{"id":17627,"date":"2019-11-28T12:29:30","date_gmt":"2019-11-28T12:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/?p=17627"},"modified":"2019-11-28T12:30:31","modified_gmt":"2019-11-28T12:30:31","slug":"osamu-tezuka-thanks-for-the-manga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/en\/osamu-tezuka-thanks-for-the-manga\/","title":{"rendered":"Osamu Tezuka: thanks for the manga!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\nNacho Granero\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Museu Nacional d\u2019Art de Catalunya is celebrating its good harmony with the world of comic strips with the new exhibition devoted to the great Osamu Tezuka<\/a>. Opened during the latest edition of the Manga Convention in Barcelona, the show offers an incredible look at the original pages that came from the pencils of the Japanese maestro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Osamu<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\nOsamu Tezuka \u00a9 Tezuka Productions\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Osamu Tezuka<\/a>\u2019s output is inevitably associated with contemporary Japan. When he began drawing professionally in 1951, Japan was occupied by the American army, keeping the peace. American culture, therefore, very powerfully influenced a Japan undergoing reconstruction after the devastation of the Second World War. Osamu Tezuka was fascinated by the films of Walt Disney, admitting that he had seen some of them more than 50 times. American comics also arrived in Japan, among them the adventures of Superman, a superhero the young Tezuka also admired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The renewal of manga by Osamu Tezuka<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

With all this baggage, Osamu Tezuka renewed a genre: manga. Although manga already existed in Japan, it was more closely associated with illustration than with telling stories with drawings. Comic strips also existed in Japan, but Tezuka added to them a new way for telling the story, with effects taken directly from the language of film. Scenes, zooms, movement between scenes; these are elements that Osamu Tezuka included in his comic strips to fascinate us with the stories. And he gave the figures large shiny eyes, associated with the companies of actresses at Takarazuka Grand Theatre<\/a>, of which his mother was a great fan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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With this\naesthetic, Tezuka laid the foundations for the manga and anime that we know\ntoday. His work began to be venerated by the generation coming after his,\nmillions of Japanese who read his stories with delight. Artists began to base\ntheir work on the aesthetic and thematic teachings of Osamu Tezuka, as we shall\nsee after looking back at the maestro\u2019s work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The creations of Osamu Tezuka, the god of manga<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The exhibition at\nthe Museu Nacional displays the work of Osamu Tezuka in chronological order. He\nstarted out as a great author of children\u2019s short stories, drawing the comic\nstrips that he would have liked to read as a boy and a teenager, when he was\ncreating works to feed his own imagination. His first great work, known\ninternationally as Kimba the White Lion<\/em>\n(1950-1954), presents a story that, ironically, Disney shamelessly plagiarized\nin the 1990s: the influence of Tekuza materialized definitively in the studio\nthat contributed so much to his work, closing a circle of creativity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Kimba, the White Lion<\/em>, Osamu Tezuka \u00a9 Tezuka Productions <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Kimba, the White Lion<\/em>, Osamu Tezuka \u00a9 Tezuka Productions. Photo: Marta M\u00e9rida<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Japan became an\neconomic powerhouse from the 1950s onwards. On the one hand, the development of\npublishing brought with it a concentration of draughtsmen in Tokyo, with a new\ngeneration of artists. On the other, local industry experienced extraordinary\ngrowth, with robotics playing a leading role. In this context, Astro Boy<\/em> (1952-1968) was born, a\nboy-robot who became a true mass phenomenon. It was a work of science fiction\nin which the struggle between good and evil was mixed with humour and small doses\nof drama. In 1963 Astro Boy<\/em> was\nturned into a cartoon, the first one in Japan, and later in the rest of the\nworld. <\/p>\n\n\n\n