Osamu Tezuka

• 1. The Boy Who Counted Bambi

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  Toyona, Osaka, 1928. A young boy named Osamu Tezuka sat in a darkened theater watching Disney films over and over again. He saw the movie Bambi more than eighty times during his childhood. His mother had to erase pages from his notebook just to keep up with how fast he drew. The family was prosperous, but the boy's obsession with animation set him on a different path than his father's management career at Sumitomo Metals. His grandfather Taro was a lawyer while his great-grandfather Ryoan was a doctor. Yet the child found himself drawn to the large, sparkling eyes of performers in the Takarazuka Revue musical troupe. These women played male roles and their costumes left a lasting impression on his future art style. He developed a profound spirit of nostalgia for that all-female theater group. Later in life, he credited his mother for inspiring confidence through her stories. She took him to the Grand Theater frequently. The experience shaped his artistic vision before he ever held a pen professionally.

• 2. New Treasure Island And The Red Covers

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  In early 1946, seventeen-year-old Tezuka published Diary of Ma-chan in an elementary school newspaper called Shokokumin Shinbun. This marked his first professional work after World War II ended. A fellow creator named Sakai pitched him a story based on Robert Louis Stevenson's classic adventure novel Treasure Island. Tezuka finished the manga loosely based on the original text. It became known as New Treasure Island and was published with bright red covers. The book numbered two hundred pages and used senkashi paper for easy circulation. This format attached him to fame immediately. The publication began what is now called the golden age of manga in Japan. It created a craze comparable to the American comic book Golden Age at the same time. Tezuka traveled to Tokyo seeking more publishers. Kobunsha turned him down but Shinseikaku agreed to publish The Strange Voyage of Dr. Tiger. Domei Shuppansha accepted The Mysterious Dr. Koronko. He played a central role in the influential magazine Manga Shōnen which ran between 1947 and 1955. His serial Kimba the White Lion became the magazine's most popular feature from 1950 to 1954.

• 3. The Factory Of Limited Animation

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  On the 4th of February 1952, Tetsuwan Atom began serialization in a weekly magazine. The character Atom and his adventures became an instant phenomenon in Japan. By 1963, Astro Boy made its debut as the first domestically produced animated program on Japanese television. The series consisted of one hundred ninety-three episodes broadcast weekly. Tezuka founded Mushi Productions in 1961 as a rival to Toei Animation. He paid animators double what Toei was paying them plus food costs. Their first film was Tales from a Certain Street Corner shown at a single special screening. This production introduced labor-saving measures like repeated animation cycles and frames held for long periods. The show cost two point five million yen per episode to produce. Tezuka cut costs by using techniques such as shooting on threes and stop images. These methods were refined there rather than invented. Selling foreign rights to NBC Enterprises provided crucial investment because Mushi Pro only had four episodes ready. The American company ordered fifty-two episodes. In the American localization, over-the-top sound effects mitigated the cheap animation. The use of sound would be further utilized in other anime to follow. Stock sound effects became standard in the industry.

• 4. The Dark Turn Of Gekiga

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  In 1967, Tezuka created the magazine COM in response to the gekiga movement and the magazine Garo. He radically changed his art from a cartoony Disney-esque style toward a more realistic drawing style. The themes of his books focused on an adult audience with dark and immoral main characters. Stories included explicit violence, erotic scenes, and crime. A common element in all these books is the very nature of the protagonists. The change started with the yokai manga Dororo which appeared that same year. This series was influenced by Shigeru Mizuki's GeGeGe no Kitarō. Simultaneously he produced Vampires introducing a stronger storyline. His work Phoenix began in 1967 and remained unfinished until his death. Besides well-known series like Black Jack and Buddha, he produced vast amounts of one-shots or shorter series. These included Ayako, Ode to Kirihito, Alabaster, Apollo's Song, Barbara, MW, and The Book of Human Insects. Many short stories were later collectively published in books such as Under the Air and Clockwork Apple. Tezuka would become milder in narrative tone during the 1980s with follow-up works like Message to Adolf.

• 5. The Cinematic Page And Star System

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  Tezuka's cinematic page layouts were influenced by Milt Gross' early graphic novel He Done Her Wrong. He read this book as a child and its style characterized many artists who followed him. A key component of his style is extensive use of quotations including allusions to popular works. He incorporated multiple varieties of depth into one frame mirroring deep-focus cinematography from Hollywood film. His Metropolis exemplifies this technique along with cinematic pans and close-ups that created motion illusions. Yet his dyadic visual jokes disrupt tension reminding readers of the framework of fiction. Tezuka invented the distinctive large eyes style drawing inspiration from Takarazuka Revue performers. He also looked to Western cartoon characters like Betty Boop and Mickey Mouse. His signature characteristic is the Star System which refers to casting characters into different roles across comics. Characters appeared modified in different works similar to how actors modify their personality for performances. This system utilized crossover between celebrity, actor and character enabling intertextual history. The work included references and commentary throughout his vast body of writing.

• 6. The Last Words Of A Manga God

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  Osamu Tezuka died of stomach cancer on the 9th of February 1989 after being rushed into a hospital in Tokyo. His last words were I'm begging you let me work spoken to a nurse trying to take away his drawing equipment. Although agnostic he was buried in a Buddhist cemetery in Tokyo. In 2014 it was reported that his daughter opened a drawer locked since his death. Inside she found half-eaten chocolate and sketches of anthropomorphic animals. Stamps were issued in his honor in 1997. Beginning in 2003 the toy company Kaiyodo began manufacturing figurines of his creations including Princess Knight and the Phoenix. Tezuka ranked twenty-fourth in The Top 100 Historical Persons in Japan poll held by Nippon Television in 2006. He was the only mangaka to make that list. In a variation asking for Greatest Geniuses in History he ranked eleventh ahead of Fujiko F. Fujio. Three works made the top ten in the 2006 Japan Media Arts Festival list: Phoenix first place Black Jack fifth place and Astro Boy tied sixth. The city of Takarazuka opened a museum dedicated to him on the 25th of April 1994. It has three floors covering fifteen thousand square feet.