Osamu Tezuka was born in Toyonaka, Osaka, on the 6th of February 1928, into a family where medicine and law were the expected paths to success. His father worked in management at Sumitomo Metals, his grandfather was a lawyer, and his great-grandfathers were doctors, creating a lineage of intellectual and professional achievement that seemed to demand a similar future from the eldest of three children. Yet, the boy who would become the God of Manga found his true calling not in the operating theater, but in the margins of his school notebooks. While his arms swelled and he fell ill as a child, a doctor cured him, sparking a fleeting desire to become a physician himself. However, the answer his mother gave him when he asked whether to pursue manga or medicine was simple and decisive: work at the thing you like most of all. This decision set him on a collision course with history, as he began drawing comics around his second year of elementary school, producing so furiously that his mother had to erase pages in his notebook just to keep up with his output. His artistic style was forged in the glittering lights of the Takarazuka Grand Theater, where his mother frequently took him. The all-female musical troupe, with their romantic musicals aimed at a female audience, left an indelible mark on his psyche. He developed a profound spirit of nostalgia for the theater, and the performers' large, sparkling eyes became the defining feature of his art style, a visual signature that would revolutionize Japanese animation. He was also inspired by the early Chinese animated film Princess Iron Fan, which he credits as the most important influence on his desire to be an animator, surpassing even the Disney films he watched over eighty times, most famously Bambi.
The Manga Revolution
In 1947, at the age of nineteen, Tezuka published New Treasure Island, a work that would ignite the golden age of manga and change the landscape of Japanese storytelling forever. The story was loosely based on Robert Louis Stevenson's classic adventure novel, but Tezuka's execution was so dynamic and cinematic that it created an overnight sensation. This publication marked the beginning of what is known as the manga revolution, a craze comparable to the American comic book Golden Age. Before this, manga was often seen as simple children's fare, but Tezuka introduced complexity, moral depth, and cinematic pacing that elevated the medium to an art form. He traveled to Tokyo to find publishers for more of his work, facing rejection from Kobunsha before Shinseikaku and Domei Shuppansha agreed to publish his early masterpieces. While still in medical school, he published a trilogy of science fiction epics: Lost World in 1948, Metropolis in 1949, and Nextworld in 1951. These works demonstrated his ability to weave complex narratives with scientific concepts, a skill he would later use to enrich his sci-fi manga. He played a central role in the influential magazine Manga Shōnen, which was published between 1947 and 1955, contributing some of its most influential works and helping to define its artistic and pedagogical vision. His serial Kimba the White Lion, which ran from 1950 to 1954, was the magazine's most popular feature, demonstrating the potential of manga to deliver emotional, cinematic storytelling with moral depth. He also wrote the instructional column Manga Classroom from 1952 to 1954, which encouraged young readers to see manga as a learnable craft, inspiring many aspiring artists. His involvement was not only instrumental in elevating the magazine's prestige but also deeply formative for his own development, providing him a platform to experiment with narrative form and to mentor a new generation of artists.
The year 1952 marked the birth of a cultural icon that would define a generation: Astro Boy. Originally titled Ambassador Atom, the character was a mild success in Japan until Tezuka realized the potential of a humanoid robot with human emotions. The idea for the character's interaction with aliens came from a personal encounter where Tezuka was punched in the face by a frustrated American G.I. while working at a hospital. On the 4th of February 1952, Tetsuwan Atom began serialization, and the character's adventures became an instant phenomenon in Japan. By 1953, Tezuka published Princess Knight, a shōjo manga that would become one of his most famous works and widely regarded as a classic. The series, serialized in Shojo Club from 1953 to 1956, introduced a tradition of androgynous heroines and established several trends in the shōjo genre. It is considered to be one of the first works in this genre that was narrative-focused and that portrays a female superhero. In 1954, Tezuka first published what he would consider his life's work, Phoenix, which originally appeared in Mushi Production Commercial Firm. The story of life and death, ranging from the distant past to the far future, remained unfinished at the time of his death in 1989. He moved house in 1954, offering his Tokiwa-sō apartment to two budding manga artists he had complemented previously, Hiroshi Fujimoto and Motoo Abiko. The duo, collectively known as Fujiko Fujio, would later form careers rivaling Tezuka's in popularity and ambitions, passing on the apartment to other manga artists as time went on. The success of Astro Boy led to the first domestically produced animated program on Japanese television in 1963, creating the first craze for anime in Japan. The 30-minute weekly program, of which 193 episodes were produced, led to the first craze for anime in Japan. In America, the TV series, which consisted of 104 episodes licensed from the Japanese run, was also a hit, becoming the first Japanese animation to be shown on US television, although the U.S. producers downplayed and disguised the show's Japanese origins.
