In the city of Ise, within the Mie Prefecture of Japan, stands the Ise Grand Shrine, a Shinto shrine dedicated to the sun goddess Amaterasu. It is said that the shrine complex was first established by the divine Yamatohime-no-mikoto, daughter of Emperor Suinin, who wandered for 20 years seeking a permanent location to worship the goddess Amaterasu. Finally, at the behest of her goddess, Yamatohime-no-mikoto founded a temple in Ise. Accounts differ on when the Ise grand shrine was built, and range between some 1,300 and 2000 years ago, but what is incontestable is the fact that every 20 years, the locals tear it down.

According to a Shinto belief in death, renewal and impermanence, the main buildings of the Ise shrine are rebuilt every 20 years. It is a process known as the Sengu, and it takes almost 8 years of ritualistic preparation for each rebuild, with four years required for timber preparation alone. That which was old, becomes new again, with each generation passing its techniques and traditions on to the next. So while the Ise shrine complex has stood there for hundreds of years, it has also changed continually with the times. It is much the same with art.

The Japanese art of manga (漫画) has existed since the late 18th century, the word itself comprising the kanji 漫 (man) meaning “whimsical” and 画 (ga) meaning “pictures”. In modern Japan, manga encompasses the entirety of cartoons, comics and animation. This differs from the English usage of the term which specifically refers to Japanese comics, with ‘anime’ used to indicate Japanese animation.

Modern manga began in the years after World War II, in an occupied Japan. Perhaps it was due to the U.S. occupation, which brought American comics, cartoons and Disney films to Japan’s shores. Perhaps it was just a continuation of Japan’s pre-war artistic and cultural traditions. Perhaps, because the artform was relatively inexpensive to produce, distribute and consume, it enabled widespread adoption by the Japanese public. Whatever the case, this new form of creative storytelling quickly became popular, both within Japan, and shortly after, in other nations as well.

One of the most influential manga artists of this period, and indeed all time, is Osamu Tezuka. Tezuka has had an enormous influence on manga, pioneering the use of cinematic techniques and sensibilities. He drew on the French and German films he had watched in his youth, and introduced stylistic zooms, unconventional angles and close-ups to manga. Tezuka played with action sequence pacing, dividing climactic moments into multiple frames in order to highlight expressions and reactions. Drawing inspiration from Disney and other American animated features, Tezuka originated the use of wide-eyed protagonists in modern manga, styling them after the likes of Betty Boop and Bambi. And despite their cute designs, Tezuka’s characters were made to span the emotional gamut, expressing everything from joy to hatred.

In his teenage years, Tezuka nearly lost both his arms to an infection, an experience which inspired him to study medicine and become a doctor. Throughout his time at university, Tezuka drew manga, gaining enough interest and fame that he began questioning whether he should pursue his art full-time or continue to study medicine. Although a career as a professional mangaka (manga author) was at the time, neither lucrative nor particularly rewarding, Tezuka’s mother told him “You should work doing the thing you like most of all”. Tezuka graduated a doctor of medicine, and became a full-time mangaka. He would eventually use his medical knowledge in the science-fiction manga Black Jack about a highly skilled, unlicensed rogue physician. The titular Black Jack travels the land offering his aid indiscriminately, and charging absurdly high prices, ultimately revealing himself to be both charitable and principled. It has been widely speculated that Black Jack is the embodiment of the type of physician Tezuka wished to have become, a complex flawed hero, capable of being both compassionate and callous. Ultimately Tezuka would go on to be considered the godfather of manga and anime, creating more than 150,000 pages of manga in some 700 volumes. He produced numerous successful manga series including Kimba the White Lion and Phoenix, though he would be most well known for one work in particular: Tetsuwan Atomu or Mighty Atom, as it is known in Japan. Astro Boy to the rest of the world.

Tezuka’s Mighty Atom, first published 1952, is set in a futuristic world where robots and humans co-exist. The series follows Atom, an advanced android built by the brilliant Doctor Tenma, to replace his dead son, Tobio. Though Tenma implanted Atom with Tobio’s memories, the child android could not console him for the loss of his son. Enraged by his own creation, who neither grew nor aged, Tenma sold Atom to the circus. Eventually the android was rescued by Professor Ochanomizu, who treated him kindly, learning slowly of Atom’s extraordinary powers as well as his ability to express and experience human emotions. Atom also fought plenty of aliens and robots, the series being very much aimed at children. Tezuka intended Atom to be, in part, a modern reversal of the story of Pinocchio, featuring a near-perfect robot striving to be become more human.

