Techno-Ecologies of Terra Nullius Before and After History

Otomo Yasujiro’s 2000 page Akira manga (1982–1990) and the 124 min, highly condensed film version (1988) portray a post-apocalyptic Tokyo heading for renewed catastrophe. The setting is relentlessly urban, but opens onto ecocritical perspectives. This chapter looks at the colonial legal concept of terra nullius, a primordial state of nature without owners, as it appears in Akira when that colonial concept of empty land is replicated as the anarchic outcome of disaster. Inevitably recalling the trauma of nuclear war and inflected by histories of natural disaster in the Pacific Ring of Fire, Akira examines human agency at the crossroads of evolutionary and technological forces. Indigenous and ecological understanding that no land is ever empty challenges the dereliction of the devastated city, whilst challenging Eurocentric, colonial constructions of the human exception. In their place, the chapter argues, even in their negative portrayal of destruction, both versions of Akira present a commons that reasserts itself over human attempts at ownership and control.