Akira Creator Announces New Film Orbital Era

Today at Anime Expo, Akira filmmaker Katsuhiro Otomo announced his upcoming, third feature film project, Orbital Era. Per an account of the announcement on Twitter, Orbital Era is a “coming of age story” set in a space station. Some key art and a sketch of the space station were both shared (you can see those below), along with the tantalizing description of the film’s opening scene, in which a skateboard floating in space to reveal a huge space station. “The story of Orbital Era will show four seasons in the space colony. Over these seasons, you’ll see the characters relationships unfold,” Otomo said.

That skateboard appears in the film’s poster, which you can see above. The poster has been hanging outside since the start of the show, although it’s just now that the title was actually given. You can check out the tweets for some additional details on the project below.

Katsuhiro Ôtomo, who created the manga on which Akira is based as well as the feature film, is one of manga’s earliest and biggest success stories in North America. The movie was required viewing while Japanese animation was still considered a weird, niche thing for Americans to be interested in, and Ôtomo in 2012 was one of the first manga creators inducted in the Eisner Awards Hall of Fame at Comic Con.

Ôtomo is a bit like anime’s Terence Malick; he takes years to craft an exquisitely beautiful film, leaving his fans wondering when or if he will return next. Akira came out in 1988, followed in 2004 by Steamboy, an expensive and ambitious film that took more than ten years to complete. Following suit, it’s now another 15 years since that movie was released and we are finally seeing a little bit of what Orbital Era has to offer. The difference for Ôtomo is that he at least does TV and short films in the interim, as well as his manga and screenwriting work.