Get ready to turn heads with these Akira-themed Nike Dunk Lows sneakers!
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Akira is a cyberpunk manga series set in a sci-fi, post-apocalyptic world. The manga series follows various characters, including Shotaro Kaneda (a biker gang leader), Kei (a militant revolutionary), a trio of Espers (people who can see paranormal activity), and Colonel Shikishima (a Neo-Tokyo military leader). Each character tries to prevent Tetsuo Shima (Kaneda’s mentally unstable childhood friend) from using his new-found destructive abilities to awaken Akira. The manga was turned into a film in 1988, and Warner Bros. planned to turn it into a live-action movie set to be released in May of this year.
Andrew Chiou, who rendered a pair of mismatched Mario-themed Nike Dunk Lows in Feb, redesigned another pair of Nike Dunk Lows in July last year, this time themed after Akira. The post was captioned:
“’Akira’ Dunks 💊🏍 concepts mock up. Re-rendered my original concept and tweaked a few things 🙃”
What the Sneakers Look Like
The shoes were designed to look like the red-orange bikes seen in the original movie, with each shoe matching either side of the bike. The panels of the show are painted in a reddish-orange or terracotta. The front of both shoes have several “sponsor stickers”, including Canon, Citizen, and what looks like it could be BMW.
The shoe laces are a pale pink, with bright blue aglets, and the tongue of the show is a slightly greyer-looking pink. The Nike symbol is set in one of the terracotta-coloured panels and starts white before turning the same bright blue as the aglets as they circle the back of the show. A small patch of lighter white at the beginning of the Nike logo seems to be trying to replicate a false shine.
The Nike logo on the tongue of the shoe is done in a font style similar to the manga.
The back panel of the shoes have the word “Akira” just under the blue of the Nike symbol, and the base of the shoes have a red and black design.
There’s a lot of detail in the shoes, meaning there’s plenty for fans of the manga and the movie to see and freak out over and freak out they did if the comments under Chiou’s post were anything to go by.
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Fan Response
Fans loved the shoes’ design, with many saying they desperately wanted/needed a pair of their own. One or two joked that Kanye West would also want a pair when the shoes eventually launched. Several showed their appreciation through the flame emoji, indicating that the shoes were “fire”.
With such a positive response to the shoes, we hope the film doesn’t follow the pattern of previous manga to live-action film adaptations.
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TL;DR
- Warner Bros. is planning a live-action Akira film.
- Andrew Chiou designed a pair of Nike Dunk Lows theme after the manga back in 2022 when news of Warner Bros.’s upcoming film was still fresh.
- Many fans of Akira love the shoes.
