Akira is the best animated "anime" of all time. While many people have problems with the plot being incoherent (they kind of adopted a 900 page manga into a single 2 hour movie!), since you seem to like frenetic action plots at least a little, I do not think it should be a big problem for you. TETSUOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
"Good" or "bad" gets to be a touchy subject, but I will certainly say for instance Black Cat and Chrono Crusade are great examples of anime worse than their manga. I always want to be involved with an anime that is as good as or better than the manga, or why would I not just be reading the manga? On that subject, Cowboy Bebop and Trigun as others mentioned are about the ultimate better than their manga series. Trigun's manga is cute, hilarious, more fun in some ways than the show, but the show is just amazing. Cowboy Bebop has amazing animation, voice acting, art, action, and the manga is completely derivative and worse.