Word: tezuka
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...Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989), a former M.D., more or less invented Japanese comics - AKA manga - during the 1950s. Part D.W. Griffith and part Walt Disney, he is revered in Japan and throughout Asia but only recently has his work been appearing in quantity in the United States. His most famous creation, "Astro Boy," a series about a powerful robot who looks like a boy, has been reprinted by Dark Horse (see the TIME.comix review.) "The Phoenix Saga," a multi-volume series considered his life's work has properly begun to appear here courtesy of Viz. Now Vertical...
...lucky that practicing Buddhists tend to be liberal-minded. For one thing, the key events in the Buddha story appear in "Buddha" like cornerstones on which Tezuka constructs his own fantastic palace of myth and philosophy. The first volume, during which prince Siddhartha is born, barely concerns itself with this event. Instead the majority of the narrative follows Chapra, a talented slave child who hides his caste to become the adopted son of a general. Along the way he befriends Tatta, a cheeky little boy of the lowliest pariah caste. Tatta has the remarkable ability to take over the minds...
During the first two volumes Tezuka particularly explores the injustice of the caste system, and by implication, all human hierarchies. Thus, the second volume opens with the young Siddhartha being told he cannot play with the toys of the slave children. The sickly child, who frequently dozes off into meditative states, becomes increasingly obsessed with the inevitability of death and the cruel arbitrariness of the caste system. An older Tatta, the mischievous pariah, reappears and takes the prince away from his palace of luxury to experience the real world. There he meets Migaila, a bandit that he falls in love...
...Neither reverent nor irreverent "Buddha" can best be described as playfully serious. (Tezuka takes the Middle Path!) Much of this comes from a uniquely Tezuka form of comix making. The characters have a simplified, "cute" design but inhabit a highly detailed, realistic environment - a style that became the foundation of the manga look. Recalling traditional Japanese landscapes, with careful pen and ink craftsmanship Tezuka depicts mountain vistas and waterfalls. In one remarkable scene a swarm of locusts fills an entire two-page spread...
...Cameos by characters from previous works, nonsense doodles, and even Hitchcock-like appearances by the artist himself, are de rigueur to Tezuka. He has an almost Shakespearian desire to mix high drama with low comedy, though Shakespeare rarely had characters doing both. At one point during volume one a powerful general sends away his escorts when he wishes to bathe in a pond. Adopting a silly, girlish pose and sprouting long eyelashes he says, "I don't want you to see me naked. Pray, won't you go?" Some of the oddity may be attributable to the translation, which puts...