As we begin the fifth day of the Osamu Tezuka Manga Movable Feast, we have a terrific assortment of essays and reviews. Today’s contributions run the gamut from a “lyric essay” about Tezuka to reviews of Buddha, Princess Knight, and The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga.
At World Literature Today, Rob Vollmar offers a historical and cultural framework for understanding Tezuka’s manga from the 1960s and 1970s. “Occupying a unique position in time, Tezuka Osamu was able to assess at least three different Japans that had existed in his life,” Vollmar explains. “The early Shōwa period Japan of increasing militarization and hardship; the postwar Japan occupied and shaped by a foreign power that had reduced it to ruin; and the polarized Japan of the 1960s that saw great wealth amassed against a backdrop of unrest and, in some cases, outright oppression of people and ideas that did not support the popular narrative of better times.”
Writer Margaret Emma offers a short lyric essay meditating on her pilgrimage to Takarazuka, one of Tezuka’s favorite childhood haunts.
Justin of Organization Anti-Social Geniuses shares five things he learned from reading Helen McCarthy’s The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga. Also tacking God of Manga is Ash Brown, host of Experiments in Manga. “I knew the man was prolific, but I had no concept of just how astoundingly prolific he was until reading The Art of Osamu Tezuka,” he observes.
Linda, a.k.a. Animemiz, reflects on her long-standing relationship with Tezuka’s work, which she first discovered through the anime adaptation of Umi no Toriton (Triton of the Sea).
The first volume of Princess Knight has proved a popular topic this week. Among the folks reviewing the new Vertical, Inc. edition is Anna, hostess of Manga Report. “It was fun to see elements in Princess Knight that still show up in contemporary shoujo,” she notes. “Cross dressing and phantom disguises are common, and Sapphire bears up bravely under an overwhelming sequences of adventures and problems.”
Also popular this week: Buddha. Over at Slightly Biased Manga, Connie tackles the first volume, comparing it favorably with Phoenix. “It’s equally serious and as cosmic as a volume of Phoenix,” she opines. “Phoenix has a lot of very Buddhist themes about death, rebirth, and the value of life, and all those values are obviously reflected here, in a series about the beginnings of Buddhism.”
How to Participate in the Osamu Tezuka Manga Movable Feast
To submit a review, essay, podcast, etc. for inclusion in the archive, please do one of the following:
- Send me an email with a link to your contribution.
- Post a link to your contribution on Twitter. Please make sure that you address it to @manga_critic and use the #mmf hashtag.
Older reviews and essays may be submitted for inclusion in the MMF archive, though they will not be featured in the daily link posts.
If you do not have a blog, but wish to contribute, please email me. I would be happy to post your essay here at The Manga Critic, as I did during the To Terra feast (hosted in May 2010).
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