A couple of months ago, Matt and Ross Duffer, the creators of “Stranger Things”, cited “Akira” and “Elfen Lied” as inspirations for Netflix’s hit series in an interview with The Daily Beast:
DB: Nice. Are there images or movies that helped shape “Stranger Things” that you haven’t seen a lot of people catch onto yet? One I was happy to see somebody point out yesterday was the anime movie Akira.
Ross: Yes, I saw that. Akira was obviously a big one.
Matt: But then weirdly it’s like, I haven’t seen it for a long time. More recently I had seen an anime called “Elfen Lied” that is clearly inspired by Akira. And that was really influential. When I watched it I thought it felt like an ultraviolent E.T. There were a lot of things in there that I really liked and that made their way into the show, particularly related to the character of Eleven.