Miwa Ueda; pub Kodansha (Jp), Tokyopop (US, as Peach Girl and Peach Girl:
a virtual chess game of relationships while the boys are by and large carried along as their pawns. Ueda’s witty script stays tightly focused on these four characters, emphasizing those moments when Momo and Kairi are caught in the wrong place at the wrong time by both Sae and Toji. Sae’s more than happy to spread the word about Momo “cheating” on Toji, reinforcing their classmates’ notions that Momo is little more than an easy, two-timing ganguro gal. Toji even breaks up with Momo at one point to protect her from further harm to her reputation, even though he can’t really believe that she’d cheat on him like that.
Sae doesn’t always get the upper hand. When Momo fi nally gets her revenge on Sae, banding together with Toji and Kairi to reveal her true nature in front of the rest of the school, the result is literally crushing. Ueda draws Sae as a two-dimen- sional, fl attened-piece-of-paper version of her former self as a visual reminder of this. Once Sae gets an idea to put her back on top again (and gets an off er to become a professional model, to boot) – pop! – she’s back to her well-rounded self again. Her schemes become more elaborate than ever in the second half of the series, with a drugging and date-rape situation turning the manga away from its otherwise fl oaty romantic comedy feel. Frequent plot twists make it diffi cult to guess whether Momo will end up with Toji or Kairi – and whether Sae will ever get her just desserts – which keeps this series compelling right to the end.
Momo’s blonde hair and tan mark her out as a ganguro, but Miwa Ueda’s witty script shows there’s much more to her than that.
Cour
tesy of K
odansha L
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here’s no disputing that Astro Boy is Osamu Tezuka’s most recognized character. Yet it was another of his series, the millennia-spanning Phoenix, that the manga master considered his life’s work. Serialized from 1967 to 1988, although the foundation for the series was laid as early as 1954 (see box overleaf), it might have run even longer were it not for Tezuka’s death in 1989. “The story has been swinging between past and future and eventually it will converge in the present,” Tezuka once wrote. “Until it reaches that point, I must continue drawing.” Tezuka himself notes in the first story arc, “Dawn”, that the story takes place during the time of the Chronicles of Wei from the Three Kingdoms period of China in the third century, considered to contain the first historical account of Japan. The second story arc, “Future”, takes the other extreme, depicting humanity on the verge of collapse in the year 3404.Japanese readers not only had to deal with the series jumping between time periods in its narrative, but also between publications, with Phoenix appearing
in three different magazines over parts of three decades. It was first serial- ized in Tezuka’s own anthology COM, before it shut down in 1972. The artist felt his greatest challenge with Phoenix was writing stories that were intellectu- ally challenging, and the series’ subse- quent move to Manga Shōnen, coupled with the emergence of more complex shōjo manga, prompted him to take more chances, some of which he later acknowledged did not pan out. “Phoenix in those days became gimmicky to keep up with the trend,” he once wrote. “I had been drawing Phoenix for over ten years by then, so what I thought was a brilliant new idea seems dated now.”
As one of Tezuka’s first series aimed at adult audiences, Phoenix acts as a link in his evolution from an artist drawing series aimed at children to his later adult-targeted series like Black
Jack. Phoenix was Tezuka’s canvas for
experimenting with panel layouts. The story arc “Universe” (sometimes known as “Space”), for example, features four astronauts who are forced to abandon their ship in separate escape pods. Once those pods are launched, Tezuka shows
Phoenix
Osamu Tezuka; pub Osamu Tezuka (Jp, 1967–72), Asahi Sonorama (Jp,
1976–86), Kadokawa (Jp, 1986–88), Viz (US, UK); ser COM (1967–72), Manga Shōnen (1976–86), The Wild Age (1986–88); vols 12; age 16+
each astronaut in separate groups of frames on each page; whenever they join up, their frames join up, whenever they are separate, they are shown separately. Th e eff ect even extends to the point where, if an astronaut decides to cut off communication with the others for whatever reason, their frames are shown merely as a string of black boxes.
Each of the twelve Phoenix stories Tezuka completed before his death is self-contained; some stories incorporate elements of science fi ction, while others are historical fantasies. All are linked by the mythical, immortal phoenix, the bird whose blood supposedly grants
eternal life to those who drink it. But immortality and man’s quest to seek it interfere with Phoenix’s other main theme: the eternal Buddhist reincarna- tion cycle of death and rebirth. Th is cycle is embodied in the series’ other recurring character, Saruta, a man always destined to suff er yet who manages to persevere in whatever situation he is placed. While he may not be called “Saruta” in every story, his wild hair and large nose signals his presence – acting as a character like those in Tezuka’s “star system” (see p.12) and fi lling diff erent roles in diff erent stories.
Th e story arc considered the best in the series is also one of Tezuka’s most