In 1963, Mighty Atom became the first popular anime series, at its height being watched by 40% of the television-owning population of Japan. Astro Boy’s popularity was so immense that researchers believe it is one of the reasons that the Japanese are more accepting of household robots than people of other nations. Shortly after its Japanese debut, an English language version was produced for American audiences, and because of lingering postwar anti-Japanese sentiment, the show’s origin was largely downplayed, with American viewers often completely unaware they were watching a series created in Japan. The name of the series was also adapted from the potentially controversial Mighty Atom, to Astro Boy, and Tezuka, an artist inspired by American animation, came to produce an animation series that became popular with its audiences. So popular, in fact, that in 1965, Tezuka received a letter from an Astro Boy fan named Stanley Kubrick, inviting Tezuka to be the art director of his next work, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Tezuka reluctantly turned down the request due to his ongoing commitments, but he was known to have enjoyed Kubrick’s film, listening to its soundtrack while he worked.

Modern manga is typically published in black-and-white, and read from top to bottom, and from right to left. Most works are published in manga magazines, which typically feature a collection of concurrently running serialised stories, as well as some trial debuts known as ‘one-shots’. Because of poor paper quality and magazine size, which can range up to 850 pages, many magazines are often colloquially referred to as ‘phone books’. In order to maintain an output of some 300 to 400 pages of manga per month, Tezuka would hire younger artists to assist with the more tedious aspects of manga production. These assistants would draw frames, ink the black spaces and help with backgrounds, though Tezuka himself was responsible for much of the pencilling and inking. The assistants learned and honed their skills under Tezuka, often moving on to become significant mangaka themselves. An entire industry began to form around the production of manga, and the market began to divide itself to suit the growing readership. Initially the two main divisions were shōnen manga, which targeted boys, and shōjo manga, which was aimed at girls, though since then, additional categories have emerged, including seinen and josei manga, for adult men and women respectively. The narratives and subject matter of manga works also began to expand, spanning all literary genres, from westerns to high school dramas to slice-of-life stories, as well as all combinations of said genres, resulting in works such as Detective Conan, which is both a school drama and a mystery series.

These days, one of the most well respected mangaka is Naoki Urasawa, whom Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz has described as “a national treasure in Japan”. Urasawa is known for his European settings, detailed homages to manga history and his dense multi-threaded narratives. One of Urasawa’s most significant works is the psychological drama Monster. Beginning publication in 1994 and concluding in 2001, Monster tells the story of the brilliant Japanese surgeon Dr. Kenzo Tenma, living and working in Germany, who saves the life of a young boy named Johan Liebert, only to learn that he is a psychopathic murderer. Tenma’s pursuit of Liebert plays out in the manga as a suspenseful thriller and an exploration of human psychology. It was critically acclaimed both within and outside Japan, and won Urasawa the first of his two Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prizes. He would win the second in 2005, for a series called Pluto.

In Tezuka’s vision of the future, the birth of the robot Atom, or Astro Boy, occurred on the 7th of April 2003. This turned out to be an overly optimistic estimation of technological advancement. The year was commemorated in style, though, with numerous Astro Boy events and a new animated series. And in the lead up to the celebration, Naoki Urasawa approached the Tezuka Productions company with a request. Urasawa wanted to write a series reimagining a classic Astro Boy story written by Osamu Tezuka, titled “The Greatest Robot on Earth”. It was one of the first Astro Boy stories Urasawa had read, at around age five, and he had spent years expanding it in his mind. Like many other children, Urasawa had learnt to draw by initially copying Tezuka’s artwork, and though his own work is markedly different, Tezuka’s influence is undeniable. Eventually Tezuka Productions warmed to the idea, and Macoto Tezuka, Osamu’s son, became the series supervisor. Between 2003 and 2009, Urasawa serialised his story in monthly segments, eventually collecting the individual chapters into 8 volumes known as tankōbon, each roughly the size of a paperback book. The series, though relatively short for a manga, was extremely well received, and Urasawa’s Pluto won him a second Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize.

