Short answers, pulled from the story.
Katsuhiro Otomo is a Japanese manga artist, screenwriter, animator, and film director, born in Tome, Miyagi Prefecture in 1954. He is best known as the creator of Akira, both the 1982 manga series and the 1988 animated film. He is also recognized as a pioneer of the New Wave movement in manga during the 1970s and 1980s.
Otomo began Akira in 1982 with its first episode appearing in issue 52 of Young Magazine on the 6th of December 1982. The series ran for eight years, producing two thousand pages of artwork before concluding in 1990.
Otomo's major honors include induction into the Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 2012 (only the fourth manga artist to receive this), the Purple Medal of Honor from the Japanese government in 2013, the Winsor McCay Award at the 41st Annie Awards in 2014, and the 2015 Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême, becoming the first manga artist to win that prize. France also honored him as a Chevalier and later an Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Otomo published his debut, a manga adaptation of Prosper Mérimée's "Mateo Falcone" titled "A Gun Report," on the 4th of October 1973. His notable pre-Akira works include Domu, which serialized from January 1980 to July 1981 and won the Nihon SF Taisho Award, and Fireball, his first science-fiction manga, published in 1979.
Otomo named three manga artists he especially revered: Osamu Tezuka, Shotaro Ishinomori, and Mitsuteru Yokoyama. French cartoonist Moebius is frequently cited as a major influence on his realistic character design. He also credited Tetsuya Chiba's framing and Shigeru Mizuki's approach to detailed backgrounds as foundational to his visual grammar.
Artists who cite Otomo as an influence include Naoki Urasawa, Masashi Kishimoto (creator of Naruto), and the late director Satoshi Kon, who worked as Otomo's assistant on both manga and film. Akira Toriyama, creator of Dragon Ball, called Otomo "incredible" when asked to name his favorite manga artist. American director Rian Johnson has pointed to Domu as a direct influence on how telekinesis is depicted in his film Looper.