I’ll admit I do know embarrassingly little about Tezuka’s life and work, past the apparent impression he had as each one of many pioneers of manga and the originator of TV animation. There was short-form anime earlier than Tezuka, however it was the cutthroat discount he struck when it comes to “restricted animation” that allowed anime to be in any manner financially viable as a weekly tv medium. And to be sincere, his discount was itself a reasonably unfastened interpretation of “financially viable,” a labor-heavy but nonetheless bare-bones adaptive methodology that also has repercussions in how animators are criminally underpaid immediately.
So Tezuka each created and quasi-doomed tv animation, whereas additionally creating a number of the most iconic and long-lasting characters and narratives in both manga or anime. Hell, one in every of final 12 months’s most acclaimed productions was an adaptation of a status reimagining of an Astro Boy arc. His works stretch the boundaries of “basic” to one thing virtually equal to sacred texts; anime is the place it’s dramatically due to his creativeness, and the place it’s financially due to his enterprise acumen.
Like many originals of such stature, Tezuka was by no means content material to take a seat on his prior accomplishments, or just replicate the issues he had created earlier than. The final stretch of his profession featured a dramatic broadening of his artistic ambitions, shifting from tales of boyhood achievement to grand reflections on historic figures or the course of humanity. Phoenix represents the end result of this late-career ambition, although after all, issues can solely be seen as “culminations” looking back. We can not know the place else Tezuka’s arms may need stretched – we solely have the unimaginable catalog he left behind, alongside a legacy persevering with into the longer term.
From its first pages, Phoenix demonstrates the odd confluence of variables at play in Tezuka’s later work. The manga begins with a somber reflection on the nice and horrible energy of a volcano, right here accompanied by playful drawings of forest animals with anthropomorphized physique language and massive pleasant cartoon eyes. This scientific breakdown of the method of eruption is then contrasted in opposition to an articulation of the mountain’s mythic import, its significance to an early tribe of people revealed by way of their prayers for a lady on the verge of dying. After which we lurch once more in direction of slapstick comedy, simply earlier than it’s revealed that the younger boy Nagi’s brother has succumbed to his wounds.
Via this distinctive combination of far-reaching philosophy and farce, of comical exaggeration and frank violence, Tezuka affords a narrative of mankind’s inhumanity in direction of man – to not choose us, however to place us inside the legacy of all animals, the way in which of nature altogether. And he constructs this meditation out of all of the instruments he’s acquired all through his profession, embodying an ethos of tales being approachable by each youngsters and adults, and of disrespected varieties like comedian artwork being able to nice, soul-churning artistry. In Tezuka’s world, cartoonish exaggeration can exist proper alongside mass slaughter; there is no such thing as a partitioning the world into socially agreeable and grotesquely morbid containers, the world is humorous and sorrowful and foolish and brutal all on the similar time.
Nagi’s brother Uraji wished to say the lifetime of the phoenix, which is claimed to grant everlasting life. He desired this not for glory, however to save lots of the lifetime of his ailing spouse Hinaku, who was affected by what Tezuka quickly reveals to be untreated tetanus. However simply earlier than Hinaku succumbs to her ailment, she is saved by the knowledge of a person who washes up on shore – Em Dee, a foreigner who’s at first handled as a slave, however finally allowed to marry the girl he saved. However then, on the eve of their marriage ceremony, it’s revealed that Em Dee was truly a spy; a ahead agent of the Priestess Himiko, whose troops proceed to slaughter Hinaku and Nagi’s village below the command of the brutal captain Saruta.
It’s at that time the place Phoenix reveals the true scope of its perspective. For because it seems, Em Dee’s betrayal will show solely the primary in an extended line of upheavals and reversals, shifting tides that may power Nagi to seek out household the place he can, solid the highly effective all the way down to the earth, and finally destroy almost each character we come to know. Nagi will come to see the conquering Saruta as a real father, Em Dee and Hinaku will bear the seeds of the longer term, and all will finally be misplaced within the nice march of time, the phoenix perpetually flying overhead, a continuing reminder of our implacably finite lifespans.
