Akira, Vol. 2

The masterpiece of Katsuhiro Otomo continues.
Vol.2 expands what it was set in the first one but at the same time still carries the same problems that we saw before.
In this second volume we discover more about the military conspiracy that was introduce to use earlier, what whould be the roll of Tetsuo and the other childrens and who is Akira. Also, we continue following Kaneda and Kei while they try to found out what's happening. And this are without question the best parts of the manga. Trying to figure out what's going on and tying what little information they give us makes this a more complete reading that the first volume. With more information on the conspiracys we can understand a lot more about the themes but without going to much in depth yet.
As the mistery grows in complexity and give us more to be exited about what's to come, the characters don't. We don't see a lot of depth neither in their relatonships or personalites. While they maintain the charismatic dialogue and expresion, this doesn't help to create a real conection with the reader and instead work more as a way to show us what's happening.

Akira Vol.2 is a very enjoyable reading and of course the amazing artwork continues, with excelent us of light and perspective to create depth, but suffers with its cast of characters as they are not the most complex ones.

Although I thought this volume was a bit more uneven than the first, it does still propel the story forward by leaps and bounds, the artwork continues to be amazing and the world-building continues to grow in some interesting ways I hadn't anticipated, so I ate this one up pretty quickly. Maybe I have a different outlook because I had the next volume ready to go right after, so I wasn't looking at this volume as a piece on its own and so I maybe was more forgiving overall, but I still think this is a truly solid manga that deserves it's ‘best of' status and this volume didn't make me think otherwise.