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The story
A thread on 5ch’s “Nandemo Jikkyo G” board sprang up to swap trivia about manga legend Osamu Tezuka. Tezuka reportedly held himself to three absolute rules: never mock war victims, specific professions, or specific ethnic groups. Building on that, posters piled on tidbits — how the departure jingle at Takadanobaba Station comes from “Astro Boy,” the backstory behind Black Jack’s unlicensed medical practice, and Tezuka’s friendship with Takashi Yanase. Opinions split along generational lines too: some said “Black Jack is about the only one still fun to read today,” while others countered that his works have long been staples of school library shelves.
What people said
· Never draw content that mocks victims of war or natural disasters.
· Manga that discriminates against a specific profession is also an absolute no.
· Manga that ridicules a specific ethnic group is also an absolute no.
Simply put: "Always respect basic human rights, no exceptions."
I mean, he still gave Black native characters weird broken speech patterns in his work, so it's not like Tezuka was some progressive humanist ahead of his time.
Basic principles for manga artists
Source: "How to Draw Manga" by Osamu Tezuka.
Well, there aren't many manga artists who were also great people character-wise…
Feels like most of them had strong quirks (eccentric personalities).
Takashi Yanase might be the one who was actually a saint, though.
Same, I never found anything besides Black Jack all that fun either…
Honestly I think Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball) and Takashi Yanase (Anpanman) are way bigger household names these days.
By the way, he (Tezuka) was also a regular at Higashiyama Onsen there.
JR Aizuwakamatsu Station
Aizu Higashiyama Onsen
Fun fact: the departure jingle at JR Takadanobaba Station (Yamanote Line) in Shinjuku, Tokyo is the theme from "Astro Boy."
That's because Tezuka's own studio, Tezuka Productions, was located in Takadanobaba.
· Black Jack (Kuroo Hazama)
A brilliant surgeon, but technically an outlaw since he holds no medical license.
That said, he did receive a full medical education, graduating from the medical school of a private university out in the countryside.
By the way, the university Black Jack attended is modeled on Kawasaki Medical School, a private medical university in Okayama Prefecture.
Black Jack (Kuroo Hazama) is known as a genius surgeon, but psychiatry is actually his one weak spot.
You could call it his only weakness.
And it's not just surgery, either — he's also deeply knowledgeable in internal medicine, ophthalmology, pharmacology, and veterinary medicine.
Fun fact: he was actually good friends with Takashi Yanase (creator of Anpanman).
Yanase was the older of the two (born first),
and yet Tezuka was the one who died first…😢
By the way, Yanase is from Kochi Prefecture! (Same as Ryoma Sakamoto, former PM Osachi Hamaguchi, and Ryoko Hirosue.)
Besides Anpanman, he also created a boy cat character called "Nyander Kamen."
When he was young, Yanase actually worked at the Mitsukoshi department store in Nihonbashi.
He's also the one who designed the logo on Mitsukoshi's wrapping paper.
Takashi Yanase was actually an elite graduate of Chiba University's Faculty of Engineering.
He graduated from Tokyo Kogei School, the predecessor of Chiba University's engineering faculty.
*Pictured: an Anpanman-related book sold at Chiba University's co-op store.
Rabbit girl "Mabel"
Rabbit girl "Pacifica"
Rabbit girl "Wendy"
Hey, Philosophy News (a popular 5ch roundup/aggregator blog)!
Put this thread together in a summary post!
Boccherini
An Italian mafia boss who appears in "Black Jack."
After his grandson dies of severe heart disease, he shoots the son of the Japan Medical Association's chairman in revenge.
By the way, he'd tried to get Black Jack to operate on his grandson, but Black Jack had been arrested through the Medical Association chairman's influence, so the surgery never happened.
That's why Boccherini's grandson ended up dying.
Yeah, I think it's genuinely hard to appreciate what's great about Tezuka when you're comparing him to stuff like Dragon Ball…
I couldn't get into anything besides Black Jack either…
Afterward, the Medical Association chairman had a medical license made for Black Jack so he could formally ask him to operate on his son — but Black Jack refused anyway.
That made the chairman break down crying.
Tezuka was heavily influenced by Disney and American cartoons to begin with, so he was skilled at mixing gags (satire) into even the most tragic stories.
Even Black Jack was packed with gags, played as "just a manga, not real medicine."
That said, he still never once made light of war victims — no exceptions.
(He didn't just hold himself to that line; he strictly enforced it on other manga artists too.)
I don't think Tezuka's making the reading list of a middle schooler who just started getting into manga.
That's more of an old-man-who-never-stopped-reading-manga thing.
My elementary school library had Tezuka on the shelves, and it was popular.
Nah, you hear a lot that Tezuka's and Fujiko Fujio's works are basically the only manga you're allowed to check out of a school library, so plenty of kids do end up reading the classics.
He just loved working no matter what, so a lot of his stuff got dismissed as flops back in the day — which means some of it might actually land better if you read it now.
Well, nobody's ever going to top his sheer output anyway.
Apparently at his peak he was running 11 serializations at once.
Whether Tezuka's work is fun depends on the reader (a lot of it's pretty tough going for casual readers, at least), but even a novice can tell he's not a bad artist.
If I had to pick one Tezuka work for beginners, I'd say "Marvelous Melmo."
Well, he was famously bad at sports himself, and he hated the strict senior-junior hierarchy of athletic-club culture too.
It's not just sports — his action scenes in general were consistently weak, or more like understated, and the battle-manga grammar that's still mainstream today traces back to gekiga, not Tezuka.
I think that's where Disney's influence on him really shows.
Even early Disney had amazing animation, but the action scenes always felt like they lacked real punch too.
He was basically what we'd call a "kemono" (furry) enthusiast today.
"W3" features a rabbit girl character named Captain Bokko.
Shigeru Mizuki and Takashi Yanase took care of their health and lived long lives.
Tezuka and Shotaro Ishinomori, on the other hand, neglected their health and died young.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Osamu Tezuka died in 1989 at age 60. The three principles discussed in the thread — never mocking war victims, specific professions, or specific ethnic groups — are known from sources such as his book “How to Draw Manga.” That said, as post #33 points out regarding character depictions in his early work, it’s worth noting that Tezuka’s works have repeatedly drawn industry discussion over revisions made to their depictions in later reprints — there was a gap between the stated principles and how individual works actually portrayed things. Opinions in the thread split over whether his work is “still fun to read today,” with some saying nothing but Black Jack holds up and others countering that his books have long endured as staples on school library shelves for children. The thread ranged well beyond a simple highlight reel of his famous works too, touching on trivia like the departure jingle at Takadanobaba Station, his friendship with Takashi Yanase, and the differing attitudes toward health behind the early deaths of Tezuka and Shotaro Ishinomori.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “[Manga Artist] What I Know About Osamu Tezuka (Astro Boy, Black Jack, Phoenix, etc.).”
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