Astro Boy 2009E. "Doc" Smithbyline‚ Oct. 23‚ 2009Astro Boy was a Japanese manga series created by the famed Osamu Tezuka, (1928-1989), revered in Japan as the "God of Manga." First published in 1952 and appearing as a television program first broadcast in Japan in 1963, Astro Boy was also the first Japanese TV series that embodied the aesthetic that later became known worldwide as "anime". Tezuka's story follows the adventures of a fictional robot and a collection of villains and other characters along the way. In August of 2007, I had the pleasure of seeing "Tezuka: The Marvel of Manga" at San Francisco's Asian Art Museum. It was the first time that anime took its rightful place in the world of Asian art as well as an exhibit that toured the globe. No one deserves the honor more than Tezuka. Now comes his creation's latest epic, "Astro Boy", a 3-D, computer generated film that would likely have made Tezuka smile. |