Week 10 - Phoenix 1: Dawn by Osamu Tezuka (5 points)

       I did not expect this work to have visual similarities to American comics. There was a part where Tezuka attempted to poke fun at the Disney style by drawing wolves in a Disney-esque way and I found that strange since the entirety of the volume already seemed to mimic early Disney characters. Perhaps Manga and American cartoons inspired one another over time.

    For a book with such a Disney like style, I was surprised that there was so much death, violent death in particular.  I’ve seen current anime and manga that have less “mature” detailed styles that are violent, but I think I found Tezuka’s depiction of violence particularly jarring since it his art so resembles early black and white Disney films. And Disney never depicts such levels of violence. It comes down to a cultural difference, I guess.

    Something that rubbed me the wrong way was how a soldier brutally murders Nagi’s entire village and Nagi comes to forgive this soldier and see him as a father figure, justyifying the soldiers actions with, “You were just following orders.” Given that the first volume of Pheonix was published only 9 years after the end of WWII and the Nuremburg Trials, it almost feels like a retort. Many of the Nazi soldiers claimed that they committed atrocities just because they were told to do so, and I believe this. Regardless, someone who lost a family member to a Nazi would never come to see that Nazi as family. I may be reaching, but given the closeness to WWII I can’t help but feel that Tezuka is writing sympathies for the Nazi soldiers. I don’t like it. Even if that was not his intent, the moment so grossly pulled me out of the story because seeing your parent’s killer as a father is not a relatable scene.

    Overall though, I was surprised by how much the narrative pulled me in. The art was appealing and the story was grand.