The Factory Of Dreams
Tezuka's transition from manga artist to animation pioneer was fraught with conflict and innovation. His first work to be adapted for animation was Saiyuki, a retelling of the Chinese story of Journey to the West, produced by Toei Animation in 1960. Tezuka was officially credited as the director, but later crew accounts would prove that the manga artist was difficult to motivate to do work. Most of the direction was done by Yabushita Taiji instead. Tezuka was eventually given the task of storyboarding the film, so that he didn't actually have to animate anything and something in the production could get done. He did not follow Toei's deadlines, and after a year of working on the project and several weeks of threats from Toei's producers, he finally delivered his 500-page storyboard so the animators could do their job in the autumn of 1959. The film was released as Alakazam the Great in 1960. That said, many of the animators were initially shocked at the amount they had to produce in such a short amount of time, amounting to a frame a day, thinking it undoable. However, Tezuka's simplified art style made the entire animation process much more efficient. In 1961, Tezuka entered the animation industry in Japan by founding the production company Mushi Productions as a rival of Toei Animation. His initial staff was composed of animators he had met while working on Saiyuki that he convinced to join by paying the animators more than double what Toei was paying them as well as paying for food. Their first film was Tales from a Certain Street Corner, an anti-Disney, experimental film. Just like on Saiyuki, Tezuka would often fall behind his own deadlines and the staff would have to pick up the slack only for Tezuka to take credit for it later. Tales from a Certain Street Corner was shown at a single special screening and featured many tricks that would be later standardized as labor-saving measures in the anime industry such as repeated and reversed animation cycles of characters dancing, frames being held for a long period of time. This same screening also featured the first screening of Tezuka's Astro Boy initial two episodes eight weeks before its original broadcast on the 5th or the 6th of November 1962 at the Yamaha Hall. Astro Boy was first broadcast on New Year's Day 1963; this series would create the first successful model for animation production in Japan and would also be the first Japanese animation dubbed into English for an American audience and also created the market for children's merchandise. This is in large part because Tezuka was able to undercut his competitors, cutting costs to 2.5 million yen per episode by using techniques that would later be adopted by the television anime industry at large such as shooting on threes, stop images, repetition, sectioning, combined use, and short shots. None of these methods were invented by Tezuka or Mushi Pro, but were instead refined there. During production, the staff also found that while the short cuts were initially obvious, the use of soundscaping helped to mitigate it. The only reason Astro Boy was able to survive its inception is because Tezuka was able to sell the foreign rights to NBC Enterprises, an important distinction from NBC itself which was the entity Tezuka believed he was selling to. The American company ordered 52 episodes, a crucial investment because Mushi Pro only had four episodes in the can and only enough resources for one episode more. In the American localization, even more over the top sound effects were used to mitigate the obviously cheap animation. The use of sound would be further utilized and exemplified in other anime to follow, leading to many of the stock anime sound effects modern audiences are now used to. Selling to an American market was very restrictive, though. They were not to include any indication that the show was made in Japan, they were not to have any arc that lasted more than an episode, all street signs had to be in English, there could be no religious references, adult themes, or nudity. Tezuka agreed to this, claiming that it would fit better with the sci-fi setting by giving the sense of a placelessness. However, he would soon be disappointed by the American market when a Mushi Pro representative went to discuss the next year's episode order only to find out that the Americans didn't need anymore, believing that 52 episodes were more than enough to cycle through indefinitely. Other series were subsequently adapted to animation, including Jungle Emperor in 1965, the first Japanese animated series produced in full color. Jungle Emperor was also successfully sold to NBC Enterprises who almost made Mushi Pro clothe the wild animals featured. They were finally able to negotiate that animals were permitted to be naked in natural settings, and that the depiction of black characters was permissible, as long as they were presented as civilized; evil characters could still only be white. In the late 60s and 70s, it was clear that the rise of Mushi Pro was a short one and it was sliding into bankruptcy. Tezuka's financial model was unsustainable and the company was deeply in debt. In two desperate attempts to earn enough money to pay investors, Tezuka turned to the adult film market and produced A Thousand and One Nights in 1969 and Cleopatra in 1970. Both attempts failed. Tezuka stepped down as acting director in 1968 to found a new animation studio, Tezuka Productions, and continued experimenting with animation late into his life. In 1973, Mushi Productions collapsed financially; the fallout would produce several influential animation production studios, including Sunrise.
