South Park has returned for Season 29 on Comedy Central, and the premiere snuck in a perfect Akira shout out that just isn’t the same one you’ve likely seen in a ton of other projects. Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira is one of the most influential manga releases of all time, and that’s even more true for its feature film adaptation. It has been referenced in many different ways across multiple projects through the course of the last few decades, and South Park itself has even given it a shout out before.
But South Park series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone clearly have a love for Akira’s iconography that goes far beyond the bike slide that you’ve seen referenced before in many other shows and movies, and that’s especially true with a cool moment from the Season 29 premiere. As pointed out by @UGGMUGG7 on X, there’s actually a cool Easter Egg seeing Cartman reenact an Akira scene that really isn’t referenced as much as the other famous bike moment. Check it out below.
Anyone else catch the Akira reference in the new episode of South Park? pic.twitter.com/x4uuaSuUKz
South Park‘s Season 29 premiere episode, “South American Biker Gangs,” sees all the boys across town get access to E-Bikes and start causing chaos all over. It’s already kind of Akira-esque in tone as the famous manga and film also sees young boys forming bike gangs in their post-apocalyptic world, and cause the same amount of chaos. The reference in question sees Cartman crashing through a restaurant window before leaving without a care, and that’s especially impressive considering that the episode didn’t do a bike slide as many fans would have expected from such a reference.
South Park has had shout outs to Akira in the past such as that time where Cartman morphed into a giant pulsating monster as a result of fusing with his Trapper Keeper in Season 4 (much like Tetsuo Shima’s own transformation), so this is a cool way to keep all that love going. Considering how else this newest premiere felt like a classic episode, it does make a lot of sense that there would also be another early season parallel here as well. And it’s a good sign of what could be on the way for the rest of South Park Season 29.
South Park Season 29 has revealed its schedule for the rest of the year with Comedy Central, and you can catch up with any episodes that have already been released now streaming with Paramount+. There are currently only six episodes slated for this new season thus far, but the initial deal between South Park Studios and Paramount revealed that Parker and Stone must release ten episodes a year. So there are potentially four other episodes still to come.
The current release schedule for South Park Season 29’s remaining episodes breaks down as such:
This bi-weekly release schedule mirrors the way South Park released last year, so it’s yet to be revealed what we could expect from everything moving forward. But that’s par for the course with the long running series at this point.
