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Published in 1973, Barbara is one of Osamu Tezuka's mature adult comics, which means that it has some nudity and sexual content, but it actually means more that it deals with different themes and approach from his more obviously children-oriented comics. It's also quite a daring subject, an adventurous one rather than a political one, dealing in some ways with the idea of art and craft, but in a more serious way than how the artist sometimes inserts himself self-effacingly and self-critically as comic moments in his other books. Barbara the character is something of an enigma, a muse perhaps, one that Tezuka recognises as being influenced to some extent by Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann . Unlike Nicklausse however who tries to keep her master on the right path, Barbara is a more inconstant companion to her sensei. Yosuke Mikura is a "popular Symbolist writer' who picks Barbara off the streets, a drunk, delinquent, with a shady background. There is a literary bent t...

Created in 1972-73, Ayako is one of Osamu Tezuka's dark exploration of people and society, specifically dealing with the significant post-war years from the 1950s, right up to the present day in the 70s. It's not a pleasant story to say the least, the American occupation giving rise to enormous upheavals that Japanese society is incapable of adjusting to. More than that, but seen through the eyes of one family, who represent many aspects and attitudes of Japanese society, it even seems to bring out the worse in the Japanese character. Ayako opens with Jiro Tenge returning from the war, the country defeated, its impact shock to the whole nation. He returns to his home village in the country, Yodoyama, to the grave disappointment of his tyrannical father who is ashamed that Jiro didn't die honourably in the war like so many others. Jiro finds that much has changed in the time he has been away, as much with Japan as his family. His teenage sister Naoko is secretly part of a l...

Osamu Tezuka's 1965 science-fiction hero team adventure Wonder 3 is aimed at a younger audience and with Tezuka's imagination, style and dynamism there's plenty to enjoy. If you want you could maybe even find a little bit of broad social commentary, but if not, it still seems fairly on the money in respect of its traditional SF theme of showing the planet Earth in decline and in need of outside intervention if it is to be saved. Things are so bad however that the Milky Way League aren't even sure the Earth is worth saving. They decide however to send a superhero Space Patrol Squad team The Wonder 3 to monitor the planet for one year and if it doesn't show any sign of being worthy of redemption, they are to use their Antiproton bomb to destroy the place. It's too much of a risk to the rest of the universe. Arriving on Earth the three decide to disguise themselves as animals in order to blend in (the idea of taking human form too disgusting to contemplate). The t...

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 an...

Zatoichi? Blind swordsman? Pah! How about a blind swordsman with no arms and no legs either? That would be the condition of Hyakkimaru, his father, samurai general Lord Daigo having forged a deal with forty-eight demons, offering each of them a part of his new-born son in return for bestowing great powers on him. The deformed child is abandoned, but is rescued by a maverick Black Jack-like doctor who creates prosthetic limbs for the child. On discovering from one of the many supernatural creatures drawn to this unusual child that to regain his missing body parts he must find and destroy each of the forty-eight demons, Hyakkimaru becomes a wandering swordsman with weapons in place of his missing limbs. On one of his journeys he encounters Dororo, a fearless child and beggar thief with an equally troubled past. Dororo has an intriguing storyline, one that draws effectively from Japanese ghost and demon mythology. Anyone familiar with Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo will find those themes an...