>Tezuka dedicated an entire chapter in the finalized Mighty Atom tankobons to say that the period where his new editor forced him to make Atom more serious was the worst period in his entire career, nearly killed the brand and was just a travesty in general. He then goes on to call said editor a fucking coward, a hack, a fraud, and an outright leech of a human being.
Was Tezuka right? Was Astro boy too serious?
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Idk, but it's not like Tezuka can't do serious well. His other titles showed he absolutely could. It's interesting though that for a part he hated working on, the fans still liked it.
Plutobros...
Astro boy is about a robot boy in a speedo who shoots lasers out of his ass. It does not need to be serious.
This. Japs only ever play things straight.
I double checked my phys Black Jack volumes just in case and it's not there. I remember it being presented alongside Hot Dog Corps and Plant Girl, but Archive.org's scans of the 2013 release lack it. Might have been in an omni and I'm mistaken. I'll go track it down.
Bump
Popularity doesn't equal quality.
Found it, it's the foreward to the volume with Blue King.
He specifically was talking about retards like user who are intentionally missing the point that there's a difference between "Self-Serious" and "Taking The Cartoon Seriously." He has a whole comic in a prior volume about how he sees Atom like Popeye, where it can deal with mature subjects because it's abstract and funny and silly, so it isn't as harsh as media aimed at older audiences.
The stories he's talking about deal with bigger moral gray zones and take themselves far more "seriously" than regular Astro Boy stories.
He posits it as "Making Atom the bad guy," but when you read the stories it's more that they get in too deep on real world drama and moral ambiguity and being extremely self-serious. You know, the shit Ken was doing, like that one user mentioned
Just to make it even clearer, Astro is not culpable for any deaths in the Blue King/Blue Bon storyline. He just does the kinds of ham-handed shit Knuckles does in Ken's stories. Joining the baddies because of "complex circumstances" that aren't well thought out, going out of control after being tampered with by scientists, etc. It isn't bad because of the basic ideas, but because it's trying too hard to be dramatic and topical in an inelegant way that doesn't fit the series. The same ideas can be handled without betraying Atom as a franchise and even were in later adaptations.
But instead you get tons of shitty melodrama and fucking Robot Concentration Camps (yes, really) that are just as ridiculous as the dingos being alternating Jew/Nazi analogues in Ken's stories.
Tezuka's worst work is still a solid 8.
>read Kirihito Sanka recently
>that part where the main character is put into a cage with a female dog in heat that starts humping him
Princess Knight is worse than an 8.
Ohhh wait I have to read it from left to right
>Princess Knight is worse than an 8.
I assume you got filtered by the gender stuff, or you didn't actually read it and only read the synopsis or watched a video about it.
No, I read it. I think the gender stuff was poorly done, maybe because of the shear simplicity and duality of it. I guess it fits with the fairy tale aspect but I found myself rolling my eyes at it most of the time. It also seemed to meander quite a bit after a while. Which is weird for such a short manga. Maybe I read it too fast though. I'll probably read it again at some point.
That is some very interesting geography
Tezuka is always right.
I love how Jack Black is a wizard doctor who likes to fuck with his retard patients or their family/friends/town before fixing the issue like a folklore god.
The only guy on his level was the Euthanasiabro who after watching too much death on the battlefield, decided to go and grant death to those who wish for ti.
I can only speak as a person born after the peak of the manga's relevance. For me the chapters of softer drama/action/adventure sat just fine next to the chapters of robots fighting for rights or robots in camps or lessons about the tragedy of misunderstanding/innate failure between certain cultures to get along, mostly because of the consistent artstyle and the blending of tone tying everything together - in the 'softer' chapters there are still preventable/tragic deaths, in the 'more serious' chapters there are still roots of optimism and how things can go differently.
For my money the only arc that really didn't belong in Astro Boy was the one where he time-travelled. Having to reconcile the Astro we know is a replica while the original stopped functioning and effectively died in a field halfway across the globe, for me that undermines the whole series and its moments of aspiration and optimism.
Admittedly I started my Astro experience playing the GBA game and then diving into the manga and crossover media afterward. Omega Factor's ending can also only exist after the manga's creation, such is its nature. But it feels like the character's long fought-for, long-deserved last hurrah.
>I love how Jack Black is a wizard doctor who likes to fuck with his retard patients or their family/friends/town before fixing the issue like a folklore god.
Black Jack's trademark of asking for a [relative to the client] fortune up-front, as a secret test of character, left a strong impression on me.
The Black Jack chapter that sticks out the most in my mind is when a medicial official, who already tried to fuck the man over, finds his son's life in jeopardy and offers Jack a full no-questions-asked medical license, which he tears to shreds. The chapter ends on the official's begging for Jack's help. If you're a cynic you can assume Jack stays true to his word and the boy dies, but if you've read enough chapters you know exactly how the resolution plays out in your head. That's probably exactly why it was left open-ended.
My favorite chapters are the one with the Euthanasia Doc are those focused in Pinoko's how he see him as a Father/God for pulling the miracle of her existence, she is the one who most idolizes him but also the only one who tries to see his human side, it's a great dynamic.
