MW - Osamu Tezuka

Not only is Osamu Tezuka's 1976 graphic novel MW a remarkably different kind of story from the Japanese master of comics, but challenging his country's political infrastructure, the corruption behind election string-pulling, the government connections with rich and influential businessmen and the thorny question of US involvement in Japan, it's a daring and challenging work of great relevance. 

More than that, Tezuka explores the human, or perhaps more accurately, the inhuman impulses that lie behind such actions. At the centre of the story is an unusual love affair between a priest, Father Garai, and a morally corrupt young man, Yuki. The two of them have in the past survived the accidental release of a deadly experimental virus called MW that wiped out the entire population of a small Japanese island. Only a child at the time, the experience and exposure to a smaller dose of the virus has however has deeply affected Yuki, the effeminate young man now a quite dangerous and ruthless kidnapper and murderer. His actions seem random, striking out at authority but also showing up in cruel behaviour towards Father Garai and anyone who comes into close contact with him, but they all have a connection to what happened 16 years ago on that small island. 

As well as the interesting questions that Tezuka raises in regard to US wartime actions, their influence in Japan and their impact on the psychology of the individual (are the actions of Yuki any less harmful to society than what has been perpetrated by the respective governments?) - Tezuka's layouts and artwork techniques as always remain fascinating, the writer-artist's style still cartoony, but finding other appropriate means in the line work and the arrangements to express the dark elements that underlie the story.