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Osamu Tezuka

Robot Cat to the Rescue

After a successful Kickstarter campaign, DMP Digital Manga will be releasing a translated version of Osamu Tezuka’s A-Tomcat this April. Tezuka, as if you didn’t know, was the creator of Kimba the White Lion — and many many other world-famous titles, including of course Astro-Boy. This one-shot black & white paperback is an off-shoot of the Astro-Boy Series. Try to follow this: ” Tsugio is a young Japanese boy who is very fond of reading the Astro-Boy manga series. One day he finds a stray kitten and persuades his family to keep it. But then, after an encounter with two aliens honeymooning on Earth (!),  suddenly the little cat not only looks like Astro-Boy, but has Astro-Boy’s Powers! Check out more at DMP’s order site.

image c. 2013 DMP Digital Manga

Unico comes to DVD

Unico is a well-known and well-loved anime and manga character created by the late great Osamu Tezuka in 1976. A baby unicorn with the magical ability to make people happy, he draws the wrath of jealous gods who think only they should have such powers. Tezuka was unsuccessful in turning his popular manga into a TV series, but Unico did find his way into a pair of feature films in the early 1980’s.  In The Fantastic Adventures of Unico (from 1981, directed by Toshio Hirata), the West Wind is charged with carrying Unico away to a far-off land when the gods banish him — but she takes pity on him and sets him free.  Now Unico and his friends are on the run, with the angry gods in hot pursuit! Then in 1883 came Unico in the Island of Magic (directed by Moribi Murano) where Unico and his friends join the fight against an evil wizard who plans to turn all living things into his zombie slaves. Both feature films (dubbed into English) were popular VHS tapes in the late 80’s but have long since gone out of print. Now comes the word that Discotek Media are releasing both Unico films on DVD this month, each with both the English and original Japanese soundtracks. You can find out more about all of this (including several Unico fan sites) by checking out Unico on Wikipedia.

image c. 2012 Tezuka Productions