BJ is one of the most based characters I have ever seen. I like how he lives true to himself but also plays on his reputation of being somewhat of an enigma.
There's some manga with the same kind of storytelling/charachter?
i saw people complain that the tone of phoenix for example is too silly, like because he'll have a mass murder in one page and the next page there'll be slapstick gags
I see this about a good bit of manga from time to time actually. I dont think its a problem myself. You can have serious or dark topics and make jokes along side it. I forgot but it was some other manga or anime that i recently got into a discussion with someone about for the same reason.
Tonal whiplash is a thing.
I liked the ao kishi episodes in the 63 adaptation (probably mostly because of tomino's direction), but the "moral dilemma" did feel a little forced.
This
Bump
Tonal whiplash is a meme. if you haven't been groomed to think its bad you never even notice it
Franken Fran.
Black Jack, if he was completely high on Progress® and functioned more like a Monkey's Paw for the greedy or stupid.
While also having a heart of gold and a genuine love for life.
Consistent tonality is better.
So what relation does an editor actually have?
Can't he just make it clear who the editor works for?
From the sounds of it the artist just didn't have a spine and the editor was trying to hit what was popular
it isn't. tonal swerbe turn good jokes into gut splitting jokes because they catch you off guard. the molecules of a joke are made from the element of surprise.
Editors have quite a bit of sway over a piece but how much depends on the publisher and the artist and their agreements. Its complicated. At the end of the day an editor is hired to supervise an author by the publisher and has quite a bit of power in general though.
its a meme for smoothbrains
also i realized the discussion was in the same thread as this and about the same topic with the same pic
Bump
I'd find it funny if ashita no joe was the reason of this student movement considering it inspired multiple student revolts in it's time of publication and astro boy still ran for three months of it's run
Tonal whiplash is definitely an issue sometimes. Treating something dead seriously, and then treating it as a joke right after, can just lead it to being hard to take the original thing seriously again, or it just takes you out of it. It’s not to say that small jokes thrown in are bad, but a huge flip flop usually is, unless a series is built from the ground up to allow for these tonal switches. It’s not black and white either way. I’ve seen the same series make jokes during a serious bit that landed well, and others that just made me ask ‘why?’
That’s retarded. It’s basic tastefulness to keep a proper tone. You don’t tell zany jokes at a funeral. You can have humor following dark stuff but it should somehow fit with the general sensibility of the work, otherwise it looks ridiculous.
you that type of guy that hates the frank grimes epsiode of the simpsons huh
Do you really think some manga could be "the reason" of the 60s student movement? It is connected, sure, but c'mon dude. Try reading about it a little.
>Do you really think some manga could be "the reason" of the 60s student movement?
Possibly
natalie.mu
>Ashita no Joe was serialized in Weekly Shonen Magazine (Kodansha) in 1967. In the program, the influence that "Ashita no Joe" had on the young people who put themselves into the student movement at that time,
maybe not in YOUR stick in the mud culture. Over here a funeral is a big party to celebrate the bereaved's life, including swapping funny anecdotes about them
Tezuka was right, battle shonen is trash
I bet he would have liked Yugioh though
>Burger article with english sources
Keep it moony, bub
That’s still a change in tone with reason. The whole thing about keeping the tone is that humor shouldn’t undermine the seriousness of a situation, it should be an aside, or complement it.
I see you're not only a complete ignorant, you're also an idiot. You have to understand Ashita no Joe was an expression born out of the 60s political climate, not the other way around.
based
I'm not the one who's afraid to post japanese sources in regards to a japanese subject, hmm?
Ashita no joe obviously inspired those protests as the japanese sources I posted demonstrated, that's something you're going to have to digest whether you like it or not. sport
Of course it inspired them, but it is not "THE" inspiration or cause, it simply played a part in a process that was happening with or without it.
I gave you an accessible source. Go pick up a history book if you don't like it. Bye
I gave you a source established in the protest's origin point, run away from the facts as much as you want, it always will catch up with you in the end
>Ashita no joe obviously inspired those protests as the japanese sources I posted demonstrated
You posted a news article about an episode of a documentary TV show, that's not demonstrative proof of anything.
>His editor left him in the dust like that?
Any other editors that crashed their writer’s manga with no survivors?
A documentary tv show in japan that discusses ashita no joe's influence on the student movement, yes
based
This is the batman vs superman debate but localized to one IP
But Tezuka understood that seriousness has a place, and this was not it.
>it has wacky things therefore it can't be serious
I fucking hate this logic
How can you put whacky and serious things together?
Have you not read a single fantasy novel?
False equivalence. Fantasy doesn't mean whacky.
That's a yes then.
You have to have a brain of a child to even think about engaging in fantasy. That's why most fantasy works are infested with manchildren as their fanbase.
No. Fantasy doesn't mean whacky. Fantasy can still be presented as serious and fit with a serious setting. Astro boy is a robot boy with guns in his butt. That doesn't lend itself to stories like the ones that Tezuka hated.