Akira Street Scene production artwork Otomo studios Pattern no. 182

Here is something pretty cool. I wasn't sure what it was when I first bought it which was on a bit of an impulse. I had hoped that it migh be the hand of Otomo-san himself but had no real clue. With the help of a friend and some sleuthing I have found that it is the finished pencils for the background art to scene 182 in the Akira anime movie. It is actually a pretty cool scene and unlike being just a background you see for blink of an eye, it is in the movie full screen without any foreground characters for several seconds. The scene was also included in the US theatrical trailer.

In my additional images you will see a scan of the storyboards from the Complete Otomo series book 21 which was part 1 of the 2 storyboard volumes. You can see even early on Otomo knew what he wanted drawn. I've seen a photograph of this prelim so it was on display at some point too and was made into this larger finished pencil illustration and then painted by art director and master painter Toshi Harur Mizutani. The painted piece was entitled "Akira Pattern No. 182 Final Production Background" and was displayed in the Akira - The Architecture of Neo Tokyo which toured internationally. You can read about it here https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2022/06/akira-architecture-neo-tokyo/ It is also featured in the exhibition book Anime Architecture: Imagined Worlds and Endless Megacities by Stefan Riekeles.

In the movie this scene is from 6:48 to 6:54 so on screen quite some time and a key scene and is also not just a background scene but the actual scene itself. Right after the opening battle with the clowns they pan a shot of Neo Tokyo then this scene which is moving and blurry at first as one of the rebels escapes with Takashi (No. 26) and is stumbling injured through the side streets just before he shoots the dogs and then is himself shot triggering Takashi to collapse all the buildings around them. How cool is this. Two screenshots below from 6:51 and 6:53. Blurriness effect is seen in the screenshots.

At 4:14 in this documentary on Akira where they interview Otomo-san this is in the background too. Again, this appears at 23:12 in the documentary where they are interviewing Mizutani-san who is the art director as well as the painter of the finished piece. Finally, this scene made the US theatrical trailer and can be seen in the documentary at 49:42 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj7wxeo6R9o&ab_channel=JPSOUSAdesign