Osamu Tezuka's "Phoenix"

what?
I have one volume of this, I think tale of the future? anyway it was too depressing to make me want to read more. I have plenty of depressing Tezuka already, anyway.

As far as I know, MW is unrelated to Phoenix.

http://www.vertical-inc.com/books/MW/MW_preview01.html

wow, never heard of that one. Sounds worse than Adolf.

Haven't read Adolf, so I can't say, but it's definitely built to stack the deck against your instinct for compassion. The one lead character is a sort of Batman/James Bond type of resourceful genius, except completely evil, and the other nominally more sympathetic lead is a pedophile priest who's one redeeming personality trait is that he's racked with guilt over his crimes and wants to be a good person but just can't seem to manage it.

it=MW, I hope obviously

MW is batshit insane; there's a live action movie on the way in Japan.

I'm about to buy ALL of Phoenix on Amazon except for the first book; anybody got a good place to get that? It's out of print.

> MW is batshit insane

No argument here! I think maybe that helped me to dig it.

Don't get me wrong, it's great; it's just fuckin' nuts.

Tezuka is great - I haven't been disappointed by anything of his I've read yet (well, okay, maybe some of the later Astro Boy stuff, but it was like 15+ volumes in). That said...

1) What's the deal with having people mangled horribly in car accidents? I just read v1 of Black Jack and there's like two stories in there with that gimmick!

2) What's with the patchy cloth pig that... err... explodes with tension? It's one of those non-sensical cartoony devices he puts in randomly in his books. Is it related to something real?

Can someone explain those patched-up pigs to me, though? What's that about?

I'm writing a paper on Buddha right now, and apparently it's a hyotantsugi (i.e. "patched gourd"), sketched by Tezuka's sister when they were both schoolchildren. He later used it in his own works as a sort of trademark symbol which doesn't necessarily have any bearing on the story proper (Mark Wheeler MacWilliams, “Japanese Comics and Religion: Osamu Tezuka’s Story of the Buddha,” in Japan Pop! Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture, ed. Timothy J. Craig (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2000), p. 124-5).

-- L (Leee), Sunday, May 29, 2005 2:49 AM (3 years ago) Bookmark Link

Not sure what the car accident theme is about, except there's all manner of violent themes that emerge... stonings, urinating on characters, casual rape are all prttty common in the overall oeuvre as well. Dude's pretty twisted.

Ha, I feel kind of like a jerk for not finding that up in the thread. Thanks, though!

Just finished the last volume of Phoenix this morning. Excellent recommendation, so just wanted to say thanks to the various people who were recommending it. I'm kind of curious to learn more about Tezuka's religious beliefs. Buddha was, obviously, fairly well-disposed toward Buddhism, but there were a couple Phoenix volumes that seemed highly opposed to the proliferation of Buddhism in Japan. I suppose both share a hostility to organized or state religions, but I was surprised at the portrayal of Buddhism as an evil, invading religion.

Now I want to track down the live action 1979 Phoenix adaptation with the Michel Legrand score. According to Wikipedia, I'm going to have to find a Spanish DVD. Don't suppose anyone here has actually seen it?

It's up on Karagarga with English subtitles, thanks for mentioning it to me, cuz I'm gonna go get it NOW. Email me off thread and I'll see about mailing you a copy.

You know that Metropolis (the anime, not the F. Lang film) is based on the second book of Phoenix, right? Also Space Firebird 2772

d'oh! no seeders!

Ah, too bad. I knew about Space Firebird 2772, but I didn't realize Metropolis (which I've been meaning to see for a while) was an adaptation. I knew it was Tezuka, but I thought it was a different work. I should certainly watch it while I'm still on a Tezuka kick.

I just went through what felt like a bender of Tezuka—the first volumes of Black Jack and Phoenix and three volumes of Buddha. Great stuff, as if that needs repeating.

So, I should read Black Jack next, then? Adolf? Dororo?

Yeah, Black Jack's cool. Totally different in tone from Buddha and what I've read of Phoenix. I mean, who dreams up an emotionally haunted mercenary supersurgeon as a comic book hero?

probably an emotionally haunted ex-doctor who became a comic book writer.

Dororo, Apollo's Song, MW are all great; don't neglect astroboy! The dark horse reprints are tiny, but fun reads. Buddha and Phoenix are pretty clearly the apex as far as American reprints go.

Astro/Blackjack do suffer from repetitious episodic themes, so tread lighter than you would with Buddha/Phoenix. You can burn out if you do two or three books at a time.

MW sounds excellent, but the library doesn't have it. They do have Dororo and Apollo's Song, though, so maybe I'll do some shorter ones after this most recent glut. Certainly before I try the 23 volumes of Astro Boy they've got....

it is ridiculous that all the viz english volumes of phoenix are OOP.

i bought them all on amazon a year or two back and i never did a full read through! need to set aside a month.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC4Q07JJmB8

http://tezukainenglish.com/wp/?page_id=172

Just read Ayako, holy cow, that was dark.

Guys, I just watched the first episode of the OG Astro Boy, and I really did not expect it to be such a rich + multilayered text as it is or for it to be so deeply, sublimely fucked up. Soooooo I'm gonna be watching more Astro Boy, is what I'm sayin' here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAzTJdgwUSM