Customer Reviews

Ode To Kirihito

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Just finished the last 300 pages in a whirlwind last night. Completely staggering! This is among Tezuka's very best works (and certainly his crowning achievement available in English.)

All the familiar Tezuka themes are here, including well worn ones from Astroboy and Kimba, but here they are used to devestating effect along-side an infinitely more sophisticated Tezuka who can show us the full range of human emotions. I recognize that Tezuka (like Miyazaki after him) wanted to show us characters who are human, neither good nor bad, and it couldn't be done better here. The subtitle 'are you a beast?' could be applied to every character as we see them go through their transformations, even to society itself.

The biblical quotes and christian imagery are used masterfully, not as a religious instrument, but as a powerful illustrative device for the emotions and struggles of our heroes. Tezuka as usual finds the commonality between Christianity and Buddhism (not overtly); driving his characters to find their own humanity by first giving up that humanity. Ultimately, the characters only seem to rise from their own personal hells once they've given up those attachments to their former lives and begin to live for others.

Politically, the book couldn't be more timely. Sides constantly shift as goverments backstab 'less fortunate' countries in the name of profit, while individuals duke it out at a corporate level on their own personal ego trips. Parents sell out their own children to wager on rising corporate kings. This sort of sophistication is well past the Tezuka of the 50's and 60's, placing at or beyond the high water-mark reached by Alan Moore's 'From Hell' (maybe not your personal favorite, but a superbly dense, sophisticated comic, way out in front of the pack.)

Ultimately however, Tezuka shows he is, above all other things, a great story teller. The characters are compelling and pull you along on their harrowing trip through dissolution, hell and rediscovery, and when that ending comes (probably not without a few shed tears), we have precisely the kind of ending you would expect from any great novel: highly satisfying with a sense of personal granduer.

This is a triumph for Vertical, and if there was a way to induce everyone who reads comics to read Ode to Kirihito, Tezuka would win his crown in the US overnight. It has everything to succeed, short of the mechanism to put it in the hands of every reader.

This is a serious graphic novel with a capitol 'S'. It weighs in at over eight hundred pages, and its dark narrative features multiple murders, rapes and infant death. Still, it's a brisk, compelling tale that underscores the noble, tender facets of humanity as often as its bestial ones.

If the story itself isn't to your liking, it's worth reading for Tezuka's incredible technique alone; with strong draughtsmanship, twisting layouts, and stark, abstract images to bring its emotions to life.

Ode To Kirihito is one of those stories that fills you with inspiration and hope. Tezuka doesn't hold any hands or make the world more gentle then it needs to be: the picture he paints is a very bleak one, filled with racism, elitism, selfishness and greed. And yet, we as humans can still somehow overcome all this.

This is an excellent manga, and I highly recommend to anybody who enjoys a great story.

If this were a film, it would surely be a mixture of art-house in moments and Cecil B DeMille in others -- with intimate character development but spanning Japan, China and the Middle East. It's thriller, love story, medical drama, spiritual quest, adventure and crime story with an eu de scifi wafting over the whole concotion. Typical Tezuka drawing style, which I find clear and compelling but others may have their own opinions.

This is my 3rd Manga ever and I was simply blown away. I ordered this book along with Osamu's other Buddha titles. I had no intention of reading it at first glance because I had other more coveted titles, anyway I just took a while to browse it and I couldn't put it down for next 4 and half hrs till I finished it. Its hands down one of the most engrossing book. Osamu is simply brilliant and is a master story teller weaving all human emotions in this superbly crafted book. His brillance lies in developing each character and handling it in such a way that left you gasping and wonder how keen an observer Osamu was.

Kirihito

Gentle dog-faced doctor,
You wander such a difficult world.
Your self-importance, your violence,
emptied out by suffering,
You are more you now
Than before you had a dog's face.

This was the first "comic book" I had read since 1940. I read it in one sitting.

This is an amazing story and one that clearly no American would ever do. And I am referring to more then simply setting it in Japan. The blending of genres is something that Americans get touchy about, Americans like genres that are clear cut and a book that is part medical drama/part interntional adventure/part love story would put a lot of them off.

