TEZUKA, Osamu

(1928-1989)

   The premier artist in the world of Japanese manga (COMICS) and animation, in both of which he established a standard. He began contributing serial comic strips to a regional newspaper in 1946 while in junior college. He became a leader in Japanese comics with Shin Takarajima ("The New Treasure Island") (1947). Most of today's Japanese comicsillustrators grew up strongly influenced by OT. His most famous creation was the Tetsuwan Atom series (1952 on; in trans as Astroboy), which began as a series in the children's magazine Shonen. It was eagerly welcomed not only by comics lovers but also by sf fans all over JAPAN, because his stories showed a real sense of the feeling of modern sf which at that time had been grasped by few Japanese writers. Most of his work was for children, but he published in general magazines also, and 2 pure-sf serials appeared in SF Magajin ("SF Magazine"), SF Fancy Free (1963) and Chojin Taikei ("Rise and Fall of the Bird-Human Race") (1971-5). Thesewere highly esteemed by sf fans, who are normally severe towards comics.In 1952 OT established an animation studio, Mushi Productions, producedseveral full-length animated films, and then began work on the first animated series for Japanese tv, Tetsuwan Atom (1963 onwards), famous in the West as Astroboy. This was the dawn of "Japanimation". He is often looked upon as a Japanese Walt Disney, but failed to elevate his company to a major enterprise, being a better artist than businessman. His main other comics series were Jungle Taitei (1950 on; trans as Kimba, The White Lion), later a tv series, the Black Jack series (1973 on), and the Hi NoTori ("The Phoenix") series (1966 on), selected sections of which were made into feature films, some live and some animated: one which appeared in the West was the animated Hi No Tori: 2772 (1979; vt Space Firebird 2772; vt Phoenix 2772), dir OT with Suguru Sugiyama, which tells of theattempted capture of a cosmic space firebird whose life-blood may rejuvenate Earth.

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