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Short Takes: The Art of Osamu Tezuka and Korea As Viewed by 12 Creators

September 6, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

I’m taking a break from shojo romances and seinen shoot-em-ups in favor of two books aimed squarely at older comics connoisseurs. The first is Helen McCarthy’s The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga (Abrams Comics), an award-winning biography of Japan’s best-known manga-ka. (Her book just nabbed a Harvey in the Best American Edition of Foreign Material category, a category normally reserved for translated comics such as Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s Abandon the Old in Tokyo.) The second is Korea As Viewed by 12 Creators (Fanfare/Ponent Mon), a much-anticipated follow-up to the critically acclaimed anthology Japan As Viewed By 17 Creators. Which ones deserve a place on your bookshelf? Read on for details.

THE ART OF OSAMU TEZUKA: GOD OF MANGA

BY HELEN MCCARTHY • ABRAMS COMIC ART • 272 pp.

In the introduction to The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga, author Helen McCarthy argues that Tezuka’s work merits scholarly attention, but also deserves a more accessible treatment as well, one that acknowledges that Tezuka “was first and foremost a maker of popular entertainment.” Her desire to bring Tezuka’s work to a wider audience of anime and manga fans is reflected in every aspect of the book’s execution, from its organization — she divides her chapters into short, one-to-three page subsections, each generously illustrated with full-color plates — to its coffee-table book packaging.

As one might expect from such an ambitious undertaking, the results are a little uneven. The strongest chapters focus on the unique aspects of Tezuka’s work, exploring a variety of creative issues in straightforward, jargon-free language. McCarthy provides a helpful overview of Tezuka’s “star system” (a.k.a. recurring figures such as Acetylene Lamp and Zephyrus) and traces the evolution of his storytelling technique through dozens of series, debunking the notion that he “invented” cinematic comics while carefully spelling out what was innovative about his manga. McCarthy also makes a persuasive case for Astro Boy as one of the most important works in the Tezuka canon, the series that most clearly anticipated his mature style.

As a biography, however, The Art of Osamu Tezuka offers little insight into Tezuka’s personality beyond his relentless perfectionism and strong work ethic. McCarthy’s attempts to situate Tezuka’s work within the context of his life and times feel glib — a pity, as she makes some thought-provoking observations about Tezuka’s recurring use of certain motifs — especially androgyny, childhood, and disguise — that beg further elucidation.

That said, The Art of Osamu Tezuka largely succeeds in its mission to educate fans about Tezuka’s work process and artistic legacy, clarifying his place in Japanese popular culture, exploring his animated oeuvre, and introducing readers to dozens of untranslated — and sometimes obscure — series. A worthwhile addition to any serious manga reader’s library.

KOREA AS VIEWED BY 12 CREATORS

VARIOUS ARTISTS, EDITED BY NICOLAS FINET • FANFARE/PONENT MON • 222 pp. • NO RATING

This anthology of twelve short stories, six by Korean artists and six by French, follows the same basic template as Japan As Viewed by 17 Creators, offering brief, impressionistic scenes of contemporary Korean life. Though 17 Creators is a uniformly excellent work, its companion volume is not; the stories run the gamut from pedestrian to brilliant, with the Korean artists making the strongest contributions.

The unevenness of the collection is attributable, in part, to a home field advantage. Artists such as Choi Kyu-sok and Byun Ki-hyun tackle deeper, more penetrating topics than their French counterparts, exploring homelessness (“The Fake Dove”), sexual discrimination and violence (“The Rabbit”), and the decay of traditional social networks (“The Rain That Goes Away Comes Back”). Though the artists’ ambition sometimes outstrips their allocated space, all three stories boast beautiful, detailed artwork that suggests the rhythm and feeling of modern urban life. The French contributions, by contrast, are travelogues of one sort or another: in “Beondegi,” for example, Mathieu Sapin imagines what it would be like for a French-Korean woman to return to her parents’ home country, while in “Letters From Korea,” Igort offers brief descriptions of places he visited in Seoul. The weakest of the collection is Catel’s “Dul Lucie,” an uneventful travel diary filled with observations about “doll-like” and “sensual” Koreans that — in English, at least — leave a bad aftertaste of exoticism. Though the other French artists are not as patronizing, the stories feel shallow; imagine an essay about New York City written by someone who only visited Times Square, and you have some idea of how superficial these artists’ appreciation of Korea seems to be.

