just finished reading the last volume of the Akira manga, and there's a number of interesting parallels with Eva, Instrumentality, and the Impacts:
1) Akira was trying to trigger the next leap in human evolution, apparently through an enormous explosion.
2) at the end, Kaneda is skeptical about such an evolution:
[Kaneda:] "All your power ever brought you was misery..."
[Kiyoko:] "But also, it brought us friends... friends who can communicate without words... Friends who can understand one another. Completely."
So, human evolution is presented as the solution to our inability to connect with others, or more specifically, Kaneda's lost friendship with Tetsuo.
3) as Kaneda is being sucked into the apocalypse, Kei calls him back, and through the power of love they re-emerge in the total ruins of Neo-Tokyo.
Conclusion) Akira the manga ran from 1982-1993, and from what I've read, it had a pretty profound influence on just about every otaku of the time. You can see Akira's influence pretty clearly in Sadamoto's aborted manga and anime, Route 20, and it's possible that it seriously influenced Anno and the rest of the Gainax crew. The parallels are pretty clear to me. The question is, have other sci-fi works ever dealt with this human evolution theme? Either Eva was influenced by Akira or both just played with the same sci-fi cliche, if it is one.
Parallels: Evangelion and Akira
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