The Darker Side Of Light
While Tezuka was celebrated for his children's works, he simultaneously cultivated a darker, more literary side of his art that would redefine the boundaries of manga. In 1967, in response to the magazine Garo and the gekiga movement, Tezuka created the magazine COM. By doing so, he radically changed his art from a cartoony, Disney-esque slapstick style towards a more realistic drawing style; at the time the themes of his books became focused on an adult audience. A common element in all these books and short stories is the very dark and immoral nature of the main characters. The stories are also filled with explicit violence, erotic scenes, and crime. Through the magazine, he also wanted to recreate the vision of the Manga Shōnen magazine he had contributed to in the early 1950s, making it a platform for artistic experimentation and promotion of young emerging artists. The change of his manga from aimed at children to more literary gekiga manga started with the yōkai manga Dororo in 1967. This yōkai manga was influenced by the success of and a response to Shigeru Mizuki's GeGeGe no Kitarō. Simultaneously, he also produced Vampires that, like Dororo, also introduced a stronger, more coherent storyline and a shift in the drawing style. After these two he began his true first gekiga attempt with Swallowing the Earth. Dissatisfied with the result, he soon after produced I.L.. His work Phoenix began in 1967. Besides the well-known series Phoenix, Black Jack and Buddha, which are drawn in this style, he also produced a vast amount of one-shots or shorter series, such as Ayako, Ode to Kirihito, Alabaster, Apollo's Song, Barbara, MW, The Book of Human Insects, and a large number of short stories that were later collectively published in books such as Under the Air, Clockwork Apple, The Crater, Melody of Iron and Other Short Stories, and Record of the Glass Castle. Tezuka would become a bit milder in narrative tone in the 1980s with his follow-up works such as Message to Adolf, Midnight, Ludwig B unfinished, and Neo Faust. Black Jack, which ran from 1973 to 1983, is the story of a talented surgeon who operates illegally, using radical and supernatural techniques to combat rare afflictions. Black Jack received the Japan Cartoonists' Association Special Award in 1975 and the Koudansha Manga Award in 1977. Three Black Jack TV movies were released between 2000 and 2001. In fall 2004, an anime television series was aired in Japan with 61 episodes, releasing another movie afterward. A new series, titled Black Jack 21, started broadcasting on the 10th of April 2006. In September 2008, the first volume of the manga had been published in English by Vertical Publishing and more volumes are being published to this day. Buddha, which ran from 1972 to 1983, is Tezuka's unique interpretation of the life of Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism. The critically acclaimed series is often referred to as a gritty portrayal of the Buddha's life. The series began in September 1972 and ended in December 1983, as one of Tezuka's last epic manga works. Nearly three decades after the manga was completed, two anime film adaptations were released in 2011 and 2014. Dororo, which ran from 1967 to 1968, is a manga series about a boy called Hyakkimaru who has been robbed of 48 of his body parts by 48 different devils. In order for him to retrieve a stolen part, he must eliminate the devil that stole it. Hyakkimaru meets a boy thief, Dororo, and together they travel while being constantly attacked by ghosts and monsters. In 1969, the manga series was adapted into an anime that consisted of 26 episodes. In 2019, nearly 50 years later, the manga series was re-adapted into another anime series with 24 episodes.