[Meeting…] Tetsuo

The historical setting in which it is set Akira, the manga by Katsuhiro Otomo, could not be more convulsive. It was 1992 (about ten years after this work began to be drawn) when a colossal explosion equivalent to a nuclear detonation shook Tokyo. This was the trigger for a third world war that devastated the entire globe and left the main cities of the world in ruins.

38 years had passed since then (that is, it was 2030), and the Japanese capital, now called Neo-Tokyo, had barely begun to heal its wounds. The immense crater left by the explosion, the epicenter of the catastrophe, was still there, and numerous pockets of poverty turned it into an unsafe city where violence was the order of the day. It was the breeding ground for different gangs, made up of young people from broken families with no future prospects, to do their thing. One of them was headed by a young man named Kaneda, but it will be his friend's. Tetsuo who I'm talking about today (sticking to what happened in the manga, and not the anime).

The awakening of power

Tetsuo Shima is a young man of fifteen or sixteen years old. quite normal looking. Its main distinctive feature is its broad forehead, over which dark spiky locks protrude. In his first appearance he seems to maintain a some rivalry (apparently healthy) with Kaneda. It was in a motorcycle race, in which these two characters competed with greater intensity than the others, when an accident occurred in which Tetsuo took the worst part. The presence of a child in the middle of the road caused him, when maneuvering suddenly to avoid running over him, ended up unconscious on the ground. Several mysterious events followed. That child not only looked grotesquely aged, but he disappeared in a matter of seconds. Kaneda and his gang were then forced to leave by suspicious officers and taking his injured friend to a place that none of them will be aware of.

Quite a few things happened until Tetsuo's reappearance. His friends (that is, Kaneda, Kai and Yamagata), when going in search of him, ran into Kay and Ryu, a young woman and an adult belonging to an armed resistance organization, as well as that mysterious boy who turned out to have psychic powers, and whom, apparently, both sides were looking for. In those events Kaneada came into the crosshairs of the leader of the government mission, the colonel. After all that, and back at the correctional center where they are confined (a seedy slum where they receive mistreatment by the disciplinary staff), they were surprised to see that Tetsuo had returned.

After returning to their street adventures, they soon discovered that their friend was not the same as always. After his mysterious disappearance he seemed to have acquired a much more aggressive and arrogant character. Not only did he begin to question Kaneda's command, but, after confronting a rival gang (the Clown's), almost killed one of its members, and he would have done so if he were not stopped by him. His mood became even more irascible due to his severe headaches and drug dependency that has developed since his admission to that strange hospital. It would soon be known that it was because His psychic powers were beginning to awaken.. Some extremely destructive powers that they were capable of shattering everything in front of them, and that he would not hesitate to use to burst the heads of all those who faced him. In fact, after a series of incidents, would manage to take control of the Clown's gang, whom he managed to intimidate with his newly acquired skills into supplying him with all the drugs they could find, from which he will become staunch enemy of Kaneda and his former gang.

Number 41

All this occurred because a government investigation team, led by the Colonel, had discovered the powers that Tetsuo had. As a result of that, it had been ssubjected to a series of experiments and had been given a very powerful drug to which he had become addicted. Like the test subjects of a macabre project (and from which only three children had survived, all of them horribly aged and addicted to that narcotic), He was assigned a number, 41, and was admitted to a center designated for such activities. However, the nature of his power and his unstable temperament made him uncontrollable. Not only does he end up escaping (that escape was what caused the events with the Clown gang already mentioned), but, above all, he met through hisnewly acquired telepathyla máxima preocupación de los responsables del proyecto: el despertar de Akira.

En efecto, el Coronel y su equipo temían por encima de todo que el sujeto de experimentos más poderoso que haya existido despertase, y llegaron a la conclusión de que Tetsuo podría ser ese temido revulsivo. La razón es que la explosión que devastó Tokio no fue provocada por una bomba nuclear lanzada por una potencia extranjera, sino por el poder del propio Akira. Tras saber de su existencia, nuestro antagonista insistió en conocer a aquel prodigio humano que hibernaba en una enorme cápsula criogénica en las profundidades de la tierra, algo que logró a pesar de la resistencia mostrada tanto por el propio Coronel como por Kaneda y Kay, quienes se habían asociado tras los sucesos de la banda del Payaso.

Akira's Lieutenant

Las consecuencias del despertar de Akira fueron catastróficas. Neo-Tokio fue una vez más reducido a escombros por otra gigantesca explosión, dejando paso una vez más al caos y la muerte, y Tetsuo supo pescar en ese río revuelto. Movido por su afán de poder pero siendo consciente de que Akira era mucho más fuerte, se sirvió de aquél para mandar. Construyó así el Gran Imperio de Tokio, en el que nominalmente Akira era el jefe supremo, pero que en el que en la práctica el propio Tetsuo tomaba las decisiones. Esto se sebía a a que Akira era un niño abstraído que apenas pronunciaba una sola palabra. Tanto sus dotes de mando, que le permitieron agrupar en torno a sí a cierto número de fieles, como los poderes sobrenaturales de ambos prodigiossuscitaron un afán mesiánico entre la población, quienes les alababan como a dioses. A ello contribuyó que repartiese comida entre las masas hambrientas, aunque, no contento con ello, suministraba drogas a las raciones para hacer a la población aún más dependiente.

Desde entonces, los poderes de Tetsuo no dejaron de aumentar. Gracias a Lady Miyako (una anciana que también reunía facultades mentales fuera de lo común) supo que las drogas bloqueaban el desarrollo de sus habilidades psíquicas, por lo que, tras superar su síndrome de abstinencia, fue capaz de hacer prodigios antes inimaginables. Por desgracia, su cuerpo fue incapaz de poder canalizar semejantes fuerzas, lo cual provocaría grotescos cambios en su organismo que llegarán a amenazar su propia existencia.

Conclusion and recommendations

Tetsuo Shima es un adolescente problemático perteneciente a la banda de Kaneda. Cuando sus poderes despearon, la rivalidad relativamente sana se trocó en odio y, sirviéndose de ellos, buscó la forma de mandar sobre los demás mientras trataba de calmar su agudo dolor de cabeza y su no menos fuerte síndrome de abstinencia. Conocer a Akira fue el empujón que necesitaba para lograr el poder absoluto.

Son muchas las ediciones del manga que han salido en español. La editorial que más publicaciones ha realizado ha sido Editions B, con hasta tres ediciones distintas. La primera, de 1990, consta de 38 tomos. La segunda (1992), más compacta, de 14. Por su parte, la de 1999, concentra toda la serie en seis grandes tomos. Ese es el mismo formato que sigue Norma Editorial (2005), aunque con portadas diferentes.

También está la famosa película de animación estrenada en 1988 y dirigida por Katsuhiro Ôtomo que presenta grandes diferencias en algunos aspectos de los expuestos en este artículo basado en el manga.