Katsuhiro Otomo had previously created "Fireball" (1979), an unfinished series in which he disregarded accepted manga art styles and which established his interest in science fiction as a setting. "Fireball" anticipated a number of plot elements of "Akira", with its story of young freedom fighters trying to rescue one of the group's older brother who was being used by the government in psychic experiments, with the older brother eventually unleashing a destructive "fireball" of energy (the story may have drawn inspiration from the Alfred Bester's 1953 novel "The Demolished Man"). The setting was again used the following year in "Domu", which was awarded the Science Fiction Grand Prix and became a bestseller. Otomo then began work on his most ambitious work to date, "Akira". While "Akira" came to be viewed as part of the emerging cyberpunk genre, it predates the seminal cyberpunk novel "Neuromancer" (1984), which was released two years after "Akira" began serialization in 1982 and was not translated into Japanese until 1985.