Osamu
Tezuka: Influencing Expressive Techniques in Contemporary Manga
Modern
manga has come a long way from the early days of Edo. Osamu Tezuka
is one if the main pioneers that laid the road that many manga
artists followed to create the Japanese culture of today.
Today
when many western readers read manga they often times describe
it as being almost cinmatic. Many Japanese young artists also
found this same inpression when they first read Tesuka's "New
Treasure Island" during its realease in 1947. This cinematic
feeling was borin during the postwar cotemporary manga movement
lead by Tezuka.
Manga
is repeatedly described as cinematic... yet the pictures do not
move. What makes this feeling of film surface in contemporary
manga?
Tezuka's
composition and arrangement becomes what is most sucessful in
creating this illusion. In "New Treasure Island" Tezuka
chose to illustrate a sequence that used to be represented by
a page or two into an 180 page sequence. This was different from
anything the manga world had ever seen before. The new post-war
approach had begun a revolution. From close-ups and perspective
pans to zooms, "it was almost as if the artist has simple
pasted succesive frames from a film onto the page."
This
is seen in many examples of contemporary manga today. The artistic
value of manga became more apparant over the following years.
The development of these styles evolved along with the development
of story subject.
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