Tezuka In English Discussion Forums

Which animes/mangas/characters/and so on by Osamu Tezuka do you think is the most overrated? Which do you think is the most underrated?

Hmm I really like Jungle Taitei...well maybe not because it's THAT good but because I love comics about animals. XD

I think Astro Boy is a little overrated. I think it has too many "unnessecairy" stories and gets too long.

Well yes, MW is quite underrated. I thought it's great. Also Superbird System is really good but not much known.

Well I think part of Jungle Emperor is that it needs to be taken in with the animated series. Kimba and Onward leo are both weird and broken, yet add other layers to the manga--certainly if Tezuka had ever redrawn Jungle Emperor, some of these 'layers' would have been added. And it is that totality which I consider among Tezuka's best work (not really fair, eh?)

As to the original manga itself--it certainly isn't perfect (which can be leveled at all of Tezuka's early work), but it is definitely the best of his early work. The best fully formed, fully fledged early piece by him.

Overrated? I suppose in that all the world knows Kimba, but again, I see Astro as the most overrated. Not because of any fault of Kimba but rather because all throughout the world there is the image in peoples' heads of boy-robot-superhero Astroboy, and this entirely misses the point.

Behind both Kimba and Astroboy are some great comics, but compared to the quality of Tezuka's later work (more or less unknown in the west until recently, and even then...), it is hard I suppose to call either underrated.

All of that said, I guess I just don't like this thread. Everything by Tezuka in English I will buy. I haven't found the 'bad' work yet...