In a conventional story, this may appear considerably fatalistic. However Phoenix will not be in regards to the tales we inform of our personal lives – or reasonably, it contains such tales solely to emphasise that they’re fantasies, comforting delusions designed to border us as the middle of the universe. However any particular person human life is kind of temporary, even when consequential, and Phoenix is in fact in regards to the nice span of historical past, the forces that shift and repeat and see humanity reinventing itself in new but acquainted varieties. It comprises historic markers largely to emphasise the gap between their dwelling grandeur and historic import; its perspective is all the time that of the phoenix above, seeing the conflicts of people as little completely different from the warring of pink and black ants.
Phoenix’s most determined characters rage in opposition to that dying of the sunshine, the need to ultimately depart the stage in order to make room for somebody new. The Priestess Himiko could possibly be thought of the antagonist of this arc, however she’s additionally merely a determined lady clinging to fading energy in an age the place superstitions are now not enough to take care of order. Himiko additionally embodies Phoenix’s strategy to historical past and legend; although she is traditionally canonized as the primary chief of Japan, she is right here depicted as each a heartless conqueror and a superstitious tyrant. This fast deflating of Japanese mythology displays Tezuka’s age and expertise, however the takeaway is nothing as simple as “Japan is constructed on a false promise of supremacy.”
Himiko will not be a monster, she is an individual, and all individuals are related of their ignorance, selfishness, charity, kindness, ambition, and all else that makes up human nature. All people are provincial of their idea of fellow humanity, all are determined to outlive, and all are decided to make sure their legacy endures. When Saruta completes his routing of Nagi’s tribe, the opposing chief’s closing phrases are “in case your chief is a girl, you too might be destroyed” – an announcement of feeble superstition, emphasizing that there was no higher “righteousness” on this tribe, however that they nonetheless deserve life. Em Dee might have introduced higher fortune and mental enlightenment to those individuals; as an alternative, he led his personal allegedly superior tribe to destroy them completely. Neither schooling nor its absence are inherent markers of the Aristocracy or decency. So it goes.
By grounding Nagi’s adventures in historical past, Tezuka additional emphasizes how forces that appeared implacable, everlasting, and even the avatars of the gods had been merely quirks of their period, nice leaders who rose to near-godhood solely to fall into obscurity by way of the lengthy arc of human progress. When describing the ascension of Japan’s first emperor, Tezuka states that “on this trend, Japan was shaped as a nation by way of invasion, struggle, and slaughter.” With every bloody step ahead, Phoenix pushes in opposition to the assumed righteousness of our self-serving views of dynasty and future. There’s nothing magical or inevitable in regards to the emperor of Japan – he’s merely the newest conqueror to put in himself upon a throne of skulls, his allegedly god-given proper to rule a self-serving fantasy widespread to many rulers. Himiko claimed herself invincible and inevitable, however finally fell into spoil. Her successor will expertise the identical; all tyrants have their flip within the solar, however all empires ultimately crumble.
On the person stage, the fluidity of human nature and superficiality of assumed righteousness are illustrated by way of the trail of Nagi and Saruta, mortal enemies who ultimately change into real father and son. Dragged throughout the ocean by his hated oppressor, Nagi at first can not perceive why Saruta works so exhausting to protect him, regardless of beforehand culling his entire village. It’s an comprehensible disconnect, for the excellence between private morality versus loyalty to a better energy is advanced and fluid. Usually, the humanity we assign to others is just a mirrored image of private proximity, reasonably than the precise habits or beliefs of anybody concerned.
