https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Playlist
Fans of modern Japanese animation can undoubtedly immediately think of some great classics from acclaimed series such as: Neon Genesis Evangelion and Cowboy Bebop It is influenced by the works of filmmakers such as Satoshi Kon and Hayao Miyazaki. What is less known is that these and other anime works are Astro Boyor in Japan, Astro Boy (“The Mighty Atom”). First conceived on the page by artist Osamu TezukaThis work is remembered today as “the godfather of manga” (i.e. Japanese comics) and was adapted into a (disappointingly underfunded) animated television series in 1962, overseen by Tezuka himself.
“It was a ridiculously low figure,” Tezuka later wrote in his autobiography about the per-episode figure he’d offered to reluctant sponsors, but it (like other severe limitations) spurred considerable creative energy, even as it caused various production stresses.
Eventually, Matt Alt wrote: Pure Invention: How Japan Created the Modern World“The beloved characteristics of Japanese anime — dramatic pauses, long still periods, and limited movement — have evolved from desperate cost-cutting measures into elements that distinguish anime from content produced in other countries.”
When it was first released in November 1962, Astro Boy It was accompanied by a little-known Tezuka project. A story from a street corner “Tales from a Street Corner” is a 40-minute film made with an “anti-Disney” aesthetic. At Western Film ReviewCathy Munroe Hotz calls this “Tezuka’s experiment Animations that Tezuka created for artistic rather than commercial purposes, or experimental works. Although the animation uses unusual techniques, such as a subjective shot of plane tree seeds falling to the ground, it is not “experimental” in the usual sense.
The term fits well with several other works. Playlist at the top of the postis a collection of clips from a variety of Tezuka Osamu’s experimental and quasi-experimental animations produced between the mid-1960s and the late 1980s (many of which are easily available in full on YouTube), which collectively demonstrate both his imagination and sense of humor. “Memory” The 1964 film “Memoria” is a traditional animation. Monty PythonAn omnibus depicting the aspirations of postwar office workers in a paper-cutting style Pictures at an Exhibition Pictures at an Exhibition, created a few years later, satirizes modern society in ten different ways, each accompanied by a movement from Mussorgsky’s work of the same name.
By the end of Tezuka’s life, his animation style seems to have evolved in several directions at once. “Jump” 1984 (Jumping) imagines what it would be like to leap ever more superhuman heights from a first-person perspective. “push” 1987’s Push uses a more traditional manga aesthetic to depict a post-apocalyptic world ruled by vending machines. In the same year, Osamu Tezuka, a descendant of the famous samurai, wrote Hattori Hanzo — also published Muramasa, an allegory of nuclear annihilation featuring a cursed sword. The threat that humanity poses to the planet was also a major theme in the show. Forest Legend Legend of the Forest was left unfinished until Tezuka’s death in 1989, when it was later taken over by his son Makoto, one of countless animators, Japanese and otherwise, who now work under the influence of their Godfather.
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Based in Seoul, Colin MaOnershall Writing and broadcastingHe has written papers on cities, languages, and cultures, and his projects include the Substack newsletter. Books about cities And books A city without a state: Walking through 21st-century Los Angeles. Follow us on Twitter CollinhamOnershall or Facebook.
