Akira mouse pads for the desk

Padrift's Akira mouse pads and desk mats are original designs inspired by Katsuhiro Otomo's manga and his 1988 film, printed edge to edge on 3 mm neoprene with a fabric top, a non-slip base and stitched edges. Pick anything from an 11.8″ × 15.7″ (30 × 40 cm) pad that holds only a mouse to a 23.6″ × 47.2″ (60 × 120 cm) mat that swallows most of a desk; there are eight sizes in all, and each pad is printed for one order instead of waiting on a shelf.

Akira is a story about a city as much as its people: a rebuilt Tokyo full of gangs, protests, soldiers and secret labs, and two boys from the same orphanage who end up on opposite sides of all of it. That gives a desk a lot to choose from, from one red shape on a black pad to a whole skyline under the keyboard.

Neo-Tokyo, 2019, seen from now

Otomo serialized the Akira manga in Kodansha's Young Magazine from 1982 to 1990, and the film he directed came out in Japan in July 1988, two years before the manga was finished. Both are set in 2019, in Neo-Tokyo, a city rebuilt on the edge of a huge crater left by an explosion decades earlier.

That 2019 is now in the past, and the gap is part of the appeal on a modern desk. Akira imagined the future with cathode-ray glow, hand-painted neon and concrete megastructures, and a design from it looks like a picture of the present drawn from the 1980s. Next to a slim modern keyboard and a flat monitor, that contrast reads as deliberate rather than dated.

One red accent

Akira's signature color is a single, saturated red: Kaneda's jacket, his bike and the trail of his tail lights. The rest of the film is mostly blue-black night, gray concrete and the sickly greens and whites of labs and hospitals. That balance, one hot color against a lot of cold neutral, is exactly how a good desk accent works.

Put an Akira design with a red focal point on a black or charcoal desk and echo the red once: a red Escape key, a red coiled cable or a red mouse. Leave everything else black or gray. Under white or cool lighting the red stays clean; under red RGB the whole mat warms up and the night areas turn a deep maroon, which suits a gaming room but hides some of the detail in the city.

The bike on a long mat

Kaneda's motorcycle is long, low and wrapped in bodywork, with the rider lying almost flat across it. In other words, it is a horizontal shape, and it fits a desk mat better than almost any vehicle in anime. On an M, 11.8″ × 27.6″ (30 × 70 cm), or an L, a side view of the bike can run along the top edge above the keyboard, nose pointing away from the mouse so the long tail section sits over the corner your hand uses.

Kaneda's slide, the bike skidding sideways with its rear swung out and red light streaking behind it, needs a little more depth. On an XL, 15.7″ × 35.4″ (40 × 90 cm), the bike can sit at one end with its light trail sweeping across the rest of the mat. The trail is abstract, so it doesn't matter that your keyboard and mouse sit right on top of it; the bike itself stays clear in the corner.

The capsule on a small pad

Kaneda's gang is called the Capsules, and the back of his jacket carries a big red-and-white pill. Pills turn up again and again in the film, as gang badges and as the drugs passed around on the streets and in the labs. A single capsule is one of the simplest symbols in all of anime: two colors, two rounded ends, no face.

That simplicity pays off on the 11.8″ × 15.7″ (30 × 40 cm) pad, where most of the surface sits under your hand. A capsule placed in the upper third, on black or white, reads clearly around the mouse and is recognized instantly by anyone who knows the film. On a light desk, a white pad with a red capsule is a crisp, almost graphic-design choice for an office.

Tetsuo and the red cape

Tetsuo, Kaneda's younger friend from the orphanage, is the story's open wound. Picked up by the government after a crash, he develops psychic powers that keep growing beyond his control, and his resentment of always being the one Kaneda protected turns into something enormous. Late in the film he wears a ragged red cape, and his lost arm is replaced first by machinery and then by something much worse.

Tetsuo designs are the darkest Akira art for a desk. A figure in a red cape on a field of rubble works on an XL or XXL with the figure at one end, away from the mouse. The body-horror images from the finale are striking but intense, and they suit a personal gaming setup more than a shared desk or an office where colleagues see your screen and your desk on calls.

Kei and the resistance

Kei is a member of an underground resistance movement who gets pulled into Kaneda's chaos and turns out to be far more capable than he is. She is drawn in plain dark clothes with short hair, and her scenes take place in tunnels, sewers and safe rooms rather than on neon streets. Designs built around her are quieter and more grounded: muted blues, concrete grays and a single figure moving through a dark city.

Those tones suit a desk that wants Akira without the red. They work beside navy, gray or black peripherals and look good under cool white light, and they are calm enough to sit behind a work laptop all day.

The children in white

Three of the most unsettling figures in Akira are children: Takashi, Kiyoko and Masaru, psychics kept by the government, with the bodies of kids and the wrinkled faces of the old. They are dressed in pale hospital clothes and surrounded by white rooms, and in one scene they attack Tetsuo with visions of giant toys, a teddy bear and toy cars looming over his hospital bed.

