Week 2: Phoenix Dawn, Tezuka

Phoenix Dawn holds no punches in being a very cool and unique mature book. It has a lot of things that really appeal to me like mythology and history. Something that I really like is the overall aesthetic of the book. For some reason all the old comics like Dragon Ball, and Mega Man have this really cool cartoon vibe that just feels timeless. Something I noticed while reading the Manga was that the panels were really inconsistent with the art. Sometimes they would have really detailed shots, and some were really poorly drawn. Sometimes the characters would look more like Disney cartoons, and sometimes it would look like a Sailor Moon comic. To me this adds to the authenticity of the fact that its a really old Manga that really paved roads for future styles to come. Artists weren't payed very well and were charged per page, so I can see why some of it was super simple and almost gestural. Finally something that I really liked was it had a lot of action in it, they cover topics like death, war, sickness, religion and love. Overall I really enjoyed it, and I can see know how art style and topics of books reflect on the time they were created.

I did some more research and also found that there was a movie adaptation on the Manga that I want to watch, I think color and animation really adds to the drama of the story. its also interesting to see how the Manga was adapted to Anime for and how the character designs carried over to animation given on how loosely drawn they are.