Two stories make this collection a worthwhile investment. The first is “Solgeo’s Tree,” by Lee Doo-hoo, in which a monk paints a mural so life-like that birds attempt to perch in its branches. Told with almost no dialogue, the story relies heavily on Lee’s exquisite pen-and-ink drawings to impart its Buddhist moral. The second is “A Rat in the Country of Yong,” Herve Tanquerelle’s playful, wordless story about a mouse visiting Seoul. The surrealistic imagery — skies full of dragon transports, streets filled with animal-eared people, pools inhabited by monstrous carp — and Chaplin-esque physical comedy evoke the strangeness and excitement of visiting a new city without falling into the trap of essentializing its people. Both comics attest to the vitality and richness of the “as viewed by” concept, and suggest what might have emerged from this sometimes insightful, sometimes banal French-Korean collaboration.

Manhwa Monday: September Preview

September 6, 2010 by MJ 1 Comment

Welcome to another Manhwa Monday! It’s fairly quiet on this holiday weekend, so perhaps it’s time to look at what’s coming for the month ahead.

Yen Press is the only American manhwa publisher with new releases planned for September–all new volumes of continuing series. My pick of the bunch is volume three of One Fine Day, Sirial’s whimsical look at the domestic life of three pets and their magical master. (Click here for my review of volume one.)

Also this month, Yen releases volume nine of Legend (click here for reviews) and volume three of Laon.

NETCOMICS is conspicuously silent on the print front this month, though regular updates of their online series have finally resumed in earnest, including the release of volume four, chapter seven of The Adventures of Young Det just last week.

At Rocket Bomber, Matt Blind posts the latest round of manhwa rankings, this time for the week ending August 29th. The usual contenders remain strong, and NETCOMICS’ BL one-shot U Don’t Know Me moves up even one more notch to first place in manhwa this week (and 158 in “manga” overall).

It’s been a very quiet week for reviews, but at PopMatters, Oliver Ho posts a thoughtful review of one of my favorite manhwa, Byun Byung-Jun’s Mijeong (NBM/ComicsLit). Meanwhile, at Slightly Biased Manga, Connie finally checks out volume one of Sarasah (Yen Press), though she’s not pleased with what she finds.

That’s all for this week!

Is there something I’ve missed? Leave your manhwa-related links in comments!

Harmony

September 4, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

VIZ launched its Haikasoru imprint in 2009, with the goal of bringing Japan’s best speculative fiction to the US. Haikasoru’s debut titles — All You Need Is Kill and The Lord of the Sands of Time — introduced Americans to two award-winning sci-fi authors whose work had previously been unavailable in English. As the line as grown, so, too, has the diversity of its offerings, which run the gamut from horror (e.g. Otsuichi’s ZOO) to teen-friendly fantasy (e.g. Miyuki Miyabe’s Brave Story and The Book of Heroes) to science fiction (e.g. Issui Ogawa’s The Next Continent and Hosume Nojia’s Usurper of the Sun). Harmony, the newest Haikasoru title, falls on the softer end of the sci-fi continuum, depicting a world in which “admedistrative” societies — that is, countries that operate by rule of medicine, rather than rule of law — are the new empire-builders.

