Osamu Tezuka Museum

[strobe_z]

I'm just on my way home after 2 weeks in Japan/Korea - it was a mostly work-related trip, but I did schedule in a short side-trip to Osaka just after I arrived in Japan. I went down and wandered around the Takarazuka theatre, saw posters for the latest releases, and then spent a few hours wandering around the Tezuka museum.

It was a very neat experience to see some of his original artwork - especially from manga that I know quite well. I think for someone like me, who knew quite well what I was looking at, it was a fun experience, but the almost total lack of English explanations would have made it difficult for most casual fans I think. I resisted the urge to buy Black Jack toilet paper, but during the course of this trip (including a few trips to several locations of Japanese manga super-store Mandarake, and a couple of trips to second-hand bookstore Book-off in both Japan and Korea), I made off with a few nice Tezuka finds.

I mainly concentrated on the mysterious original versions of manga. I ended up with a nice slipcase cover of the original version of New Treasure Island, two volumes of the origianl Jungle Emperor manga and a nice volume of Phoenix that includes the original, unfinished version of the Phoenix story "Dawn". I really enjoy comparing the early editions with the later "standard" ones to see the major and minor differences.

I took a bunch of photos, and plan to create a "Tezuka museum" page for the main website. It was a blast.

[Huscheli]