Tezuka High School

Rock's manga debut as a young boy detective with shiny dark hair named after Japanese pronunciation of Sherlock Holmes.

In the distant year 2003, Japan is a technological utopia, and robots are everywhere. One such robot, Tobio, was built by the brilliant Dr. Tenma to replace his dead son. But when it soon becomes apparent that Tobio is an imperfect copy of his departed child, Dr. Tenma throws him out. He is rescued from the scrap heap by the benevolent Professor Ochanomizu, a crusader for robot civil rights. Now the little robot, renamed Astro Boy, is given a mission to defend Japan and the world from all manner of sinister threats. Using his seven super-abilities and 100,000 horsepower worth of strength to battle evil, Astro hopes to set an example to the world of the good which all robots are capable of. Note: Chapter count only includes chapters from the original 1952 to 1968 serial

Taking place in a medieval fairy-tale setting, Princess Knight is the story of young Princess Sapphire who must pretend to be a male prince so she can inherit the throne (as women are not eligible to do so). This deception begins as soon as she is born, as her father the King announces his baby is a boy instead of a girl. The reason for this is that the next-in-line to the throne, Duke Duralumon, is an evil man who would repress the people if he were to become king, and because of this the King will go to any length to prevent him from taking over. (Source: Wikipedia)

"All things are born and all things die. That is the law of heaven." According to legend, the Bird of Fire called the Phoenix is the eternal spirit of life, death and rebirth. She oversees the cycle of reincarnation and the rising and falling of civilizations and species. Those who can obtain her blood will be granted eternal life, while to others she can grant infinite wisdom, or eternal suffering. Throughout history, from the dawn of civilization to the extinction of the human race, those human souls touched by the Phoenix have hunted her over and over in multiple reincarnations, and their actions in one life determine or reflect the sins and sufferings of other lifetimes.(Source: AnimeNewsNetwork)Note: This is an incomplete series due to Tezuka's death.

A samurai lord has bartered away his newborn son's organs to forty-eight demons in exchange for dominance on the battlefield. Yet, the abandoned infant survives thanks to a medicine man who equips him with primitive prosthetics - lethal ones with which the wronged son will use to hunt down the multitude of demons to reclaim his body one piece at a time, before confronting his father. On his journeys the young hero encounters an orphan who claims to be the greatest thief in Japan. Like an unforgettable road movie, Dororo reaches deeper than its swashbuckling surface and offers a thoughtful allegory of becoming what one is, for nobody is born whole (Source: Kodansha USA)

In 1968, appears in the sky a mysterious ghost moon. Five hundred million years before, on the moon, the Moko Empire is threatened by the Gerdans, a terrible warlike nation. Prince Norman then starts the search for beings with supernatural powers to help him fight his enemies. Taku, a young Japanese boy of our time, is then chosen and teleported at the prince's era to integrate a special fighting units. While our young hero realizes its growing psychic powers, the moon is under alert and the destiny of an empire and maybe...much more are in the hands of the chosen ones!

The ocean holds many tales. Tales of mermaids, of underwater kingdoms, and of fantastical beasts lurking in the deep. Spurred by these tales, Kazuya sets out to find the truth, but what he finds is a baby?! Not just any baby, the baby Kazuya finds is Triton! The last of a once mighty and proud race of people from the sea. Triton seems human, but unusual and terrible events begin to happen with all those around him. Who is Triton, and why does he bring misfortune to everyone around him? (Source: DMP)

Melmo's mother dies in a traffic accident, leaving young Melmo and her younger brother Totoo. Anxious Melmo's mother in heaven asks God to prepare some magical candies, and hands them to Melmo. There are two kinds: Melmo can grow 10 years older to become any sort of adult she wishes by eating a blue candy. By eating a red one, she can become 10 years younger. Using these miracle candies, Melmo disguises herself as a nurse, schoolteacher, policewoman, and overcomes troubles together with her brother, Totoo.

