Dark Horse Comics bought the license in the middle of the 1990s, following Epics rights to Akira. Their strategy departed greatly from Marvel’s daring colorization project. Dark Horse decided to provide Akira in a style more true to the Japanese tankbon, employing the original black and white drawings yet keeping the left-to-right reading order for Western viewers.
Coinciding with the manga craze in North America, Dark Horses versions helped introduce Akira to a new generation of manga readers in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
In 2009, Kodansha established its own English-language publishing division, Kodansha Comics (now Kodansha USA), and reclaimed the rights to publish Akira in English. Between 2009 and 2011, they released new editions of all six volumes, priced at $24.99 each. These editions included some color pages at the beginning of each volume—a nod to the Epic colorization—but otherwise returned to the black and white artwork of the Japanese original.
The definitive English-language edition arrived in 2017 with Kodansha USA’s 35th Anniversary Box Set. Priced at $199.99, this deluxe collection finally presented Akira to English readers as Otomo had originally intended: in its original right-to-left reading format, with the original hand-drawn sound effects intact, and at the larger size that showcased the artwork properly. The box set also included the Akira Club art book, giving fans access to Otomo’s design work and commentary that had previously been unavailable in English.
