Tezuka In English Discussion Forums

Tezuka's general philosophy.

I've just finished 4 volumes of Phoenix, MW, Ode to Kirihito, Apollo's Song, and I also watched all of the 80's Astro Boy. Each one of them moved me deeply and their stories rank up with the eminent authors such as Dostoevsky and Camus.

I read Apollo's Song, Ode to Kirihito, and MW in about 1 day. They were awesome

Phoenix was just mesmerizing! It's on my top ten lists of all time. Karma was very moving and powerful. It captured the spirit of religion rather than its dogmas.

I plan to write an essay on the themes Tezuka delves into for fun. I really like his personal, humanist philosophy, and I believe by writing an essay I would be supporting his lifelong goal of establishing the comic medium as a viable form of literature. Many teachers and professors still deny comic books and manga as viable forms of literature. I mean, look at Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Naoki Urasawa, and Osamu Tezuka!

So what books should I buy next? Should I buy the rest of Phoenix or start concentrating on Buddha?

Also, may one of you direct me to some good commentaries on Tezuka's works and general outlook on life?

By the way, here is a cool analysis on MW I found:

In Defense of Tezuka's MW
http://www.comixology.com/articles/107/ ... as-i-MW-i-

My comic/manga heroes are (in order)...
1. Alan Moore (tied with Tezuka)
1. Osamu Tezuka (tied with Moore)
2. Naoki Urasawa
3. Neil Gaiman

Maybe I should add the creator of Mushishi, but I've only watched the anime rather than manga. I admit, I've yet to check out Go Nagai and some other greats also.

Finally, I forgot to mention, I am reading The Elements of Style and On Writing Well in order to improve my skills on essays, so this is going to be a long project! Thanks!

Hooray!

Whoa, whoa, slow down there.
Great ambitious project, but Tezuka is such a huge broad subject. Why not focus on Tezuka's philosophy in just one or two works?
I could write endlessly on just one page in a Tezuka work.....

And yes, Buddha is definitely the way to go for more philosophy, but it's long.

To me, Phoenix is hard to digest as a whole, and there's enough material in any one volume for countless essays. So there's no need to buy the whole thing for that purpose.

Good luck!

I'm also interested in Tezuka from a more academic standpoint AND I love Alan Moore too. If you ever get stuck in your essay or you want to discuss something more academia-like, don't hesitate to come back to the forums! We love more in-depth stuff like this!

If you read Japanese, I would also recommend Tezuka's "Human Metamorphoses."

I was working on something like this for Phoenix but put it to the side. Phoenix in my mind is definitely very central to his 'philosophy', but by no means is it restricted to Phoenix as you well know.

I put philosophy in air quotes, because there's a lot more to the way Tezuka does things than just philosophy proper. I argued in the Leo essay I wrote that this is the first full-fledged evocation of Tezuka's story telling mode; which is a part of that philosophy (but you wouldn't normally call it philosophy).

There's definitely a lot that could be written about this and I've found in general it isn't the territory a lot of fans want to get into. They're satisfied with the paraphrased 'love all life' or whatever else, but the problem is that is paraphrasing. There's a few pages in the intros to one of the Adolph volumes that is a translation of Tezuka explaining his 'philosophy' (I discuss this , make sure and scroll down to where it says "Jungle Emperor as a primer to Osamu Tezuka's vision".

Would be interested to see anyone explore this more thoroughly as I think English speakers are getting a bit short-changed on this; though the situation is obviously a lot better than it used to be.

Returning to Phoenix, I really think the volumes to consider are Karma, Future and Nostalgia. All of the volumes are important, but these three show his central themes in their purest.