Teenage delinquent Yaketpachi's has a spectral woman as the closest thing to a female influence in his life: Maria! The manifestation of the women Yaketpachi lacks in his life, Maria needs a body to become corporeal, but the only thing around is a sex doll, which is easily ravaged by a hard life and the target of rough pranks. Yaketpachi and Maria are joined at the soul, but ripped apart by an uncaring society. How much strain can Maria's plastic body take before it cracks beyond repair? Yaketpachi may want to move heaven and Earth to provide a life for Maria, but do teenagers truly know love? Osamu Tezuka brings the battle of the sexes to a paranormal comedy, where Yaketpachi and Maria explore their teenage years in High School, with all the trials and tribulations that come with it. There's the queen bee of the school to tussle with, a dating club that heavily skews towards one gender (and against Yaketpachi), and even rival spirits out to earn their own revenge against their accidental deaths! Yaketpachi's Maria continues to prove to be a love letter to young love, with all the faults and flaws that are inherent. Tezuka brings a healthy dose of real-world sexual education to the drama of a love that can never be between a man and his sex doll. (Source: DMP)

Osamu Tezuka’s vaunted storytelling genius, consummate skill at visual expression, and warm humanity blossom fully in his epic volumes on Siddhartha’s life and times. Tezuka evidences his profound grasp of the subject by contextualizing the Buddha’s ideas; the emphasis is on movement, action, emotion, and conflict as the prince Siddhartha runs away from home, travels across India, and questions Hindu practices such as ascetic self-mutilation and caste oppression. Rather than recommend resignation and impassivity, Tezuka’s Buddha predicates enlightenment upon recognizing the interconnectedness of life, having compassion for the suffering, and ordering one’s life sensibly. Philosophical segments are threaded into interpersonal situations with ground-breaking visual dynamism by an artist who makes sure never to lose his readers’ attention. (Source: Kodansha USA) Note: Won the Bungei Shunju Manga Award in 1975 and the Best U.S. Edition of International Material for the Eisner Award in 2004 and 2005.

Opening a few years after the end of World War II and covering almost a quarter-century, here is comics master Osamu Tezuka’s most direct and sustained critique of Japan’s fate in the aftermath of total defeat. Unusually devoid of cartoon premises yet shot through with dark voyeuristic humor, Ayako looms as a pinnacle of Naturalist literature in Japan with few peers even in prose, the striking heroine a potent emblem of things left unseen following the war. The year is 1949. Crushed by the Allied Powers, occupied by General MacArthur’s armies, Japan has been experiencing massive change. Agricultural reform is dissolving large estates and redistributing plots to tenant farmers—terrible news, if you’re landowners like the archconservative Tenge family. For patriarch Sakuemon, the chagrin of one of his sons coming home alive from a P.O.W. camp instead of having died for the Emperor is topped only by the revelation that another of his is consorting with “the reds.” What solace does he have but his youngest Ayako, apple of his eye, at once daughter and granddaughter? (Source: Kodansha USA)

Among adult readers in Japan Black Jack is Osamu Tezuka’s most popular achievement, and perhaps the most close to the creator’s heart, as Tezuka considered entering the medical field—majoring in medicine in college—before devoting his life to comics. Black Jack is a genius surgeon who never acquired his license due to his clashes with the medical establishment. He is hired out by anyone willing to pay his exorbitant rates and is perceived as a heartless rogue because of his enigmatic nature and antisocial manner. But as readers will soon discover, that is not the whole story. (Source: Kodansha USA) Note: Won the 1st Kodansha Manga Award in the Shounen category in 1977.

To learn about his roots, Sharaku must investigate the mysterious ruins that a long-lost civilization called the Three-Eyed Ones bequeathed to him. In his worldwide search, which takes both him and Chiyoko Wato to locations like Arizona, Easter Island, and Mexico, Sharaku deciphers ancient scriptures and uses gadgets he invents to help solve (or start) problems and mysteries. Sharaku is frequently bullied for his childishness, and as such the story is also about how he fights back when the x-shaped bandage that covers his third eye is removed. Behind the bandage is hidden Sharaku's malicious third eye, and the boy's hidden evil genius emerges when it can see. Sharaku's rivalries with teachers or students are occasionally developed into major plot points. Note: Winner of the 1st Kondansha Manga Awards (1977) in the shounen category.

