I, however, am a bit more skeptical of this one than when Last Airbender was being adapted. For one, that one was clearly set in an Asian, Inuit inspired world, and white people were taking the main roles as members of various ethnic groups. For Akira, the entire setting is being moved to "Neo-Manhattan", so as far as I'm concerned, the race of characters are up for grabs. In the grand scheme, the fact that these characters are white is about on par with every lead character in every Hollywood film being white, especially films set in New York.
The characters are still named Akira, Tetsuo, and Kaneda, though, right?
...actually, if they just changed the damn names I bet there'd be a lot less complaining.
I mean, you know, there'd still be a whole lot of complaining, because Internet, but not as much.