Harmony takes place in the late twenty-first century, fifty years after nuclear holocaust destroyed North America and destabilized the international balance of power by flooding the Third World with an abundant supply of nuclear weapons. In the chaos that ensued, countries which successfully developed the medical technology to treat radiation sickness supplanted the old superpowers, while less scientifically advanced nations descended into guerilla warfare. The new admedistrative powers transformed the World Health Organization (WHO) into a global peacekeeping force tasked with monitoring other nations’ ability to “ensure their populace a lifestyle that [is] sufficiently healthy and human.” The key to that lifestyle is WatchMe, an elaborate system that keeps close watch over individuals’ health, guiding them away from potentially harmful choices — fatty food, alcohol, cigarettes, distressing literature — repairing cellular damage, and providing the government a steady stream of data about a person’s behavior and current medical condition.

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Harmony is told through the point of view of Tuan Kirie, a twenty-eight-year-old WHO agent tasked with solving the mystery behind an “outbreak” of suicide — an action that, in theory, should be impossible under the WatchMe system. Tuan is an appealing narrator, at once tough and funny, a natural contrarian who smokes and drinks and defies authority yet nonetheless treats her mission with the utmost seriousness. The story moves fluidly between past and present, using Tuan’s childhood memories to shed light on her conflicted, often subversive, behavior. Until the third act, the pacing is brisk and the dialogue crisp; as Tuan draws closer to finding out what prompted the wave of suicides, however, the story begins to sag under the weight of turgid conversations about free will and psychology, a flaw that the frequent changes of setting can’t conceal.

It’s a shame these third-act discussions are so pedestrian, as author Keikaku “Project” Itoh has devised a nifty set-up for examining the boundaries between public and private life, imagining a world in which the government’s desire to collect data and enforce civility goes well beyond speech, belief, and association — all manifestations of conscious thought — to the level of neural transmissions and body chemistry. For most of the book, Itoh manages to dramatize the conflict between public and private without speechifying or shortcuts, using Tuan’s role as a WHO agent to explore the nature of admedistrative rule. Though Tuan yearns for the physical and social freedom less technologically advanced societies enjoy, the persistence of armed conflict in the developing world is a potent reminder of why so many people willingly submit to the benevolent totalitarianism of the WatchMe system.

VIZ has done an excellent job of adapting Harmony for English-speaking audiences. Translator Alexander O. Smith, in particular, deserves praise for the smooth, idiomatic voicing of Tuan’s thoughts in language that captures the heroine’s fierce personality. Smith also navigates passages of scientific shoptalk and historical description with ease, producing a highly readable text that lacks any of the tell-tale signs of translation: awkward turns of phrase, confusing use of pronouns.

Aside from a few third-act hiccups, Harmony is a solidly entertaining book, offering a judicious mixture of globe-trotting action, social commentary, and suspense to engage all but the hardest science fiction fans, and a surprise ending that neatly resolves the main plot while raising new, thought-provoking questions. Recommended.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

HARMONY • BY PROJECT ITOH, TRANSLATED BY ALEXANDER O. SMITH • VIZ • 252 pp.

Harmony

September 4, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

In 2009, VIZ launched its Haikasoru imprint with the goal of bringing Japan’s best speculative fiction to the US. Haikasoru’s debut titles — All You Need Is Kill and The Lord of the Sands of Time — introduced Americans to two award-winning sci-fi authors whose work had previously been unavailable in English. As the line as grown, so, too, has the diversity of its offerings, which run the gamut from horror to teen-friendly fantasy and science fiction. Harmony, the newest Haikasoru title, falls on the softer end of the sci-fi continuum, depicting a world in which “admedistrative” societies are the new empire-builders.

Harmony takes place in the late twenty-first century, fifty years after a nuclear holocaust destroys North America. Countries which successfully developed a cure for radiation sickness have supplanted the old superpowers, while less scientifically advanced societies have descended into a perpetual state of guerilla warfare. Keeping the peace is the World Health Organization (WHO), which is tasked with monitoring world’s well-being. Their mission sounds benign, but WHO’s “peacekeeping” efforts smack of Big Brother: they use WatchMe, an elaborate system that keeps tabs on what people eat, do, and say while providing the government a steady stream of data about a person’s medical condition.