Michio Yuki has it all: looks, intelligence, a pedigree as the scion of a famous Kabuki family, a promising career at a major bank, legions of female admirers. But underneath the sheen of perfection lurks a secret with the power to shake the world to its foundations. During a boyhood excursion to one of the southern archipelagos near Okinawa, Yuki barely survived exposure to a poison gas stored at a foreign military facility. The leakage annihilated all of the island’s inhabitants but was promptly covered up by the authorities, leaving Yuki as an unacknowledged witness—one whose sense of right and wrong, however, the potent nerve agent managed to obliterate. Now, fifteen years later, Yuki is a social climber of Balzacian proportions, infiltrating the worlds of finance and politics by day while brutally murdering children and women by night—perversely using his Kabuki-honed skills as a female impersonator to pass himself off as the women he’s killed. His drive, however, will not be satiated with a promotion here and a rape there. Michio Yuki has a far more ominous objective: obtaining MW, the ultimate weapon that spared his life but robbed him of all conscience. There are only two men with any hope of stopping him: one, a brilliant public prosecutor who struggles to build a case against the psychopath; the other, a tormented Catholic priest, Iwao Garai, who shares Yuki’s past—and frequently his bed. (Source: Vertical)

A little unicorn named Unico lives with his mistress Psyche, bringing her happiness and good fortune in return for her unconditional love. The goddess Venus, however, grows jealous of Psyche's legions of admirers and flings Unico across time and space! When he awakens, he's facing down mean buffalo in the American West, with no memory of Psyche or his past life. It's the first of many exciting adventures that will bring Unico face to face with high society in Imperial Russia, characters from fairy tales and Shakespeare, and even an automated factory intent on blotting out the sun. (Source: eManga)

After living in Transylvania for several years, "Earl Dracula" (as Osamu Tezuka's official website calls him in English) has moved to Japan. In the Nerima Ward of Tokyo, he and his daughter, Chocola, and faithful servant Igor have taken up residence in an old-Western style house. While Chocola attends Junior High School, Earl Dracula is desperate to drink the blood of beautiful virgin women; an appropriate meal for a vampire of his stature. However, each night that Earl Dracula goes out on the prowl he finds himself getting involved in some kind of disturbance which leads to him causing various trouble for the local residents. With nobody in Japan believing in vampires, his very presence causes trouble amongst the people in town. (Source: Wikipedia)

Rainbow Parakeet is a genius actor and a fantastic mimic, but also a thief. He can act out any role to the best of his abilities, while robbing the richest members of the audience during his performances. His methods are a mystery, even to the detectives charged with apprehending him: Police Inspector Senri and his daughter, Police Detective Mariko Senri.(Source: Wikipedia)

This is a fantasy story about a sword and the magic of a girl warrior, Emiya, in a fictitious world. A strong country, Guroman, attacks and overtakes the country of Kukurit, though the particulars of when and where this happens are not given. As a means of keeping the peace, the two countries exchange their third prince and princess, respectively. Prime Rose, the third princess of Guroman, is placed in the custody of a noble family of Kukurit under the name of Emiya. She grows up into a self-centered high school student. Although Emiya is favored by Prince Pirar of Guroman, she becomes a girl wanted by the authorities for her aid to the people of Kukurit reacting against the oppressive government. She is saved by the sword master Jimba, and flees to the wilderness. In the meantime, mysterious Tanbara Gai musters the forces of the people of Kukurit in an attempt to overturn Guroman's control. Emiya also decides to cooperate on the scheme. (Source: tezukaosamu.net)

A graveyard in contemporary Israel has an unlikely visitor. The elderly gentleman from Japan, a former news correspondent, lays a bouquet of flowers at the tomb of one Adolf Kamil. For he remembers the tale of three Adolfs: Kamil, a Jew who grew up in Kobe, Japan, the son of a baker; Kaufmann, only child of a German consul stationed at that port city and his Japanese wife; and the Fuhrer with whom the Far Eastern nation made common cause. Note: Won the 10th Kodansha Manga Award for general manga in 1986.

Although an attractive girl, Toroko is a terrible actress. Despite the fact that she messes up her lines, ignores her superiors, and generally causes mayhem, Touzai Television continues to use her in many of their shows. People begin to notice, and the tabloid reporter, Rokurou, intends to get to the bottom of this mystery. Little does he know that his investigation will turn up a strange relationship between the actress and a demon… or that he will soon be a part of that uneasy relationship himself. Osamu Tezuka, the God of Manga, depicts an usual and unprecedented drama about demons and the supernatural. You don’t want to miss this one! (Source: DMG) Note: Includes the three-part story Kibando (牙人).