Week Two: Osamu Tezuka

AYAKO by Osamu Tezuka was an interesting read, as I picked it up with zero idea what the manga was about, and was pleasantly surprised. Seeing as this was my first exposure to Tezuka's work, I was intrigued and interested in checking out some of his other work. 

While AYAKO is not a nice, light-hearted manga, the way it was written and the underlying story beneath it had a lot to offer. Because it is a post-war manga, it offers a lot of insight on cultural and political shifts taking place in Japan at the time, and also paints all of the characters in a somewhat negative light while doing so. There is a lot of history sprinkled in between the overall story, giving the reader something to latch onto. Each character that was introduced had their own small backstory arc and varying intentions: this is made clear from how fast the story shifts from Jiro serving as an agent working with the United States, to revealing underlying family drama and issues. Ayako serves as both the most innocent and only innocent character in the story, and even then she was punished for being alive. 

The characters overall were a bit hard to follow. Whether this is from not living in a period of post-world war II or just not understanding the culture, this made the manga a little bit harder to read than most. AYAKO's story definitely has a lot of merit to it, regardless of its dark, distressing overall themes, but as a result it highlights feelings of that time period rather well.

Tezuka's other works were also pretty powerful and deep, and it is evident that his title as the "Father of Manga" is well deserved: His work definitely shaped the way manga and anime is today. He touched upon important political and cultural topics in order to get people to think about them further, and helped develop many of the genres prevalent today.