Until the third act, the pacing is brisk and the dialogue crisp. As Tuan draws closer to finding out what prompted the wave of suicides, however, the story begins to sag under the weight of turgid conversations about free will and psychology, a flaw that the frequent changes of setting can’t conceal. It’s a shame these discussions are so pedestrian, as author Keikaku “Project” Itoh has devised a nifty set-up for examining the boundaries between public and private life, imagining a world in which the government’s desire to collect data and enforce civility goes well beyond speech, belief, and association — all manifestations of conscious thought — to the level of neural transmissions and body chemistry. Though Tuan yearns for the physical and social freedom less technologically advanced societies enjoy, the persistence of armed conflict in the developing world is a potent reminder of why so many people willingly submit to the benevolent totalitarianism of the WatchMe system.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

HARMONY • BY PROJECT ITOH, TRANSLATED BY ALEXANDER O. SMITH • VIZ • 252 pp.

Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham: A

September 3, 2010 by Michelle Smith

From the back cover:
Lionized by literary society, Edward Driffield is married to his second wife, a woman of iron will, indisputable rectitude and great charm. Her request to Alroy Kear, lightweight novelist, to write a biography of her husband seems both flattering and agreeable. But on delving into Driffield’s past Kear revives the spectre of his first wife, Rosie, delectable companion of less respectable days and the unlikely muse of his greatest work.

In this novel Maugham has created the unauthorized biography, the book that cannot be written for fear of offending Driffield’s unsuspecting public. And in Rosie he has given us his greatest heroine, luscious, inconstant and commonplace, yet lingering most persistently in the mind.

Review:
Prior to reading Cakes and Ale, my exposure to W. Somerset Maugham was sorely limited. I first heard of him during my teen years in the context of “the guy who wrote the book that became the movie that starred Bill Murray in his first serious role.” (I was a bit of an SNL fanatic in those days.) After reading Cakes and Ale, I wonder what took me so long.

Cakes and Ale will possibly sound disorganized when described, but flows logically when read. The narrator, William Ashenden, is a middle-aged author who’s approached by a more commercially successful peer, Alroy Kear, to help with a biography Kear is writing. The subject is Edward Driffield, a novelist with whom Ashenden was acquainted when he (Driffield) was married to a vibrant but unfaithful former barmaid named Rosie, but who spent his later years with a respectable second wife who struggled for years to make him fit the mold of a venerated elder statesman of literature.

Despite Kear’s assertions that he wants to know everything that Ashenden has to tell about Driffield’s former marriage, Ashenden realizes that, with the second Mrs. Driffield backing the biography project, there’s no way any of it would be usable anyhow. The fact is, Driffield wrote better books when he was married to Rosie and though she was wildly unfaithful, it wasn’t done from malice. Rather than tell Kear what he wants to know, Ashenden instead reminisces privately about his awkward first meeting with the Driffields as a boy of fifteen—during which period he obediently adopted the class prejudice of the aunt and uncle with whom he lived—and the later resumption of their friendship when he is a 20-year-old medical student living in London.

Maugham’s writing style is especially appealing to me, managing to be clever, witty, insightful, and concise all at the same time. There aren’t words enough to express how much I adore the passages about young Ashenden. He’s so self-conscious and awkward, and I love how Maugham depicts Ashenden’s struggle between the warnings he’s received about working-class people versus what he is actually seeing for himself. It’s a nostalgic sort of portrait, fond and sympathetic, of a boy who gradually sheds the things he’s been led to believe and learns to think for himself. This isn’t the only portrait to be found, of course. Both Rosie and Kear are quite extensively developed, and the reaction of other characters to them also allows for some wry commentary on communities both rural and literary. Oddly enough, the least developed character is probably Driffield himself, about whom the biography is being written!

The only complaint I have about Cakes and Ale is that it’s too short! That’s not to say that the story is incomplete, for it isn’t, but I enjoyed the book so much I could have gone on reading it for thrice as long! Happily, Maugham wrote quite a few other things, one of which is waiting for me at the library and another of which is on its way from Amazon at this very moment.

