Tezuka In English Discussion Forums

This entry is full of spoilers for the Nostalgia chapter of Phoenix, so dont' read it if you haven't read Nostalgia.

So having finally read the Nostalgia chapter of Phoenix, I'm not at all certain how to interpret the character "Fox" who is clearly Black Jack in character design, though not in personality or occupation. What are others' impressions of him?

He seems to me to sort-of serve as a guide character completing the quest for the return to nature, which makes sense given BJ's environmentalism, but that alone doesn't seem enough to satisfactoraly interpret Black Jack's only appearance in Phoenix. Is this what BJ would become living in the degenerate world of Nostalgia? Is this what he would have been like without the childhood accident? None of these interpretations seem to really settle it...

On the other hand, Nostalgia certainly clarified why Hallelujah ordered Rock to exterminate the moopies in Phoenix: Future. A species with such ridiculously superior adaptability and survival skills makes the struggle for survival of all other races unfair, and its transforming ability (as Rock says) leads people to relapse into Nostalgia and abandon progress. As always, the different volumes of Phoenix clarify one another. Now the question is whether moopies are related to Ueko.

Damn, I feel someone will have to ultimately write a character guide and index (more so that what's up on tezukainenglish.com). Fox to me looks like a sort of blend between BJ and Tatta from Buddha, so maybe it is just coincidence?

The other thought in my mind is that if Fox is more of a reincarnation of Tatta than BJ, this would sort of make sense. Tatta remains throughout the Buddha series a confused individual. A rebel who wants to do right but is in need of guidance. In this sense, Fox makes a perfect reincarnation of him since he is the moral leader of a gang of outcasts and biker-thugs (Tatta is the leader of a gang of outcasts and thieves!)

It could be that we want to see BJs character appear somewhere in this series, but perhaps Tezuka felt a strong desire to keep most of his well-known characters out. Except for Rock, what common Tezuka characters show up in Phoenix?

I'll let Ada (or someone else who knows more than I do) answer the question about the recurring Phoenix characters.

I will say though that I agree with cmoon... I think Fox is Tatta with a Black Jack scar. He totally fits the profile.

Ada and I are working on a pretty major overhaul of the whole look of the TezukaInEnglish.com website... but once that's done I'm plannig to tackle the character database (hopefully with a lot of research help). Tezuka's cast system has facinated me from the first time I found out about it (and I've always wondered why no one's attempted it before or since!). Having an appearance list for the characters is really fascinating.