Anime

Much like talking about Tezuka's manga, trying to list all of the anime he worked on, was involved with, or was produced based on his works requires a lot more space than I have here. The best place to get comprehensive information is at Tezuka Osamu World, the homepage for Tezuka Productions Company.

Here, I'll just talk about what's available in the US market. Sadly, that's not much. Because much of Tezuka's animation is either older or experimental (or both), I guess companies don't think it would interest the modern Western anime fan. Personally, I'd like to see it. I didn't get to see either Tetsuwan Atom or Jungle Taitei when they aired on telly (I wasn't born yet), so DVD is my only hope. And I'm still hoping.

Tetsuwan Atom (Astro Boy): There are two television series based on Tetsuwan Atom - one from the 60's, one from the 80's. The 60's series showed on US telly as Astro Boy back in the day, and the 80's show made it to US cable in '96. Madman Entertainment has released the 80's series on DVD. So we can just wait and hope for the 60's series someday ...

Jungle Taitei (Kimba the White Lion): Jungle Taitei showed on US telly back in the day as Kimba the White Lion. The sequel, New Jungle Emperor Leo, which Tezuka made in 1966, didn't see US telly until 1984. Kimba has faired a little better on DVD then Astro Boy - there are two volumes available on DVD, as well as a 4 disc boxed set, but none of it has been restored and the picture quality is a bit grainy. The other bad news is that they made the DVDs from the versions shown on US telly, so the episodes have been edited (sanitized for your enjoyment! and made so the unfolding story becomes an episodic story) and you can't watch them in Japanese.

The films based on Tezuka's Unico manga (Fantastic Adventures of Unico, Unico in the Island of Magic, Unico: Cloud and White Feather, and Unico: Saving Our Fragile Earth ) were available on VHS in the late 70's/early 80's, but are no longer in print over here and never made it to DVD due to licensing issues. :(

...~...

The following anime are based on Tezuka's work, but he had nothing to do with their actual production.

Black Jack: A nine-volume OAV set was produced in 1996. These are based on Tezuka's Black Jack manga, and were released in the US on DVD in 2005 from Central Park Media.

Jungle Emperor Leo: Madhouse produced this film in 1997 that was based on the manga Jungle Taitei. It is available on DVD fairly easily, but don't expect it to be like Kimba, because this is a lot darker.

Metropolis: Rintaro and Otomo Katsuhiro's adaptation of Tezuka's manga Metropolis. This is a visually stunning film with substantial plot, characters and theme. It's also easily available on DVD and you should really see it.

Tetsuwan Atom (Astro Boy): Sony produced a third Tetsuwan Atom series in 2003, which might be more familiar to modern anime fans since it aired most recently. The DVD for this series was released in late March of 2005.