This fact is mirrored in reverse when Nagi plans his assassination of Himiko, recruiting one other boy whose dad and mom had been killed by the priestess’ alleged supernatural justice. It’s a tough factor to show individuals in opposition to the idea system of their total society, however collisions of the private and the cultural have a manner of upsetting such crises of religion; when the shaman you worship accuses your dad and mom of lies, the levy tends to interrupt. It’s typically solely a private connection that may overcome the load of tradition or superstition, as within the case of Em Dee’s bond with Hinaku. And although he as soon as swore revenge on Saruta, Nagi ultimately finds himself desperately carrying his surrogate father to security, praying he’ll final lengthy sufficient to see the far shore. Our lifespans are harshly finite, however there’s sufficient time inside them for profound reinvention, for locating new humanity inside ourselves or others.
After all, this isn’t a lesson that’s simply realized, and battle is a continuing of nature, whether or not it’s human or animal. The tribes of Phoenix struggle in opposition to one another relentlessly, every determined to make sure their variety survive. And even on the person stage, characters like Nagi exhibit the problem of actually embracing a broader view of humanity. Returning to the volcanic crater of the phoenix, he finds Em Dee nonetheless alive, who claims his sister is nicely and has even borne him youngsters. Nagi despairs at this “betrayal,” although in fact he has already forgiven the person who truly destroyed his village, purely as a result of he got here to know his humanity within the 12 months they spent collectively. His very completely different response to Em Dee solely displays the fickleness of human morality, of our means to forgive those that we’ve come to see as human, versus our tendency to revile those that we can not see carefully or come to know.
And above all this striving for which means and eternity, this arbitrary struggle and equally arbitrary allotment of provisional humanity, the phoenix soars, promising a private glory that may by no means be attained. A lot of this manga’s characters destroy themselves in pursuit of it, but its physique holds nothing for them. Solely embracing the longer term, the “eternity” promised by carrying your individual genes in addition to your tradition and historic legacy onto your youngsters, can guarantee your presence survives. And there’s little heat on this assurance; solely the understanding of humanity surviving in mixture, simply as any species would hope. “It’s too late!” Em Dee calls all the way down to Hinaku as her infants tumble into the magma, “you’ll have extra later!”
At instances Phoenix is kind of intimate in its articulation of human struggling, as within the story of Nagi and his surrogate father. At others, it takes an virtually dehumanizing, impersonal lengthy view, seeing the deaths of some human beings or perhaps a society as an inevitability of time’s passage, a actuality that may be mourned, however should be moved on from, should be contextualized within the general ahead march of the human race. I suppose dwelling by way of whole struggle will generally tend to do this; it turns into tougher to see particular person human lives as important when the world round you demonstrates how fragile they’re, and the way typically we’re compelled to hold on within the wake of unimaginable tragedy.
Thus we battle onward, forming what connections we are able to, typically being destroyed within the crucible of historical past, however striving ever for a higher connection, a future for ourselves and people we love. There isn’t any righteousness within the battles offered on this quantity, nor any noble inevitability in the middle of technological progress. Such issues are as fickle and amoral because the wind and rain, or the horrible roar of the phoenix’s mountain. All we are able to hope for is that our hardships supply classes we are able to hand on to our kids, that they could chart a neater course by way of this chaotic, ever-shifting world.
Standing on the slope of the phoenix’s lair, desperately urging his son to not fall into one other cycle of revenge, Saruta’s reflections on a wasted life appear the embodiment of this quantity’s true ethos. For thirty years he squandered his power in worship of a false idol, and now solely has “his personal stupidity” to point out for it. However even he is aware of he’s incorrect; for he has realized nicely the errors of his previous, and gained a son he treasures alongside the way in which. So what if our lives are temporary fragments in an incredible chain of mankind; should you can be taught out of your errors and discover family members to stroll alongside you, then your life has been a worthy one. “The phoenix is in all places,” he pleads with Nagi. “There are phoenixes in all places you look.” Nagi doesn’t hear him; his eyes are skilled on the summit, his ideas consumed with unreachable glory.
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