Osamu TezukaIntroduction. This essay will analyse the animations done by Osamu Tezuka, looking at his influences and how he might have influenced how today's manga and anime looks like. It will show similarities in the early Disney's work and Osamu Tezuka's work and how they both might have influenced each other. The research is based upon the official website about Osamu Tezuka (http://tezukaosamu.net), Remake of Tezuka's Popular Story Turns Into Denial? a detailed article which compares Kimba the While Lion and The Lion King, The Anime Encyclopedia which give an insight for Tezuka's influence, The Osamu Tezuka Manga Museum: A Cultural Monument from a website about Osamu Tezuka himself and the museum about him. This essay will explain who Osamu Tezuka is, his influences and why he is an important character in Japanese manga and anime. Main Body. Osamu Tezuka, by his fans he is also often called the God of Manga. As a young boy he had an interest in bugs, which when he started to draw manga found a way of saying that bugs still take a part in the artist's life and influence. His pen name in Japanese is:

which have an ideogram for "insect" in his pen name. Tezuka's real name is spelled this way: Even through his pen name contains an insect, and the artist clearly did like bugs and other insects, they didn't find a way to be featured in many of his work. In the movie Kimba the White Lion or Jungle Emperor (Japanese title) there are insects shown throughout the movie but they are not in any case the main characters. Osamu Tezuka was mainly a mangaka (a person who draw manga) but he was also an animator, animated film writer, he also earned a license as a physician, but never really pursued it as a job. The artist was known as an experimental animator maker, when he was trying out how to draw animation for a wide audience, for example Cleopatra which was meant for adults, but because Tezuka's speciality were children animations, and the over all view on cartoons in America and Europe were children show, Cleopatra didn't have a great reviews. The main theme in all of his works was the preciousness of life, which is clearly visible for example in Kimba the White Lion. Osamu Tezuka builded his work with openness to the future, using the advantages of the technology avaliable, making the Japan's first animated series, which could be called anime (Astro

Boy) and first colour animation (Kimba the White Lion). Osamu Tezuka, God of Manga or Japanese Walt Disney thanks to him we know anime big eyes as they are today, he was drawing large eyes on his characters, somehow imitating Walt Disney to make the drawn characters show emotions more easily. Diary of Ma-chan is one of Tezuka's first officially published comics, which was published in Mainichi School Children's Newspaper in 1946. This was only the beginning, and later on after creating many comics, he created one, which got famous and known worldwide Astro Boy. First created in April 1952 and it run until March 1968. Then the anime was created out of manga, directed by Osamu Tezuka, and made by Mushi Productions, which was owned Illustration 1: Ma-chan by Osamu Tezuka himself, later on he changed the name to

Tezuka Productions. Originally Astro Boy was run from 1 January 1963 to 31 December 1966, making a total of 193 episodes. Osamu Tezuka is called God of Manga because he was a pioneer in creating the cinematic feeling in manga which we have today. Tezuka was using the layout of the pages to his advantage, breaking the images into small section and drawing the whole set when it was needed to create the desired effect. It is easy enough to see the Illustration 2: Astro Boy connections to modern manga, which have often the same layout, and is using the same principles of showing the main character in one of the first few sections. Tezuka's composition and arrangement becomes what is most sucessful in creating this illusion. In "New Treasure Island" Illustration 3: Cinematic page from Tezuka chose to illustrate a sequence that used to be Jungle emperror Leo represented by a page or two into an 180 page sequence. This was different from anything the manga world had ever seen before. The new post-war approach had begun a revolution. From close-ups and perspective pans to zooms, "it was almost as if the artist has simple pasted succesive frames from a film onto the page." (Fig.1)

This approach was useful when Tezuka was converting his manga into animated form. Because the comics vere created first the artist knew what worked the best and which approach in making the animation would be the best, leaving him more time to experiment with new techniques. In the cartoon Kimba, the White Lion Tezuka was able to create a couple of epic moments like the white lion standing proud on the rock, later on it became an iconic pose from the movie. The zoom ins and outs, rotations which were present in a manga form for the first time were also found in the animation. Today it is common to use those techniques, but in Osamu Tezuka's time it wasn't so common and he could be called a pioneer at using them in Japanese anime. There are many similarities between Osamu Tezuka's artwork and Walt Disney's, for example Astro Boy is very similar to Mickey Mouse in terms of character design.