I read this all at once this morning and want to read it again.

The story picks up pretty quickly and stays charged throughout the whole time. It's about a medical doctor who goes to a small village to research a mysterious disease and comes upon a very shocking discovery. The book description can give you a good story summary.

Throughout the story, you meet an interesting variety of characters. They range from different nationalities, ages, and sexes. Some of them have similar background but act very differently. Some of them act in ways not many comics i've read really portray. It's one of the things that make this story so damn interesting and engaging.

This story has a strong backbone around perceptions between animals and humans and what it means to be one or the other. The disease in the story turns people into animals and start to develop habits that seem primitive and "animalistic to people, but you can see how "animalistic" and primitive characters who don't have the disease act for a variety of reasons. You can also find the strength people can gain through hardship, how people can be changed for better or worse, and also the different ways some of the characters get screwed over(or are screwed over) that can be very sad at times. Tezuka's main strength and message is this, and if you read his other serious stories, you can see different aspects of how he portrays humanity in his other works which are highly recommended.

This story is a suspense/action story that doesn't have long periods of introspection for the characters as it barrels on and intersects through a large variety of serious issues ( racism, sexual deviancy, mental disease, vanity, and more); more than i've seen in a lot of his works(admitedly, sometimes vaguely) and in many comics. The author never sounds like he's preaching or gives a boring report on the subject; it's very concise, straightforward and bold. It intertwines perfectly with the story and gives it a new levels of interest and thought. I was really suprised by the twists the story took and the new things that were introduced along with them that added depth to the story.

The art alone in this book is worth a look through. He tries out many different comic techniques inspired by the way he sees the story in his mind, some of hit and miss, but always make you experience the comic differently than if it followed a generic style all the way through. His main artistic talent is the economy he uses in rendering his characters, and how different the characters look from one another.

This is a story that can be read quickly, though its something you might want to read closer. It doesn't have a lot of elements and cliches popular to most popular mainstream manga here. It's a damn good comic on its own, and if you feel reluctant, read it a little. If you want to read a good story, you should definately give it a shot. It's one of the best comics i've read.

Osamu Tezuka, Ode to Kirihito (Vertical, 2006)

Every once in a while I come across a graphic novel that just makes my jaw drop--Bone, Black Hole, and now Ode to Kirihito. This monstrous (832 pp.) graphic novel is not only absorbing enough that you won't want to put it down, but has as much character development, plot, and action as any print novel, and a great deal more than most. Ode to Kirihito may be Tezuka's magnum opus--and given that Tezuka is considered the godfather of manga in Japan, that's saying something.

Osanai Kirihito is a young doctor who has more scruples than his boss. This makes him a liability, so when the boss finds a way to both study a new disease and get Kirihito out of the way, he jumps at the chance, sending Kirihito to the village where the disease seems to have originated, thus almost guaranteeing he'll contract it. The disease essentially turns humans into animals. Soon enough, of course, Kirihito starts looking like a dog, and thus his travails begin. Meanwhile, Kirihito's old colleague, always more tractable, discovers that the boss' hypothesis on the disease, which Kirihito was supposed to reinforce, may not be entirely accurate, and so he heads off to Africa to gather more evidence. This throws him into a quandary; should he keep kowtowing to the boss in order to advance, or do what Kirihito would have done, and stand up to him?

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There's a great deal going on here, with many subplots, a raft of well-developed characters, and actions and reactions that feel completely realistic. Tezuka has created a wonderfully detailed world here, and the truly amazing thing about Ode to Kirihito is that, like all truly well-crafted graphic novels, it feels like we just don't spend enough time in that world. Eight hundred pages? Just a drop in the bucket. We could have followed Kirihito for thousands more.

Will definitely be on my ten best reads of the year list. An amazing book. **** ½

The best I've read from Tezuka so far! I found it so gripping, I just couldn't put it down!

I have my doubts as if people unfamiliar with comics or more specifically manga will be able to enjoy it as it's filled with typical quirks of this particular medium's vocabulary. Still, it is amazing to witness the depths of humanism that Tezuka is capable to inject into this oeuvre.

To anyone who truly enjoys comics (in all its international varieties) this is a must-read.