The palette of those scenes is the lightest in the film, white, pale blue and soft gray, so it suits a white desk better than any other Akira art. The mood, though, is eerie rather than calm. A design that keeps the children small, at one end of the mat, lets the pale room carry the color without putting their faces where your hand lands.

Concrete and construction

Neo-Tokyo is full of construction. The government is preparing for an Olympic Games, and the stadium site sits right above the secret that the whole story turns on. Cranes, scaffolding, half-finished highways and the old crater give the film a gray, industrial look that is easy to overlook next to the neon.

On a desk, that gray is useful. A concrete-toned design, a highway curving through towers or a crater ringed with lights, works like a neutral background that happens to have a story in it. It sits under any peripheral color, hides dust between cleanings and lets one red object on the desk, a bike on a shelf or a red mouse, do all the work.

Otomo's lines in black and white

The manga is a different experience from the film: more than two thousand pages of dense, precise black-and-white art, collected in six thick volumes. Otomo drew buildings with an architect's patience, and his destruction scenes, whole districts collapsing in fine linework, are pages of remarkable detail.

A monochrome design inspired by that art suits a white desk with black peripherals, or the reverse. It has none of the film's neon, so it stays readable under any lighting, and its fine detail rewards a large size: on an XXL, 23.6″ × 35.4″ (60 × 90 cm), a cityscape can sit in the upper half while the lower half stays quiet for the keyboard and wrists.

Night streets under RGB

The film's streets are lit by signs, headlights and lit windows, and its color script leans on deep blues and purples between the red. That makes Akira one of the easier anime to pair with desk lighting. Blue or violet LEDs behind a monitor deepen the night sky in a skyline design; a red light strip under the desk shelf picks up the tail lights. Keep the brightness low, because Akira's night looks best when the screen and the mat are the brightest things in the room.

The score helps too. Geinoh Yamashirogumi's soundtrack of drums, chanting and gamelan-like percussion is unlike anything else in film music, and it suits the same low-lit desk.

For artists, editors and gamers

Akira is studied by animators and illustrators for its motion, lighting and backgrounds, so an Akira mat often ends up on a desk with a drawing tablet or an editing setup. A darker design keeps glare down around the monitor, and a long mat gives a tablet and a keyboard their own zones without the tablet sliding.

For games, the 3 mm neoprene and fabric top behave like a good cloth pad should, with a smooth, even glide for racing games, shooters and anything else that rewards a fast hand, while the non-slip base stays put when you pick the mouse up and set it down again.

Sizes for an Akira desk

The available sizes depend on the design, and each product page lists them. The table shows which setups suit which kinds of Akira art.

Setup	Size	Good for
Mouse only	S, 11.8″ × 15.7″ (30 × 40 cm)	A red-and-white capsule
Laptop desk	TCG Mat, 14″ × 24″ (35.5 × 61 cm)	Kei in a dark tunnel beside a laptop
Compact keyboard	M, 11.8″ × 27.6″ (30 × 70 cm)	The bike in profile above the keys
Keyboard and mouse	XL, 15.7″ × 35.4″ (40 × 90 cm)	The slide with a light trail across the mat
Deep desk	XXL, 23.6″ × 35.4″ (60 × 90 cm)	A black-and-white cityscape in the upper half
The whole desk	4XL, 23.6″ × 47.2″ (60 × 120 cm)	Neo-Tokyo at night from end to end

The L, 11.8″ × 31.5″ (30 × 80 cm), gives the bike's profile a few more inches of road on a shallow desk, and the 3XL, 19.7″ × 39.4″ (50 × 100 cm), lets a skyline rise higher than an XL allows.

Gifts for an Akira fan

An Akira pad suits someone with a poster of the bike on the wall, someone who rides a motorcycle and loves animation, or an artist who has paused the film frame by frame. If you know their setup is black and red, the bike or the capsule is an easy pick; for a lighter desk, the black-and-white manga look is safer. If you can't check their desk, an XL leaves room for any keyboard and still shows the whole slide.

Expect 1–3 business days of printing and stitching, then the trip from Turkey, which for a US address usually adds 2–5 business days. July, the month the film first opened in Japan, makes a neat excuse for the gift if you order in late June.

Keeping the black deep

Akira designs are mostly dark, and dark fabric shows lint and pale dust more than stains. Run a lint roller over the surface, or a barely damp cloth, once a week and the night sky stays clean. When it needs a real clean, dip the pad in a basin of lukewarm water with a small amount of mild soap, work the surface gently with your fingers, rinse until no suds are left, then sandwich it between towels to draw the water out and let it dry flat, away from direct heat. Machines are off limits: no washer, no tumble dryer and no iron.

A note on names

Akira, Neo-Tokyo and the names of the film's characters are used here only to describe what inspires our designs. Padrift is not affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by TMS Entertainment, Kodansha, Katsuhiro Otomo or anyone else holding rights to Akira.