Osamu Tezuka Retrospective
It’s been a few weeks now since the 2008 Hiroshima International Animation Festival finished. This will be my in-depth look at the Osamu Tezuka
retrospective. Please check the blog for my final
impressions of the festival as a whole and for Joy’s excellent summary of the festival and this year’s winners.
Tezuka’s life and work
 James Brown and Osamu Tezuka. They might not have a whole lot in common,
but dig a little deeper.
Born five years apart, adolescents during World War II, one is commonly referred to as “The Godfather of Soul,” the other as that of manga. Both had a
deep love of theatrics, borne, in Tezuka’s case from childhood visits to the cross-dressing extravaganza of nearby all-female theatre Takarazuka.
And finally, while the former was the “hardest working man in showbiz,” I doubt that he was anywhere near as prolific as Tezuka.
A medical doctor with a mountainous creative output in both anime and manga,
his final words are said to be, “I’m begging you, let me work!” Sadly, he died of cancer at the age of 60. Had he lived, he would, I am sure, have gone
on to produce many more wonders. He would also have been 80 this year, and it was in celebration of this anniversary that the retrospective was held.
Not that any reason is needed. It remains impossible to talk about animation in Japan without mentioning Tezuka’s name. Recently, I was fortunate enough to
catch an exhibition on shojo manga in Kyoto. This showing of girls’ manga,
created mainly by women for women, nonetheless started with a look at Tezuka and his Princess Knight. When it
comes to manga, it always starts with Tezuka. And when it comes to anime, it’s the same thing.
While today’s biggest anime artist, Hayao Miyazaki, hails Tezuka as his inspiration, for Tezuka himself there was nothing home-grown to look up to. He
started Japanese animation, what is now the biggest animation industry in the world. He looked abroad, to early Disney and Russian cartoons, and made his
own style, what became the anime style: the big eyes, the childlike features and, not least, the intricate and emotionally complex storylines.
Osamu Tezuka Retrospective, Sunday August 10
It is only right, then, that perhaps the biggest highlight aside from the competition at this year’s festival was a 4˝ hour long retrospective of the master.
Unfortunately I had a bus to catch, and so missed the talk that followed. Tezuka’s son, Macoto
whet the largely Japanese audience’s appetite by promising not only a historic meeting between five of the uppermost living anime directors, but also an
announcement of a new animation by Tezuka productions. If anyone stayed on for the talk, please do let us know what it was like and what was said – I was
sorry to miss it.
 While Macoto’s Japanese introduction was interpreted in English, the films themselves were sadly not subtitled. Most of the time this was no big issue as
the majority of the films were totally nonverbal. For the half hour TV shows though, it got a little tiring following the plot, especially the rather talky
and complex first episode of Astro Boy, the first animated TV series in Japan (watch an opening sequence from the 1960s here). Still, the privilege of watching the genesis of this iconic character was
worth it all. The episode was also unexpectedly funny, with one scene (later replicated in that flawed sci-fi masterpiece Artificial Intelligence: AI)
showing Astro Boy eating spinach only to open up his tummy and remove it from the machinery.
In fact, the retrospective highlights just how thorough the influence of Tezuka is. Not just the spinach scene, but also the key storyline of AI is straight
from Astro Boy: adult wants a child to love, makes robot child, disowns robot child once he realises it will never grow up. And so many scenes and characters
from Jungle Emperor (also known as Kimba the Lion) are almost carbon copied in Disney’s The Lion King, it is very difficult to argue against
websites such as
this that Disney has some serious copyright violations on its conscience.
Style and themes
What is really brought home, though, is how unique Tezuka’s own style is. While he has his inspirations, he is never a copier. And the true revelation of
the show was the sheer creative genius of the man as an artist. He recalls a Picasso in his flawless mastery of style. From cutesy classic anime style to
stylised sixties blocks of colour to scruffy pencil, to fourth-wall texture experimentation, to… you name it, he’s done it, it seems. Each work is totally
different – and each work is a masterpiece of its genre.
Certain themes remain, the main ones being a deep humanity and anti-war sentiment. Tezuka has been accused of racism but it is important to note that the
villains in Jungle Emperor, which takes place in Africa, are the white poachers who capture Kimba’s mother and shoot his father.
Another theme is orphans. Both Kimba and Astro Boy lose their parents in the very first episode. As another great Japanese filmmaker of the same generation,
Nagisa Oshima, has said, theirs was a “fatherless generation.” While I haven’t been able to find
out about Tezuka’s own background, it is true that those who, like him, were adolescents during the war found themselves in a Japan both literally and
metaphorically bereft of fathers: if they were not dead in the war, they were at least dead as role models. The country they had built was ruined, the war
they had started lost; it was up to the next generation to build something new, with nothing to look up to.
The anti-war message runs right through every animation. Nothing good ever comes of weapons in Tezuka’s world. From the ones Astro Boy destroys with his
bare hands, to the atom bomb explosion in Jumping (always strange watching this in Hiroshima), to the horrific descent into war that we witness through
something as trivial as wall posters in the rather long short film Tales of a Street Corner. Tales was my personal favourite. A 38-minute film that starts
off all sweet, colourful and happy, very much in the style of this clip, it gradually turns into a tale of
totalitarian rule, war, and destruction. At the end though, as in all his films, there is a core of optimism, the humanism again, that seems to render
Tezuka incapable of full-on despair.
And in a world where such beauty exists, neither can I. This screening was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see great works of art on the big screen. I
have only one complaint: that there were hardly any foreign visitors. I believe this is because of the lack of information about language more than anything
else. Had people known the introduction would be interpreted, had they known most of the films were nonverbal, I am sure more would have come. It would be
great if the festival could make this information clearer in the future, although I know it involves a lot of work. It is only a fair effort for someone who
was, after all, the hardest working man in, erm, drawbiz.
August 2008
Sofie Ivan Andersen |
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