Short films by Osamu Tezuka

May 13, 2011 3:32 PM

10 short, experimental, animated films by Osamu Tezuka, godfather of anime: Jumping, Memory, Push, Broken Down Film, Mermaid, Drop, Story of a Street Corner, Genesis, Muramasa, Self Portrait. Tezuka is best known in the West for creating Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion and the mangas Buddha, Phoenix and Black Jack. Here is an interview where Tezuka talks about his shorter, experimental films.
posted by Kattullus (11 comments total)

Anyone else see C3PO and R2D2 in the Jumping video?
posted by The Hamms Bear at 4:07 PM on May 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

Is this really the only Osamu Tezuka FPP on Metafilter?
posted by The Hamms Bear at 4:15 PM on May 13, 2011

My hand to god I was planning on doing this exact same post! Mediocre minds think alike ;)

see also:

The Amazing 3

Fantastic Adventures of Unico

Bender Book
posted by puny human at 4:24 PM on May 13, 2011 [2 favorites]

Heh heh heh... you've pipped me to the post a few times, puny human.

It is fun to end sentences with "puny human," puny human.
posted by Kattullus at 4:29 PM on May 13, 2011 [2 favorites]

Tezuka is awesome.

One thing that newcomers to his work are surprised at, sometimes, is that he tended to approach his characters as like actors who could be signed onto projects and play different roles. This is sometimes called Tezuka's "Star System." He had dozens of such characters. Thus, you often see the same character design in many different, sometimes wildly different, works. More info here. One could consider the different versions of each character as showing different sides of a person, or of the same kind of person in different situations, or almost like a reincarnation of them.

One of the most interesting such characters is Rock Holmes, who appears in many Tezuka productions, who started out as a boy detective and went on to become disturbingly violent in later roles.
posted by JHarris at 4:42 PM on May 13, 2011

Huh, that's interesting. I didn't know that Tezuka was the originator of that practice. I grew up watching the great French Once Upon a Time... animated series so I'm used to that. The series is heavily influenced by Tezuka, so I wouldn't be surprised if they got that idea from his work.
posted by Kattullus at 4:46 PM on May 13, 2011

O man, are they all as good as Jumping? I haven't seen anything by Tezuka before, but definitely will now. Short films are my favorite way of learning about a director/animator/filmmaker.
posted by anotherbrick at 5:45 PM on May 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

Muramasa knows how to deal with the straw man
posted by Redhush at 9:35 PM on May 13, 2011 [2 favorites]

I first saw "Broken Down Film" years ago, long before I'd heard of Tezuka. Even after I'd heard of him, it was only in the context of his comics Kimba the White Lion, Astro Boy, and so on; when finding out he had done both (along with many other things), it was hard to believe. The man was incredibly prolific, with an extraordinary range of interests and skills.

Thanks for the post; I hadn't seen some of these movies for decades and it'll be a treat to revisit them.
posted by ardgedee at 7:34 PM on May 14, 2011

These are fantastic. Thanks!
posted by ropeladder at 5:24 PM on May 15, 2011

I first saw these -- some, at least -- in 2005 in the Tezuka Museum in his hometown of Takarazuka, near Kyoto. I think they have all his short films there to watch on demand. At the time, I wouldn't even have imagined that they'll one day be so easily available on YouTube, and I remember how painful it was that I had only a couple of hours. Having them on the internet is wonderful, but what a pity the picture quality is so poor.

The ones that made a particular impression on me were Jumping, Broken-down Film, Mermaid and Story of a Street Corner. I didn't have time to watch all of Street Corner, and for years I doubted whether I ever would. Thanks Kattullus!
posted by snarfois at 8:35 AM on May 16, 2011 [1 favorite]