WHO WAS OSAMU TEZUKA?

Osamu Tezuka created a revolution in comics and animation.
Born in 1928 in Toyonaka, in Osaka,Japan,he was reised in the nearby city of Takarazuka.
From a very early age he loved to draw (and love to collect insects so much that he later incorportated the ideogram for ‘insect’ into his first name as a pen-name.)
When he was eighteen,and enrolled in university as medical student,he made his debut as a cartoonist with a four panel newspaper comic strip titled ‘Ma-chan’s diary’.
Not too long thereafter paperbaxk compilations of his longer stories,with titles as ‘New Treasure Island’,‘Lost world’and ‘Next World’ Although Osamu Tezuka eventually received his physician’s license,he chose to devote his life to comics and animation rather than practice medeicine.
In doing so he brought an unusually creative and educated mind to both fields.
In comics,in particular,he pionaeered long narratives of hundereds,even thousand of pages,bringing ‘cinematic’ art styles and novelistic plots to the medium.
By 1950 he had finally established his position as the leading comics artist of his day when he serialized his now-classic work,‘Jungle Emperor’(also known as ‘Kimba the White Lion’) in the monthly magazined,‘Manga Shonen’.
Then,in 1952 he began serializing ‘Mighty Atom’,in the young boy’s monthly Shonen.
Mighty Atom,which later became known to Amereicans as ‘ASTROBOY’,cotinued until 1968,becaming one of Tezuka’s most pupular and famous works.

Tezuka did not stop with Atom,however.
He began turning out one hit after another,with ‘Princess Night’in 1953,‘Ambassador Magma’ and ‘W3’ (‘Amazing 3’)in 1965.
‘Vampire’ in 1966,and ‘Dororo’ in 1967.
In 1967 he also began drawing waht he called his ‘life work‘--‘The Phoenix’ and creating comics targeted at a more abult audience.
Remarkably,Tezuka continued creating comics with powerful,original themas throughout his long career.
Some of his best known later works,include Ode to Kirihito,1970,A History of Birdman,1971,A Hundred Tales,1971,Ayako,1972,Black Jack and Buddha,1973,MW,1976,A Tree in the Sun 1981,tell Adolph,1983,Ludiwig B.,1987,and Neo Fausto,1988.
Tezuka continued creating and drwaing comics until he died on Feb 9th in 1989.

Asahi newspaper explained the coontribution of this this great artist as follows;
Foreign visitors to Japan often find it difficult to understand why Japanese people like comics so much.
For example,they often reportedly find it odd ti see grown men and women engrossed in weekly comics magazine on the trains during commute hours.One explanations for the popularity of comics in Japan,however,is that Japan and Osamu Tezuka,the postwar explosion in comics in Japan would have been in conceivable.