Akira

Akira is a 1988 Japanese animated cyberpunk film directed by Katsuhiro Otomo and adapted from his own manga, made on a production budget of about 700 million yen, roughly 5.7 million dollars, with combined production and advertising costs of about 1.1 billion yen. Set in a dystopian Neo-Tokyo of 2019, it follows the biker gang leader Shotaro Kaneda after his childhood friend Tetsuo Shima gains powerful telekinetic abilities in a motorcycle accident and comes to threaten the city's military establishment. The film earned about 49 million dollars worldwide at the box office and more than 80 million dollars in home video sales, building an international cult following that critics credit with fundamentally changing anime's reach outside Japan. It holds a 91 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and is widely described as a landmark of Japanese animation and a foundational work of the cyberpunk aesthetic in film.