kellyd's review
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
4.0
I had no idea how influential the creator of Astro Boy was to comics and anime. I also didn't realize he created Kimba the White Lion! Fascinating book about a prolific storyteller.
typewriterdeluxe's review
3.0
The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga is a large and beautiful book. It should be, because cataloging Osamu Tezuka's massive body of work along with biographical information, historical context, and art criticism in a single volume is an ambitious undertaking! The book package also includes a television featurette of the artist at work, which I watched and enjoyed.
Overall, I think that McCarthy makes great connections in the book, though there was one section of painful reading. It's a rebuttal page near the end titled "Negative Viewpoints," where McCarthy defends Tezuka against criticisms of what has been called dated, uninformed, or racist artistic representation of non-Japanese characters in his works. This section came off as excessively defensive and unwilling to admit that Tezuka may have been ahead of his time in some ways but typical for (or behind) the times in other ways, and that not all of his art has "aged well." If I were the editor I would have removed this section from the book and instead organized the text/images to point out these criticized representations throughout the chronology, allowing the reader to see for themselves and draw their own conclusions.
Overall, I think that McCarthy makes great connections in the book, though there was one section of painful reading. It's a rebuttal page near the end titled "Negative Viewpoints," where McCarthy defends Tezuka against criticisms of what has been called dated, uninformed, or racist artistic representation of non-Japanese characters in his works. This section came off as excessively defensive and unwilling to admit that Tezuka may have been ahead of his time in some ways but typical for (or behind) the times in other ways, and that not all of his art has "aged well." If I were the editor I would have removed this section from the book and instead organized the text/images to point out these criticized representations throughout the chronology, allowing the reader to see for themselves and draw their own conclusions.
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