Bakuman。1 by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata: B+

September 3, 2010 by Michelle Smith

Moritaka Mashiro is bored. For his fourteen years of life he’s merely gone along with the flow, a path which is destined to end with him becoming a normal white-collar worker. He doesn’t want this, but sees no alternative until Akito Takagi, the top student in class, notices Moritaka’s artistic skills and proposes that the two team up to create a manga. Moritaka is resistant at first—he’d much rather loaf around and play video games—but when the object of his affections (and aspiring voice actress), Miho Azuki, agrees to marry him when his manga becomes an anime, he is suddenly unstoppable.

Moritaka expects resistance from his family—after all, his uncle essentially killed himself by trying to become a successful manga artist—but they’re surprisingly supportive and it turns out that his uncle’s studio has been preserved, untouched, since his death. I absolutely adore the chapter where Moritaka and Akito rush to the studio for the first time—it is seriously a manga-lover’s dream. Not only are there plenty of artistic supplies, but there are shelves upon shelves of manga (“for reference”) as well as neatly organized boxes of storyboards and final drafts. All of the scenes with the boys working on their story—they decide to submit a final draft for consideration by the end of summer break—are absolutely fascinating and bring home just how grueling creating comics can be.

There are a couple of problematic things about Bakuman, however. Moritaka and Azuki’s pledge to get married when they achieve their dreams—without dating in the meantime—is pretty silly, but not out-of-character for a couple of fourteen-year-olds. The fact that they’ll be encouraging each other via e-mail, just like Moritaka’s uncle was encouraged by letters from his classmate, who just so happens to be Azuki’s mother, is a coincidence I could’ve done without. In general, this whole subplot failed to interest me; I was much more interested in the boys’ efforts to get their manga off the ground, but I suppose listless Moritaka needed to find motivation somewhere.

More significantly, many reviewers have taken issue with the displays of sexism in Bakuman. Having now read it for myself, I get the impression that certain characters are sexist but I’d stop short of applying that label to the series as a whole. This makes me wonder, though… why, when characters in Bakuman say things like “She knows by instinct that the best thing for a girl is to get married and become somebody’s wife” or “Men have dreams that women will never be able to understand” does it not piss me off as righteously as when characters make very similar comments in The Color Trilogy by Kim Dong Hwa?

I think it depends, for me, on who’s saying it. If, as in the case of The Color Trilogy, a male author puts such words into the mouths of female characters, I can’t seem to help getting peeved about it. In Bakuman, the speaker of the first line above is Akito—in other words, just an overconfident teen who thinks he knows everything. He goes on to say he doesn’t like a particular girl in class because she’s proud of how well she does in school, but when Azuki’s mother later tells him she doesn’t like smart guys, he flails about and says, “But that’s just your taste.” Perhaps what he earlier presented as deep insight about Azuki was really his own taste coming through. The second line above, about men’s dreams, though technically spoken by Moritaka’s mother, is actually a quote from his off-camera father and was easy for me to dismiss as, “Oh, he’s just an older man with outdated opinions.”

I’m not trying to argue that these characters aren’t sexist, but they don’t succeed in getting my dander up and certainly will not deter me from reading more of the series.

Bakuman is published in English by VIZ. One volume’s been released here so far, while the ninth volume of this still-running series came out in Japan last month.

This review was originally published at Comics Should Be Good.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Magical Girl Evangelism: Shugo Chara!

September 2, 2010 by MJ 5 Comments

I’ve got Shugo Chara! on the brain today, thanks to last night’s discussion for Off the Shelf.

I know Peach-Pit doesn’t get a lot of respect, and I’m not a big fan of their other series, so I can understand that on some level. But I love Shugo Chara! and I honestly don’t understand some of the criticisms of it I’ve read elsewhere. It’s one of those series I often read reviews of on other sites and honestly think to myself, “Could we possibly be reading the same series?” That’s how strongly opinions may differ on this particular title.

