My admiration for the work and influence of Osamu Tezuka-sensei has had no bounds since I first dove into his career some 20+ years ago. He created over 700 manga titles in his career and reinvented both manga and anime with a style that was often copied and hugely influential. There were many innovations he brought with him and it would be impossible to find a North American equivalent of him unless you bundled people like Chuck Jones, Will Eisner, Milton Caniff and Jack Kirby into a single entity. Often called the Godfather of Manga or God of Manga, he is revered around the world and his finger prints are on so much of the pop-culture that we just take for granted.

His art is incredibly rare. Most of it is held by the Osamu Tezuka Foundation and Museum in Japan. The pieces you see out there are usually scraps and panels he cut out or redrew. I have a number of those. My first page by him from Black Jack turned out to be a forgery. There are also some early pages by him out there and a few dozen on the market of his later work. It is all exceedingly rare. I have been after a full page for a long time and was often the under-bidder not willing to take that extra step when pages came up. Those losses all left wounds and when I saw this incredible offering come up, I made plans to take this one beyond my comfort level. Obviously my efforts were successful and the art is now here with me. I had the chance to see some 400+ originals by Tezuaka-sensei at Angouleme a few years ago and they never fail to impress in person and yet the amount of charm and vitality on these pages even took me with a bit of surprise. There are so many pages in this story I'd have been happy having as a singular example of his work. My initial plan was to buy the story and perhaps sell of 2-3 pages to cut my costs down on this purchase but now that I have the story here, there is no way I can split it up. The story as an entity is truly museum worthy.

This story is entitled Akebono-san and was published in 1959 in Ribon Shojo manga under the Soyokaze-san series which started in 1955. Although I love his later story telling and innovations, for me this is the peak period of his art from about '59 to '68. This story was given to fellow mangaka Katsumi Mashiko-sensei around the time it was published and remained with him or his estate until it was offered and now it is here with a very humbled Jeff-san.

At some point, I will likely post each page individually with more description but the 7 pages fits perfectly with the 6 additional image format CAF allows for. I have kept the scans pretty big so you can appreciate the detail and style in the art. I have plans to ask a family member for translation of each panel but with this story, the storytelling takes you through without the need for words. There may be some subtleties in motivation and relationships you won't pick up on but thre is no doubt on what happened. Check out some of Tezuka-sensei's use of dramatic perspective, layout and lighting to create dynamic energy, atmosphere and the presence of characters.

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