The Astro Boy Essays

Osamu Tezuka, Mighty Atom, and the Manga/Anime Revolution.

I've heard Osamu Tezuka's name going around for many years, but haven't ever made the effort to find out why. I picked up this book for two reasons. One, to delve deeper into Astro Boy, of which I had watched a little bit as a child on TV via reruns. Two, to find out how influential Tezuka really was concerning manga and anime. Referred to as "The God of Manga" and the Japanese equivalent to Walt Disney, my reoccurring interest finally turned into action.

The author, Frederik L. Schodt, had an excellent rapport with Tezuka, and spent a lot of time with him. This made the narrative much more insightful, not to mention credible. Schodt's personal experiences help expand on who Tezuka was as a person as well as a manga artist/animator/businessman.

The book begins on the impact Tezuka's death had in Japan in the early 1990's. Tezuka did so much for the manga/anime industry, it's pretty hard to believe. Mighty Atom (Astro Boy in the States) is by far his most popular work, but he created about 150,000 pages of manga in his lifetime. Many others besides Atom were hits as well, but Atom sticks the most in people's hearts (an abundance of merchandise never hurts either). I think it's a smart move by Schodt to focus just on Mighty Atom and its impact, because to try and summarize Tezuka's entire career and how it changed the industry would be a near impossible task.

In a way, the creation of Atom mirrors Golden Age comic books in the United States. Continuity is not that important, characters can enter/exit on a whim, pacing can be awkward, and there's a lot of slapstick humor. The early Atom stories (which were not narrative manga by any means) were pretty much Tezuka playing around with a bunch of ideas, trying to cram them all together. Later, the character became more refined. The stories also took on a more serial nature, with recurring characters and references to prior stories. It seems like it was always a work in progress, with Tezuka never really being satisfied with a story just because it had been published. In fact, he would go back and re-create entire past volumes if he felt it would link better to whatever stories he was currently working on.

The book is also a mini-biography of sorts, linking Tezuka's life events to his manga. It also showcases how Atom was related to world events (such as World War II and the aftermath in Japan). It's apparent how Atom's experiences and characters are representative of the then-current real world. And since it ran for many years, the comparisons are even more evident. This made the stories more relatable to readers, regardless of time period. Also, when he started, manga was not as abundant as it is today, so he had the additional advantage of little competition. Not to say that it was pure luck. The man was a machine, cranking out ridiculous amounts high-quality material in impossible amounts of time. Oh, and while he was pumping out tons of material, he was also enrolled in medical school (where he also did very well).

The book also describes the creation of the 1960's animated show, which is where Atom got his biggest audience. It made him a national icon, and helped bring Japanese animation over to the West. It's funny to note that in order to save time and money (due to promises that would come back to plague the staff), many corners were cut in production. Today, people would look back and note how "lazy" the animators were, and how they used all the "cheap tricks." But again, this was due to necessity. Hell, they practically invented the "cheap tricks."

Unfortunately for everybody in the world, since nothing like the show had ever been done before, it set a standard that animation teams could receive almost no money and have extremely limited timeframes to produce a finished product. This, of course, led to the "lazy" animation practices that still torment us to this day. There's a list in the book that the team used as guidelines for the show, and it's definitely cringe-worthy:

1. Shooting three frames of film for every drawing instead of one or two to create the illusion of fluid movement.
2. Using only one drawing in a tome, or still shot, when shooting close-ups of a character's face.
3. Zooming in or out on face shots or physically sliding a single drawing under the camera to create the illusion of movement with a single drawing.
4. Shooting a single short sequence of animated drawings and then repeating it again and again while sliding the background image. Six or twelve drawings could thus be used to show a movement as long as necessary.
5. When a character moved an arm or leg, animating only that portion and shooting the rest from one drawing.
6. Animating the mouth alone and abbreviating the drawings used, showing only a fully open mouth, a shut mouth, and a partially open mouth to represent characters speaking.
7. Creating a "bank system" of images to save on the total number of drawings, allowing reuse of the same drawings in different situations.
8. Using more short takes in place of single long takes that usually required more movement.

I don't know if you've been paying attention, but that's Hanna-Barbera's entire freaking playbook right there, as well as a lot of Japanese animation for years to come. As an avid animation fan, it's infuriating to think that something that sprung from necessity influenced the entire worldwide industry for decades (and was accepted by it!).

Understandably, Tezuka's biggest drawing influence was Walt Disney. This can definitely be seen in both the manga and anime in terms of visual style. Ideally, Tezuka would have loved to have the television series be as fluidly animated as Bambi or Snow White. It's really too bad that it couldn't have been, because with Tezuka's legendary work ethic and output, it would have been something truly remarkable. But even with cutting every corner possible, it's still an impressive show with its own unique spirit. It's also very cool to see how many people that worked on the Atom series went on to become titans themselves, such as Yoshiyuki Tomino, Shotaro Ishinomori, and Fujiko Fujio.