Now, arguing with other critics is not only obnoxious, but foolish. An opinion on a subjective topic can’t actually be wrong. But I’ve made what are (in my mind) some pretty compelling arguments in favor of the series over the course of the past year or so, so what I can reasonably do is point readers to those and hope to convince them to give the series a real chance if they haven’t done so already.

So, here’s a chronological listing of my reviews of Shugo Chara!, each of which contains specific, heartfelt praise:

Volume 5
Volume 6
Volume 7
Volume 8

In addition, you can read things like Why I think Shugo Chara! overpowers Kamichama Karin Chu or (from last night) Why I think Shugo Chara! should be rated for ages 10+.

Alternatively, these posts can all be accessed together via my Shugo Chara! tag.

Without a doubt, Shugo Chara! is a favorite for me amongst pink, sparkly manga for girls. I hope one day it may be for you too. This has been my manga evangelism moment for the day. Enjoy! :)

Off the Shelf: For Kids or Not For Kids?

September 1, 2010 by MJ and Michelle Smith 14 Comments

Welcome to another edition of Off the Shelf with MJ & Michelle! I’m joined, once again, by Soliloquy in Blue‘s Michelle Smith.

With the latest Manga Moveable Feast well underway (hosted this month by the crew at the School Library Journal’s Good Comics for Kids), Michelle and I take a look at books from Yen Press, Viz Media, Del Rey Manga, and CMX. Enjoy!

MJ: So, it’s another Manga Moveable Feast week here at Off the Shelf! The object of the Feast is a bit different this time around. Though the primary title chosen for discussion is Kiyohiko Azuma’s Yotsuba&! (Yen Press), we’re also offered the opportunity to talk about some other titles that are being marketed for kids, either here or in Japan (and perhaps both).

What I’m most interested in is probably the question of why Yotsuba&! is recommended for kids here, though it’s published for adults in Japan, while some other titles are rated much higher here than they are over there. But I suspect you might have your own agenda too. Am I right?

MICHELLE: Well, no, actually. I’m still happy from my seven-volume binge and hung up on how awesome Yotsuba&! is. I haven’t really gotten beyond that yet. So, what I’m saying is I’ll happily be swept along by your agenda. :)

MJ: Well, okay! Let’s start with Yotsuba, then. For those who don’t know, Yotsuba&! is a slice-of-life series that chronicles the daily adventures of Yotsuba, a green-haired five-year-old who lives with Koiwai, her youngish adoptive dad, and who approaches everything in life with a sense of true wonder and (frequently) an earnest lack of understanding. Over the course of the series, she is introduced to everyday concepts like air-conditioning and cake, each more wonderful than the next….

Apollo’s Song, Vols. 1-2

September 1, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

Apollo’s Song may be one of the strangest sex ed manuals ever written. It begins with a textbook Tezuka scene, at once lyrical and goofy: millions of anthropomorphic sperm race towards a comely egg. After one lucky soul pants and claws his way to the front of the scrum, the sperm and egg dissolve into a passionate embrace. In the following panel, we see the result of their union, an embryo, presiding over a veritable sperm graveyard. This juxtaposition of life and death — or, perhaps more accurately, sex and death — foreshadows the dialectic that will play out in the following chapters.

We are then introduced to Shogo, a young man who has just arrived at a psychiatric hospital. Shogo is a sociopath: unemotional, cruel to animals, scornful of society, and deeply misogynist. While undergoing electroshock therapy, Shogo has a vivid hallucination in which a stern goddess chastises him for renouncing all forms of love. As punishment for his cruelty, she condemns him to a fate straight out of Dante’s Inferno: Shogo will love and lose the same woman over and over again for eternity. Thus begins a series of romantic and sexual encounters between Shogo and various incarnations of his ill-fated partner.

