Nakama Britannica

If you a veteran anime / manga fan, chances are you know who Osamu Tezuka is, or if you are a new to anime or manga and never head of him before, either way, this mangaká, director and animator led such a life, that the Japanese refers to him with two different titles – The god of manga and the father of anime. Truth is, he deserves both titles.

Osamu Tezuka was born on the 3^rd of November 1926 in a reasonably well-off family. His father was a cinema aficionado who owned a projector and his mother was a housewife, who used to tell young Tezuka many stories.

Such environment influenced his future work in many ways. Specially his story-telling skills, as he brought cinema’s perspectives to his style and used long narratives on his mangas, something new, as most mangas at that time were one shot or simply some visual gag.

It was on his father projector that Tezuka saw the movie that would change his life forever and carved into his mind the will to become an animator – Walt Disney’s Bambi

It is claimed that he watched Bambi over 80 times and that the early Walt Disney’s character design is pointed as the direct influence of one of the most recognizable features in Tezuka’s characters – big eyed characters. Needless to say that Tezuka’s influence in character design can be seen even now, from a multitude of modern anime and manga characters.

In his childhood, Tezuka’s hobbies were Bug Collecting and Entomology. His loves for bugs, led him to assume the pen name Osamushi. He just changed the last part of his name with the Chinese character for mushi (insect in Japanese).

He was accepted into medical school and to help with his expenses, Tezuka’s first manga, Maa-chan no Nikkichou, came to light. This was Tezuka’s first professional work.

Then, in 1952, he graduated at medical school and had a though decision ahead of him. Decide between being a mangaká or a doctor, bear in mind that the mangaká career didn’t had any sort of recognition back then, neither did Tezuka had any promises of making a decent living from it. Tormented by such a difficult decision, he consulted his mother who calmly tells him to choose “whichever he loved most”. And we are all glad that he chose to be a mangaká.

After that he started the most prolific mangaká career known, which spawned over 700 stories, 150,000 pages collected in more than 400 volumes. Legend says he was one of the fastest ever as well; he was able to produce up to 10 pages a day, given the current page length of manga series today, this would be the equivalent of running 2.5 series at the same time!

Tezuka was also used to be a pioneer. He was the first mangaká to come with long narratives, some longer than a thousand pages, he wrote the first shoujo manga (Princess Knight) and he directed the first x-rated animation ever (Cleopatra, queen of sex).

In 1962, he started Mushi Productions and once again, accomplished amazing feats with 58 titles on his filmography, playing many different roles such as writer, animator, director or producer.

Tetsuwan Atom, their first serialized production for TV set the standards for animation. Techniques used in western cartoons from Hanna-Barbera were largely used by Tezuka’s animation team, such as re-use of backgrounds to save time. This was the first anime series ever.

In 1964, NBC acquired the rights for an English adaptation and producer Fred Ladd came up with the English title: Astro Boy. NBC start airing Astro from 1964 to 1978 and the English adaptation included an opening song. Fred Ladd claims the Japanese producers were so impressed by the adding of lyrics to the instrumental opening, that they then added words to the Japanese version, starting the anime music trend.

Tezuka passed away on February 9th, 1989, and magazine headlines saying “Manga Taitei iku” (Manga emperor goes). Takayuki Matsutani, president of Mushi Productions, that was published in Viz Media’s English language release of the Hi no Tori manga, it is said that his last words were “I’m begging you, let me work!”

A glimpse on Tezuka’s creation

Astro Boy (Tetsuwan Atom - manga 23 volumes from 1952 to 1968; anime 193 episodes from 1963 to 1966) – A Sci-Fi tale about a futuristic world where robots and humans co-exist. Astro is a powerful robot created by Dr Boyton to replace his son who died in a car accident. When Boyton realized that Astro could not fill the void left by his son, he sells Astro to a circus. Dr. Packadermus J. Elefun notices Astro during one of the performances and manages to have him handled to him, becoming Astro legal guardian. Soon, Dr. Elefun realized that Astro was gifted with powers and human emotions. It wasn’t long before Astro started to fight against evil, which appeared in the series as aliens invaders, evil robots or robot-hating humans.

Princess Knight (Ribbon no Kishi – manga: 2 volumes from 1953 to 1956, 1 volume from 1958 to 1966 and 3 volumes from 1963 to 1966; anime: 52 episodes from April 1967 to April 1968 – licensed by VIZ Media) – This is the story of princess Sapphire, who has to pretend to be human in order to inherit the throne, as woman were forbidden to. Choppy, a young angel trainee accidentally gives Sapphire two hearts. A boy’s one and a girl one. Sapphire has to keep pretending to be a girl while fighting numerous attempts by Duke Duralumin, the next in line, to prove that she is in fact a girl, therefore, not eligible for the throne.

Adolf (manga: 5 volumes from 1983 to 1985 available in English by Viz) – This suspense manga tells the story of three different Adolf’s and how their destiny intertwines. Adolf Kamil is a Jew living in Japan, Adolf Kaufmann is a half Japanese/German and Adolf Hitler. The story revolves between the friendship of the first two Adolf’s and Sohei Toge, a reporter investigating his brother murder as the third Reich arises.

Buddha (manga: 14 volumes from 1972 to 1983, published in 8 volumes in English by Vertical) - Not much to say about this one, but its Tezuka’s personal view on Siddhartha Gautama. The series presents many new characters as well as historical figures from Gautama’s life, and go through his holiness life from before his birth, until his death.

Phoenix (manga: 12 volumes from 1967 to 1988 – available in English by VIZ Media) - Phoenix is about reincarnation and the search for immortality. Tezuka considered Phoenix to be his life work. Each story involved the search for immortality, the many stories spring back and forth through time, exploring historical and sci-fi settings.

Osamu Tezuka’s manga biography (in French) can be found here