Animation of Osamu Tezuka: Honoring Japanese Tradition

In Australia this summer, the cultural focus is on Japan's leading and most historically important manga (comic) and anime (animation) artist, Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989). Tezuka is the subject of both a retrospective screening program, "Focus on Osamu Tezuka," at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (Melbourne), and a travelling exhibition, "The Marvel of Manga," at the National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Japan boasts the largest manga and anime industry in the world. "Manga and anime culture has developed from a peculiar post-atomic fusion of Eastern calligraphic sensibility and Western narrative iconography," says filmmaker and curator of "The Marvel of Manga," Philip Brophy. Author of the fast-selling BFI publication 100 Anime, Brophy is a long-time fan and is thrilled that this work will be on show throughout Australia: "The complexity, freshness and startling originality of Tezuka's oeuvre is rarely showcased outside of Japan."

Perhaps the most accessible route to the fantastic world of Japan's greatest manga artist and animator is through the angelic face of his pre-pubescent robot creation, Astro Boy. First aired in Japan as Tetsuwan Atom: Uchû no yûsha in 1963 and re-dubbed in America in 1964, Astro Boy's title character has since become not only a major post-war icon for Japan but also a strangely attractive post-baby-boomer figure in non-Oriental countries. The manga upon which Astro Boy is based - Tetsuwan Atom (Mighty Atom) - is one of Tezuka's most well-known works, serialized in phases from 1951 to 1968.

Tezuka drew manga seriously from 1941, but such entertainment in wartime Japan was frowned upon, so it was not until 1946 that he first received a publishing deal. By the mid-'50s, Tezuka led the first manga boom in the children and young adult markets, inspiring many other artists and publishers to expand the field. Tezuka, by then, was recognized for shifting manga visual formulae toward cinematic effects and infusing his narratives with a range of emotions and tonalities that redefined notions of children's entertainment. In 1977, Kodansha commenced publication of The Complete Manga Works of Osamu Tezuka, which has grown to 300 hardbound volumes containing more than 150,000 drawn pages. Prolific, imaginative and driven, Tezuka also wrote, directed and produced animations from 1962 up to his death in 1989: a total of 14 TV series, 36 shorts and TV specials, and 23 feature-length titles. Regarded in Japan as an artistic sensei (master) and a figurehead for the manga and anime industries, his legacy is kept alive by the Osamu Tezuka Manga Museum in Takarazuka, Japan, and by the continual trickling of his work into the West.

Tezuka was remarkably articulate about his manga and anime creations. His published texts include historical overviews (the Postwar History series of Gag, Sci-Fi and Girls comics), instructional manuals (How To Draw Comics: From Portraits To Comic Stories) and autobiographical ruminations (I Am A Cartoonist). Reinforcing his ideas, of course, are the actual works. The themes of Astro Boy, Brophy claims, "are criss-crossed like delicate webbing through the allegorical pasts and speculative futures of the hundreds of manga he published, and in the anime based on his manga."

Similar to the manga exhibition's revelation of Tezuka's "duality" in creating solid family fare and terse adult drama, the "Focus on Osamu Tezuka" season covers Tezuka's experimental animations and his fantasy genre works based directly on his manga. From the sublime imaginative fancy of Jumping (1984) to the meta-gender mash-up of "Ribbon no Kishi" ("Princess Knight," a 1967 TV series) the program celebrates, through Tezuka's invention, many of the cultural and generic tropes which have become mainstays of anime to this day.

The "Marvel of Manga" exhibition is at Australia's National Gallery of Victoria (November 3, 2006-January 28, 2007) and The Art Gallery of New South Wales (February 23-April 29, 2007). The Australian Centre for the Moving Image will screen films from the "Focus on Osamu Tezuka" program December 7-17, 2006, and the special children's program January 8-28, 2007. The retrospective will also tour throughout Australia.