The short answer seems to be "it's complicated" > The team needed to tread carefully. Harvey knew that Otomo and his son, Shohei Otomo, were fans of Bartkira,

The short answer seems to be "it's complicated" > The team needed to tread carefully. Harvey knew that Otomo and his son, Shohei Otomo, were fans of Bartkira, and for a while Shohei was interested in getting involved with the project. James Stacey, a friend of Harvey and the owner of Tokyo, Japan-based comic publisher Black Hook Press, had been in touch with Kodansha, the company behind Young Magazine. Eventually, he received a letter that said Kodansha would never be able to endorse the project but was aware of its existence. A Bartkira book could be printed but never with the pages in sequential order, because this would create a direct competitor to Akira and give readers another, potentially cheaper way to consume Otomo's story. > "Which was, I feel, forward-thinking of them," Harvey says. > It was a similar situation with Matt Groening. The Bartkira organizers knew that he had seen a copy but to date have never received a cease and desist order. As an extra defense, Harvey decided to donate all of the book's profits to charity. Some went to the OISCA Coastal Forest Restoration Project in Japan's Miyagi Prefecture, where Otomo grew up. The rest went to Save the Children, a charity preferred by the late The Simpsons co-creator Sam Simon.