Though the story begins and ends in the present day, the individual episodes unfold in both the past and future, reminding the reader that Shogo cannot escape his fate. Certain recurring motifs suggest that these scenarios are, in fact, manifestations of Shogo’s subconscious as he struggles to reconcile his hatred of women with his need to be loved. In each scenario, for example, Shogo adopts a hyper-masculine guise — Nazi foot soldier, fugitive, hunter, terrorist — that he must ultimately renounce in his quest for spiritual and sexual fulfillment. We’re never entirely certain which of these episodes are unfolding in Shogo’s mind and which, if any, are unfolding in the real world.

Though Apollo’s Song aspires to universality, Tezuka’s characters remain firmly rooted in the time and place of their creation. Tezuka blames Shogo’s mother — whose crimes include an inability to lactate, promiscuity, and emotional detachment — for her son’s pathology, even treating us to a scene of the youthful Shogo walking in on his mother and a lover. While no one would deny the deleterious effects of parental neglect, Shogo’s mother seems less like a character than a casebook study out of the 1952 DSM. Other characters, such as an “artsy-fartsy,” “self-centered” career woman who defends her chastity with hysterical fury, seem like the morbidly sexual figments of a Freudian imagination.

Tezuka’s moralizing, too, has a curiously alienating effect. In the first episode, for example, Shogo imagines that he is a German soldier aboard a train bound for an unnamed concentration camp. Through the slats of a cattle car, he spots Elise, whose beauty and modesty awakens his sense of moral outrage. He rescues her first from the wreckage of the train (which is bombed by Allied forces), then from German rapists, earning her love through his selflessness. This scenario is clearly meant to teach readers that love can transcend ethnic, racial, and religious divisions, yet this epiphany is of a shallow nature, as Shogo fails to grasp the true horror of the situation or appreciate Elise’s grief at losing her entire family – in essence, the Holocaust has been reduced to a colorful backdrop for yet another of Shogo’s doomed romances.

However problematic the story may be, the artwork in Apollo’s Song ranks among Tezuka’s best, filled with arresting landscapes and surprisingly carnal imagery. In chapter two, for example, Shogo finds himself stranded on a lush tropical island. Peering through a dense frame of vegetation, he spies a secluded glen where deer, panthers, and leopards embrace their mates in sexual congress. The sensuality of the moment is accentuated by their bodies’ curved lines and beatific expressions, infusing a potentially silly scene with a graceful spirituality. Later chapters also abound in vivid images; as Tezuka imagines the Tokyo of the future, the city has been transformed from a glass-and-concrete forest into an Art Deco monstrosity reminiscent of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis or a Soviet Bloc city. Its inhabitants, a race of sexless, synthetic beings that store their faces in jars, preside over a haunted landscape of tombs, forgotten infrastructure, and empty plazas; the very barrenness of the place brings the intensity of Shogo’s yearning and anger into sharp relief.

Revisiting Apollo’s Song three years after its initial release, I find myself torn. On the one hand, Tezuka’s artwork is a feast for the eyes, featuring some of the most erotic images he committed to paper. On the other hand, it’s a deeply flawed work that, in its attitudes towards women and finger-wagging tone, shows its age. Vertical has done an admirable job of fashioning a silk purse from a sow’s ear with the handsomely produced new edition, but even the knockout cover designs can’t conceal the fact that Apollo’s Song is a sour, heavy-handed tale that lacks the essential humanism – and humor – of Buddha and Phoenix.

This is a revised version of a review that appeared at PopCultureShock on 6/22/2007.

APOLLO’S SONG, VOLS. 1-2 • BY OSAMU TEZUKA • VERTICAL, INC. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Apollo’s Song, Vols. 1-2

September 1, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

Apollo’s Song may be one of the strangest sex ed manuals ever written.

It begins with a textbook Tezuka scene, at once lyrical and goofy: millions of anthropomorphic sperm race towards a comely egg. After one lucky soul pants and claws his way to the front of the scrum, the sperm and egg dissolve into a passionate embrace. In the following panel, we see the result of their union, an embryo, presiding over a veritable sperm graveyard. This juxtaposition of life and death — or, perhaps more accurately, sex and death — foreshadows the dialectic that will play out in the following chapters.

…