The only other novelty dust covers that come to mind are those of David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp and Brian Lee O’Malley’s Seconds. Evidently, Ode to Kirihito, though a paperback, included a dust jacket that concealed half the cover, allowing the reader to slide it back and forth to see Kirihito before or after his transformation. Credit your translators, people! They’re essential! The later English printings divide the book into two volumes, a sensible enough decision, given that this nearly one-thousand-page first edition can be a bit ungainly to hold. In this case, I read the 2006 printing from Vertical, translated by Camellia Nieh. It is not an especially famous or representative work (and is awful). Ode to Kirihito happens to be the most recent of Tezuka’s books I have read, of course in English translation. The rejected medical career might be salient, given the subject of this post. For his rejection of a safer medical career in favor of his artistic passion, his obsessive dedication to productivity, and his perhaps unparalleled output of cartoons, he is a personal hero of mine. The venerable Tezuka-sensei is like Mark Twain in one way, at least: he needs no introduction. Tezuka Osamu (1928–1989) is like Mark Twain, not in that his writing is like Mark Twain’s, but in that he is a writer whom I like even though, if asked, I could not point to any story of his I can honestly say I like. (Oct.Content warning for sexual violence. While Kirihito struggles with himself and other vividly drawn characters, the operatic plot swirls from one passionate scene to the next, reinforced by Tezuka's apparently simple but strikingly expressive line work. Fleeing through episodes of brutal exploitation, he tries to find a place where he can function as a human being he winds up as a combination of Jesus Christ and the Count of Monte Cristo. He also discovers that the medical establishment has betrayed him and now wants him to disappear permanently.

However, Kirihito soon finds out how violently society reacts to anyone who looks different. When the transformation hits him, too, he realizes that the cause is not what he was told and that the condition can be controlled. Osanai Kirihito, believes he's been assigned to study people suffering from a new, fatal disease that degrades them into doglike beasts. KirihitoĬombines medical melodrama and anguished debates about guilt and redemption. His works deal with the most profound questions of human existence. Tezuka earned the nickname 'godfather of manga' not just by the length and prolificacy of his career but by the moral commitment he brought to such projects as the award-winning Buddha

Osamu tezuka kirihito