Illustration 4: Astro Boy Illustration 5: Mickey Mouse The spikes on Astro Boy's head and ears of Mickey Mouse are always seen the same way no matter from which side you will look, they also both share the size ratio meaning that their heads are bigger in comparison to other parts of the body, which are simplified. The other common feature is that they both have minimal amount of clothes on them. This shows that Tezuka was inspired by Walt's Disney's artwork, and he even himself once said that he was inspired by Disney, mainly by the movie Bambi. However, Osamu Tezuka did keep his originality in all of his work, improving on his style, which helped create a well known style of manga and anime. Even through the artist started to draw large eyes by the influence of Disney, they are quite different from them. The main difference is the white blob on each of the eyes, meant to create the illusion of life in them. The shining effect is apparent in every modern Japanese animation. It doesn't end on Osamu Tezuka taking influence from Walt Disney, because it also did Illustration 6: Promotional art for The Lion King

work the other way around. Kimba the White Lion animation was created in 1965 and The Lion King by Disney was created in 1994. Apart from the similar names of the main characters, Kimba and Simba there are many scenes in the movies which are nearly the same. Even the promotional art from The Lion King features a white lion cub playing with a butterfly.

Illustration7:Comparison of Kimba the White Lion by Osamu Tezuka and The Lion King by Disney In the scenes above Disney used the same techniques to make the scene more epic, funny or sad is the same as the ones as Tezuka worked on in his animation. For example in the top image the body is elongated by drawing the back legs further apart from the body and making the character look somewhere far away into the distance. In the middle pictures the eyes are larger from normal and the pupils are centred and in the last images Kimba and Simba are looking up, to make the begging puppy eyes, while their fathers appear in the sky. There is also some unexpected wind to move the clouds over.

Conclusion.

Apart from influencing how the Japanese manga and anime look like Osamu Tezuka could have been an influence for Japanese animation and Disney on how to do storytelling in animation. He was a great artist in pioneering the techniques and visual characteristics which are present in the modern anime and manga. Disney took a big part in creating Tezuka's style of drawing, however he did stay original and created many famous works like Astro Boy and Kimba, the White Lion. Today there are books on how to animate by Osamu Tezuka (Tezuka School of Animation), which are still on sale which prove his success as an animator.

Illustrations: Illustration 1: Ma-chan http://www.animeloyalty.com/?/Database/Series/5549/Diary-of-Ma-chan/ 21.04.2012 Illustration 2: Astro Boy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astro_Boy 21.04.2012 Illustration 3: Cinematic page from Jungle emperror Leo http://tezukasite.tripod.com/influence.html 22.04.2012 Illustration 4: Astro Boy http://www.freekidscoloringandcrafts.com/b207.htm 22.04.2012 Illustration 5: Mickey Mouse http://www.pophistorydig.com/?tag=mickey-mouse-history 22.04.2012 Illustration 6: Promotional art for The Lion King http://www.kimbawlion.com/rant2.htm 22.04.2012 Illustration 7:Comparison of Kimba the White Lion by Osamu Tezuka and The Lion King by Disney http://www.kimbawlion.com/rant2.htm 22.04.2012 Quotes: Fig. 1 Osamu Tezuka: Influencing Expressive Techniques in Contemporary Manga http://tezukasite.tripod.com/influence.html 22.04.2012 Bibliography: Official Osamu Tezuka website http://tezukaosamu.net/en/index.html 21.04.2012 Osamu Tezuka, the father of manga http://tezukasite.tripod.com/timeline.html 21.04.2012 Tezuka in English http://tezukainenglish.com/ 21.04.2012 Kimba the White Lion website http://www.kimbawlion.com/index.htm 21.04.2012 Anime New Network http://www.animenewsnetwork.co.uk/encyclopedia/people.php?id=883 21.04.2012 List of anime made by Osamu Tezuka http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Osamu_Tezuka_anime 21.04.2012