I think it's a "perversion to the norm" taking place: everything becomes subjected to Kirk Drift[0] over time. As much as we'd like to communicate something nua

I think it's a "perversion to the norm" taking place: everything becomes subjected to Kirk Drift[0] over time. As much as we'd like to communicate something nuanced and specific to a pop culture audience, they eventually want to be told that the good guys win and that they are the good guys. Battle shonen stories do that by assembling together an unending series of soap operatic character arcs and pro wrestling matchups. There's inherent "pulpiness" to that kind of writing, and what manga has been strong at historically is producing products adhering to the formulas of Jump and other manga magazines: stories that are unique in their subject matter, but similar in their tropes. What made Akira interesting to foreign audiences at the time wasn't exactly the thematic content - though it got critical praise - but the more adult subjects and violence. What you found in Western animation at the time was vastly weighted towards children's toy sales and Disney general-audiences content - there was nothing like the OVA boom. So Akira existed as "the anime with nukes, biker gangs and mutants", alongside Hokuto no Ken's "atomic wasteland where muscle men punch each other and their heads explode". And that was what defined imported anime throughout the 90's - if it wasn't violent, it was sexy. Or it was Ghibli. Interest in series like Evangelion took some time to catch up with that, as more of a fan culture arose and tastes became discerning. [0] http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/columns/freshly-rememberd-kirk-drift/ http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/columns/freshly-remem...