Remarkable Individual by Joy

Ming Chuan University
梁秝蓁 Joy Liang #21
Student ID#92659241

When I was a child, I was crazy about comic books very much. Tezuka Osamu’s works are one of my favorite comics. He is also my most admire cartoonist. Why are his works so popular? To my mind, as an excellent cartoonist as him, Tezuka Osamu has a lot of extraordinary traits that could be organized into three classes which make him so successful—“Talent”, “Creativity”, and “Enthusiasm”.

The first trait is his talent. Tezuka Osamu loved to draw from a very early age. He grew up in the downtown where the next door is the one famous Japanese traditional ensemble; therefore, he was attracted by their vivid show and delicate body language deeply. When he was eighteen, he made his debut as a cartoonist with a four-panel newspaper comic strip and not too long thereafter, paperback compilations of his longer stories, with title such as “New Treasure Island”, “Lost World” and “Next World” became smash hits, selling unthinkable for comics-over 400,000 copies each and making him nationally famous. In addition to the great accomplishment in comics, he was also bringing "cinematic" art styles and novelistic plots to the medium. By and large, he created a revolution in comics and animation. His career parallels the rise of the Japanese animation industry and he is widely credited as the most influential animator in Japan.

"Creativity” that over our imagination is his second trait. His amazing ideas were overflowing just like pour forth in torrents. All his fantasy and vigorous creativities presented in every work are various as well. In “Astro Boy”, he created a future high-tech world that humanized robot and real human beings living together, and depicted all possible conflicts between two parties. It clued a surface question: How could all races in this world get together harmonious? In “Kimba the White Lion”, he accused that human destroy nature and advocated environment protection; “The Phoenix” emphasized the eternal life,and the toleration and ruthless of nature. Moreover, Tezuka Osamu also applied his medicinal background to create “Black Jack”. This long serial described one talent surgeon who has scary scar and in black cloak that without medical license how to ask his rich but unmoral patients for huge medicine charge and help innocent lives by secretly way. It illustrated this guy greedy for money, but his attitude that about treating life is more humble, more sincere than someone else. Besides, another interesting work “The Three-Eyed One” was summarized the legend of folk tale and through detailed scientific textual criticism to construct a mysterious world. Not only revealed a lot of truly incredible situation on this earth; but also recorded the upgrade of human civilization.

His strong enthusiasm for comic is the third character. Although Tezuka Osamu eventually received his physician's license, he chose to devote his life to comics and animation rather than practice medicine. In comics, he pioneered long narratives of hundreds particular, even thousand of pages. By 1950, he had firmly established his position as the leading comics artist of his day when he serialized his new-classic work, Jungle Emperor Leo (also known as Kimba the White Lion), in the monthly magazine. No later, he began serializing the same magazine in the young boys' monthly “Mighty Atom”, which later became "Astro Boy" as known as to Americans, becoming one of Tezuka's most popular and famous works. After that, Tezuka Osamu continued his productive works. In 1967 he also began drawing what he called his "Life work--the Phoenix--" and creating comics targeted at more adult audience. Remarkably, Tezuka continued creating and drawing with powerful, original themes throughout his long career until he died on February 9, 1989. Japanese address him respectful as “The God of comics”

General speaking, Tezuka Osamu’s work was filled with love and courage, ideal and justice, concerned people and applauded life also offered dream and different perspectives. Those huge works just reflected his traits: “talent”—amazing achievement in different field (comics and animation), “creativity”—varied stories plots and “enthusiasm”—only focused on his favorite all his lifetime and never give up. I think this is the reason why his works fascinate audience and readers so much, and even they grew up; they still couldn’t put the books down and were moved so deeply. So far, I can’t find other cartoonist that can catch up with him. Where is another Tezuka Osamu? I’m waiting and seeing.