furtech | (no subject)

I guess one of the posthumous benefits of being famous and dying is that suddenly you're marketable again. Various Japanese publishers have been reprinting Osamu Tezuka's works, some in deluxe formats. One of those has been Tezuka's Phoenix (Hinotori) series. Considered to be his masterwork, I finf this series to be very uneven, storytelling-wise. Some stories left me cold while others I felt was some of his best work.

One of the gems in this collection occurs in volumes ten and eleven. I'm a bit confused as to exactly what is happening over the course of the two volumes, but the big plot seems to involve karma and re-incarnation and subtler cultural issues. The smaller stories under that umbrella are much easier to understand. Visually it will be easy to see why I like this series!

As you can see from these scenes from the two volumes, the story involves a footsoldier from Medieval Japan who after a large battle, is punished by the enemy commander by having a wolf's head grafted to his face. The story also has many creatures from Japanese folklore, including the Inari-foxes (kitsune). And then, about halfway through this, the story begins cutting between the medieval setting and a far futuristic setting. The medieval hero's re-incarnated soul is now that of a soldier in a facscist world where he ends up with a cybernetic wolf-shaped mask permanently attached to his head. There's a lot of Eastern philosophy here, set into motion by the Phoenix (who's all about karma and time).
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