Astro Boy creator crafted a manga revolution

OUTSIDE Japan, Osamu Tezuka is known as the manga artist who created Astro Boy, the robot whose crime-fighting antics are popular across the world.

OUTSIDE Japan, Osamu Tezuka is known as the manga artist who created Astro Boy, the cute young robot whose crime-fighting antics are popular across the world. He also has been labelled, in an attempt to draw easy parallels with the traditions of the West, the Walt Disney of Japan. But it seems this doesn't come close to capturing the influence and creativity of the manga pioneer.

According to a new book on his life and work, the artist could be described as an amalgam of Disney, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Tim Burton, Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan, all rolled into "one incredibly prolific creator". This reputation remains strongest in Japan, notwithstanding moves to broaden his appeal with shows such as the National Gallery of Victoria's touring exhibition in 2007.

Now, with the release of Astro Boy, starring Nicolas Cage and Samuel L. Jackson, drawing attention once again to the adventures of his most famous character, a wider critical appreciation of Tezuka's pioneering career is building outside his Japanese base. He was a "medium-shaper, the chief architect of the modern anime and manga industries", writes Helen McCarthy in The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga.

"Tezuka was an innovator in animation," McCarthy writes, "a creator of vast comic book sagas founded on a wide knowledge of international culture and literature, a fantasist who mined his innermost self for universal stories, a significant science fiction author and a scientist who popularised technology but also warned of its dangers to the planet and to mankind years before environmental concerns became fashionable."

In Japan, his influence is profound: "He was a link between its past and future, a bridge between its historic Japanese origins and its role in 21st-century world culture and the pathfinder for its journey to the West."

Tezuka led the way in post-war manga, the popular comics that take as their subjects everything from fantasy stories to science fiction, graphic violence and pornography. Their presence in Japan cannot be missed: on public transport children and adults can be seen engrossed in the stories, while in bookstores thousands of titles are on display in whole levels dedicated to the art form. Just last week, Japan's Meiji University announced it would open the Tokyo International Manga Library by 2015.

Tezuka was also an innovator in Japanese animation, or anime, developing cheap, efficient modes of production while allowing his imagination to flourish on the screen. His use of the Hollywood star system -- where selected characters were rotated around different stories and roles -- was a first for a manga artist and his animation influenced a generation of artists.

His name will always be linked with Astro Boy, who first appeared in 1951 in a comic called Captain Atom. The Astro Boy television series began in Japan in 1963, then appeared on American TV screens soon afterwards before being remade in the 1980s. But Tezuka's output went much further.

Throughout his life he produced 170,000 pages of comics and 700 separate titles. He worked constantly, juggling several deadlines and working through the night to finish his stories on time. His last recorded words before his death in 1989 were: "I'm begging you, let me work."

His comic and animation titles ranged from humorous fantasies to science fiction adventures and dark satires on consumerism. Comics included New Treasure Island, which first appeared in 1947 using his unique cinematic style; The Phoenix, a series about reincarnation that began in the 50s and later appeared on screen; and Black Jack (1973), described as "Robin Hood with a scalpel".

On screen, his animation was just as varied. Titles included Kimba the White Lion, first seen in 1965 and credited with influencing Disney's The Lion King, to the the experimental Broken Down Film (1985), about a cowboy trying to save a girl while coping with his erratic illustrator, smudges and blurring.

During a visit to New York in 1964, he ran into Disney, his idol, who told the Japanese artist he would one day like to make something similar to Astro Boy himself. The following year, director Stanley Kubrick asked Tezuka to work on the design for his next project. It was 2001: A Space Odyssey, but Tezuka had pressing commitments at home and declined.

He became a celebrity in Japan, and one of its highest earning artists. But he also had financial troubles and in 1973 his animation company fell into bankruptcy. He suffered occasionally from depression and often worried about his ability to keep up with changing tastes.

"Tezuka revolutionised Japan's comics industry after the war by making comics that thrilled young readers and kept them interested in the medium as they grew up," McCarthy writes. "He also opened up new possibilities for comics as vehicles for long, complex stories, exploring emotions and ideas far beyond the simple gag strip."

Born into a well-educated family, Tezuka had a fascination with drawing from an early age. He would draw figures on steamy train windows, share stories with friends and at the age of nine produced his first complete comic, Pin Pin Sei Chan. He was fascinated by insects, and incorporated the Japanese character for ground beetle, osamushi, into his signature.

By the time the war ended, he was producing comics at a rapid rate. He was studying at medical school at the same time but chose instead to pursue a career as an artist.

(He kept an interest in science and in 1961 received a PhD for a thesis accompanied by illustrations from Japan's top manga studio.)

By the late 1940s, when his career was taking off, an incident occurred that stayed in his mind. It was shortly after the end of the war and Tezuka managed to annoy a group of American soldiers in Takarazuka, a town near Osaka. They beat him up.

"He began to wonder how people who didn't understand one another could ever be at peace," McCarthy writes. "This became one of the enduring themes of his work."

McCarthy says he was passionately anti-war and particularly concerned about the impact of conflict on children.

"His work teems with destroyed families and lost parents but offers the possibility of survival and hope of better things," she writes. "The heroes' stories are exciting and inventive, yet also solidly rooted in the reality of the times. Corruption and selfishness were rampant, families were mutable and life was often far more complex than it seemed."

While only some parts of his work are known in the West, his legacy is safe in Japan. In addition to his influence on manga and anime, permanent tributes include the Tezuka museum, which opened in 1993 in his home town of Takarazuka.

And last year, a 2.2m Astro Boy statue was unveiled at the entrance to Tezuka's school in Osaka. The words of Astro Boy's creator appear on a plaque at the base of the statue: "I love all living things that inhabit this earth. I want to take care of life. I want to bequeath this love to the next generation."

The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga, by Helen McCarthy (Ilex, $65).