In its original form, “The Greatest Robot on Earth” story arc focuses on the villainous robot Pluto and his quest for supremacy. It was primarily a series of action packed robot fights, and it quickly became a popular classic. Urasawa’s Pluto reshapes the story as a murder mystery revolving around Inspector Gesicht, a Europol detective who is investigating a series of robot murders. Gesicht himself is revealed to be one of the most advanced robots in the world, appearing almost indistinguishable from a human being. Urasawa’s world is populated with a multitude of robots, some of whom are metallic automatons, and some of whom appear startlingly human. His art is considerably more detailed than Tezuka’s original work, and there is a striking realism to his humanoid robots. When Atom (Astro Boy) finally appears at the end of the first volume, Urasawa has reimagined him as an inquisitive but ordinary looking child. The peaks of Atom’s tousled hair recall the two black points of Tezuka’s Astro Boy, but Atom’s behaviour and expressions appear to be those of a child, delighting in ice-cream and sparking with jealousy at the sight of a human child enjoying a toy. Atom, Gesicht and a small number of other robots are all considered capable of mass destruction, and revealed to have been built before an international treaty was signed preventing this from occurring. As the series progresses, it becomes in part, a reflection on the Second Gulf War, with a team of scientists dispatched to the Kingdom of Persia to investigate the possible creation of new robots of mass destruction. Though Urasawa’s hand is perhaps too heavy in this matter, with the United States of Thracia invading Persia despite inconclusive evidence of weaponised robots, his story remains compelling throughout. There is also an enormous pathos to Urasawa’s Atom, who was sent in after the conflict as a peace keeping robot.

Urasawa’s devotion to Tezuka’s work is evident in Pluto, which is gorgeously illustrated and beautifully detailed, printed largely in black-and-white, with occasional use of individual colour accents or colour pages, for narrative impact. The tankōbon volumes are also lovingly produced with numerous essays and interviews, as well as cover illustrations that wrap around to align the irises of major characters on their spines. There is a level of care and detail to Pluto that is simply not present in most modern manga volumes. Perhaps it is partly out of respect for Tezuka, who is acknowledged as a major inspiration for Urasawa, and whose oeuvre is subtly referenced throughout the story. The series itself is billed as Urasawa x Tezuka, suggesting not only a reverent reimagining, but a competition between two significant mangaka. In an essay in the second tankōbon volume, Osamu Tezuka’s son concedes that “Mr. Urasawa has challenged my father head on, and he has not lost”. And this is very much due to what Urasawa brings to the table in reshaping an existing work, namely his own style and sensibilities.

Urasawa takes each of the world’s greatest robots, who, aside from Atom, are afforded very little characterisation in Tezuka’s original work, expands their stories and humanises them. Though Urasawa can, on occasion, be criticised for overly melodramatic dialogue, the robots are presented as individualistic, exhibiting unique interests, emotions and natures. Urasawa engenders empathy for his characters before ramping up the momentum and suspense of the narrative. Often at the point of resolution, Urasawa cuts away, and begins in media res (in the middle of things) with an entirely new character, allowing the tension of other plots to simmer in the background. And it is these diversions which reveal themselves to be the real gems in the work. Because amidst the main mystery and its commentary on the futility of war, hatred and bigotry, are the individual stories of the robots. In Urasawa’s hands, Tezuka’s robots are tortured by the Post Traumatic Stress of a war that forced them to destroy their own kind. Each of the robots seeks peace and meaning in very different, very human ways. In Urasawa’s hands, the story of “The Greatest Robot on Earth”, becomes something else entirely.

Osamu Tezuka, creator of Astro Boy and godfather of manga died of stomach cancer on the 9th of February 1989, his last words being: “I’m begging you, let me work!” His influence is undeniable, not just in Naoki Urasawa’s modern adaptation, Pluto, but in all of modern manga. In his own way, Urasawa too has shaped the course of modern manga and Japanese storytelling, with both Japanese and Western production companies queuing to adapt his work. In Indian author Arundhati Roy’s 1997 Booker Prize winning novel, The God of Small Things, she comments, “In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love and who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again. That is their mystery and their magic.” She’s not wrong.

Humanity will rebuild the Ise shrine in 2033, and we will retell our stories eternally.