There's also a big section dedicated to how Atom was brought over to the United States, and how tough of a sell it really was. As was standard at the time (and still is today far too often), many things were censored or outright removed from the show. But in contrast to today's practices, a huge effort was taken to preserve the messages and intentions of Tezuka. What a concept, trying to preserve the integrity of the original product despite it being from a different country, am I right? Unfortunately, due to legal confusion, overseas miscommunication, and poor business management in the early 1970's, Tezuka appeared to lose all ownership and rights to Atom until the late 1990's. His own creation. Ridiculous.

Tezuka used current, real-life robot technology in Atom's development. Every so many years, he would redefine the inner workings of the robot based on what was actually happening in the field. The book also discusses where some influence in Atom's creation probably came from, citing specific films and literature. It also notes Tezuka's main competition in terms of robot manga in the form of Iron Man No. 28, created by Mitsuteru Yokoyama.

Tezuka's enthusiasm for messages of peace, anti-discrimination, and other like themes permeate Atom through and through (even to the displeasure of his readers at times). His messages are quite strong at points, incorporating political and humanist views. Since he's using mostly robots to get the points across, he was allowed more freedom to showcase them. Telling some of the same stories, with humans instead of robots, would most likely have never seen the light of day. Tezuka was fascinated by the complexity of human nature, and used manga to explore the subject. There's a quote from a year prior to his death that sums it up pretty nicely:

"My manga have a wide variety of themes--they are a paean to life, they are antiwar and they are antinuclear, and they advocate the preservation of nature--but ultimately they are all one thing. They are the following appeal to young readers, to think objectively about this fragile Earth: When you grow up, don't forget to look at both Earth and mankind objectively. And always think about what it means to be human."

It's amusing to note that Tezuka considers Atom his "worst work." At times, his frustration with the character affected the stories themselves. Atom died at least three times in the manga, and at least once in animation. It's also ironic that the frustration stemmed from the success of the character. Tezuka's notes fatigue, declining income, and too many competitors entering the market. The organization that he had started was also too big for him to manage, with other individuals' ideas being used due to time and budget constraints. He was never a businessman, and it showed more than once. But he loved the art and ideas, the process of creation. It was hard to let other people dictate what direction things would take. That's an acceptable approach if you're dealing with a team of five or ten people, but the group had grown many times that size, and Tezuka simply couldn't be everywhere at once.

Even though he displayed frustration at times, he was still intensely proud of Atom's success. He loved seeing people light up at the mention of Atom's name, and felt joy that he had reached that person. He never refused to sign autographs when recognized, and loved that he was making a positive impact on the world.

The book closes with a look at the somewhat-failed 1980's Atom TV series, and Tezuka's still non-stop work habits, despite aging just as fast as the rest of us. Even though he was collecting rewards right and left for his decades of work, he just kept on working at his standard breakneck pace. He continually immersed himself in the up-and-coming manga and their artists, often keeping pace if not staying ahead of them.

Unfortunately, Tezuka also had stomach cancer, and undertook several operations. But staying true to his work ethic, worked tirelessly, even working on several projects in his hospital bed during recovery (yes, several). He died on February 9, 1989, at the age of sixty. His last words, according to his wife, were, "Please, please let me continue to work..." His pens and paper never left his bedside.

The afterword describes Tezuka and Atom's legacy. It includes discussions of projects that came about (e.g. the 2003 Astro Boy series), as well as projects that were talked about but were never made (such as a 1998 Astro Boy film involving the Jim Henson Company!). The author also talks about how he feels Tezuka would have felt concerning the advances made in animation. Atom was so successful that younger animators felt hesitant with Tezuka's work, simply because he was a national hero, and Atom a national icon. There is also an in-depth look at Naoki Urasawa's Pluto (which this blogger has already purchased in its entirety) and how an interpretation of Tezuka's work is handled extremely carefully from all sides.

The book concludes with two appendices, notes, a bibliography, and an index. Appendix A is a list of all Atom-related manga titles in both Japanese and English, organized by publication and date. It is awesome. Appendix B is the same, but for all things animation. It also includes the Japanese ratings, which is a nice touch. The Notes section is all sources of annotations made throughout the book (of which there are many). The bibliography is a list of pretty much any publication having to do with Tezuka and Atom that you could ever want.

Overall, a fascinating read, and highly recommended. You won't find anybody more qualified than Schodt to get an inside look at the man who was Osamu Tezuka and his most momentous work, Mighty Atom. If you even remotely like manga or anime, I'd suggest picking this up. It gives great insight on not just Atom, but the earlier days of the industry itself, and how Atom and Tezuka affected its continuous evolution.