It was a Thursday night in 1989 when a young boy pushed his head against the glass window of a car, craning his neck to see the letters on the movie theater sign spell out “Akira.” He had become enthralled with the Marvel comic book series over the last year before the owner of his local comic book store suggested that he see the film version. His father drove him two hours on a school night to see the film.

At the end of the screening, two generations of Peacocks came out of the same theater with vastly different reactions: “What the hell did we just watch?” the boy’s father stated more than asked.

“Something awesome,” the boy responded with enthusiasm. It began, for him, a lifelong obsession.

Joe Peacock, the little boy who once sprinted “every single day from the bus stop to try and get home just in time to watch a little bit of Robotech,” is now a man in his thirties, still passionate about the film “Akira.” He owns almost 17 thousand pieces of original art from the film. As a part of the Pittsburgh Anime Film Series, a newly expanded month-long event that will attract anime enthusiasts from all over to Downtown’s Cultural District and the Oakland area, the “Akira” expert will be re-launching an exhibit of these items at the ToonSeum on Liberty Avenue, where he will be both screening the film and lecturing about various aspects of it, as well as the film’s legacy.

Throughout the month of February, there will be a series of film screenings and lectures on Japanese animated films, all showing in Japanese with English subtitles. Though many of the events will be held directly on Pitt’s campus, the events are free and open to the public.

Charles Exley, a professor of Japanese literature and film at the University of Pittsburgh, explains that the series “was an attempt to package something that the students would be interested in in a format that had some sort of instructive input.” Exley further described the series as “a way to bring people together to celebrate that interest in a way that has teachers and students talking together.”

While it is a typical phenomenon in America for children to race home from school to watch their favorite after-school specials — be it episodes of “Dragon Ball Z” or popular MTV programs — organizers of the anime film series hope their events will have the same effect on the Pittsburgh community.

Exley explained that there is no single unifying theme to the films chosen for the series, but that he and the event organizers “were very interested in ideas about memory, identity and relationships.”

While some might think that interest in anime resides exclusively in a sort of niche community, Jeremy Ernstoff, president of the Pittsburgh Japanese Animation Club, believes otherwise.

“I think it’s definitely more widespread,” he said. “People know what it is.”

Exley agrees with Ernstoff.

“It’s different but also very familiar. It’s very hard to find somebody who has no familiarity whatsoever with some element of Japanese animation film,” Exley said.

In a society in which films and TV episodes are readily streamlined to computers — and more episodes of interest are just a click away on sites such as Netflix and Hulu — modern culture is embedded with these Japanese cultural products. Exley describes phenomenons such as Hello Kitty, Tamagotchi and Pokémon as products of “GNC,” or “Gross National Cool” — a term coined in 2002 to describe Japan’s status as not necessarily an economic or military superpower, but a cultural superpower.

But American interest in Japanese animation does not end with these cultural icons, Exley explained.

“Some familiarity with something like Pokémon is liable, eventually, to turn into familiarity with other things,” he said. Exley believes that while almost everyone is familiar with these obvious Japanese cultural phenomenons, with time will come familiarity with less obvious cultural nuances, “because it’s all so closely connected.”

For both Ernstoff and Peacock, anime’s significance resides in its ability to resonate with people across the age spectrum at once. While “a lot of things that are drawn or animated are instantly grouped into being for kids, instantly for kid-like people,” Peacock thinks that this is changing.

“I think anime was a massive part of that [change]. Anime has permeated the culture and given young people something they can grab onto and grow into as they get older,” he said. He believes this evolution “has allowed art, illustration and animation to have a legitimacy it didn’t have before in a more mature, more adult setting.”

And thus, the anime film series was created to provide an opportunity for anime lovers (and those who enjoy experiencing new things) to both celebrate their interest and meet in the sort of adult setting both Peacock and Exley described.

“When you’re a child, it’s crazy and wild and funny. When you’re a teenager, it’s got all these great one-liners,” Peacock said. “As an adult, it reminds you of your childhood without making you feel like you’re a child.”

The Pittsburgh Anime Film Series kicks off tonight with a screening of “Akira” at the ToonSeum.