I recently read The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and Anime, a manga biography of the life of Osamu Tezuka, and found a particular aspect of his career especially fascinating. I was already quite familiar with his manga works, his anime offerings such as Animerama etc. but I was really surprised to learn how many anime shorts he produced over his career. These anime shorts were experimental, unique, stunning and I wanted to tell others about this incredible aspect of Osamu Tezuka.
In order to explain the production of his first experimental short, I have to discuss the state of anime at the time. In the early 1960s, the television industry was booming in Japan but TV anime was practically non-existent due to competition from American animation. Tezuka, however, believed in the potential of animation and was determined to develop animation both for television and short films that would push the boundaries of the medium. This resulted in the studio’s first projects being the Astro Boy television series, which I’ve spoken about before, and the experimental shorts “Tales of a Street Corner” and “Male”.
Tales of a Street Corner was directed by Eiichi Yamamoto and screened at a presentation by Mushi Production near the end of 1962 alongside the first episode of Astro Boy and Male. Approximately 38 minutes in length, the short film takes place at a street corner where we see various characters, human and animal, pass through, each with their own stories. The film’s tone eventually shifts, from playful and light-hearted to a darker “conquest” of this street corner. The film was well received although much of the attention was focused on the first episode of Astro Boy and the marketing value it had. Male was also screened during the event and was much shorter at only about three minutes long. The film covers a cat’s observation of human behaviour and has a surprisingly dark ending.
Over the next 6 years, Mushi Production continued to produce experimental shorts with almost all of them being under 10 minutes long. Memory and Mermaid were both screened in 1964 at the 4th Sogetsu Animation Festival. Memory runs about five minutes long and starts out using photographic imagery and steadily becoming more and more animated as the short progresses while Mermaid, running about eight minutes long is about a boy who discovers a mermaid but is punished when others believe that he’s imagining things. In 1965, Osamu Tezuka returned to the Sogetsu Animation Festival with two more shorts, The Drop and Cigarettes and Ashes. The Drop runs a little over four minutes and is about a man who is adrift at sea, notices that there are some drops of water on his mast and attempts to get to them so that he can drink them to little avail. Cigarettes and Ashes runs just a little under four minutes and follows a chicken who decides to lead other chickens in rebellion against their oppressors. In 1966, Pictures at an Exhibition was screened at the 2nd Mushi Productions festival and, at 39 minutes long, is the longest experimental anime short that Osamu Tezuka did. Inspired by Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky, the film is made up of 10 shorts which are played to music, similar to Disney’s Fantasia. For Mushi Production’s final experimental anime short from Osamu Tezuka, Genesis was released in 1968. Parodying John Huston’s The Bible: In the Beginning…, Genesis runs just under four minutes and features little to no animation, depicting the story through still images.
As Mushi Production continued to rack up debt and eventually declared bankruptcy, Osamu Tezuka had to postpone his passion for experimental shorts until the 1980s. With the renewed success of Tezuka Productions, Osamu Tezuka decided to return to experimental shorts by doing one of his most ambitious projects, Jumping. Screening at the 1984 6th Zagreb International Animation Festival, the concept of Jumping doesn’t sound particularly ambitious. It’s about a character, whose viewpoint we share in a first-person perspective, who jumps higher and higher, starting off with relatively small jumps before traversing over towns and seas. What makes this project particularly ambitious was the decision to fully animate the backgrounds, a technique which was similarly used in a scene of Phoenix 2772. The short is over six minutes long and the animation for the film was particularly work intensive. The next year, at the 1st Hiroshima International Animation Festival, Tezuka unveiled Broken Down Film. Running under six minutes, the film tells the story of a cowboy who must save a damsel in distress from a railway track. A typical story except for the fact that the film is deliberately animated to look in poor condition and the cowboy must deal with various issues that crop up because of this poor preservation.
For the 2nd Hiroshima International Animation Festival in 1987, Tezuka screened two experimental shorts, Push and Muramasa. Push runs for a little over four minutes and is set in a world where much of the Earth has been destroyed. However, vending machines are still present and offer a large variety of products. When the main character attempts to procure a new Earth, he is denied. Muramasa runs for over eight minutes and follows a samurai who finds a possessed sword called Muramasa. In 1988, he released his last two experimental shorts at two separate events, The Legend of the Forest – Part 1 and Self-Portrait. The Legend of the Forest was an ambitious project from Osamu Tezuka that would have been broken up into four episodes, with each entry becoming progressively more and more modern in animation style and technique. Only the first and fourth entries were completed and runs for about 29 minutes. Self-Portrait, running at a brief 13 seconds was screened at the 8th Zagreb International Animation Festival and features faces split into three vertical strips. These faces attempt to match like a slot machine and, once it finally matches with Osamu Tezuka’s face, coins flow from the completed face.
These unique, stunning experimental anime shorts from Osamu Tezuka are fascinating for the animation techniques that they explore and the way they push the limits of the medium. In a world where animation is all too often restricted to established techniques and stories, works like these are all the more impressive and, even to an Osamu Tezuka fan like me, remain underappreciated. Let me know your thoughts on the unique, stunning experimental anime shorts of Osamu Tezuka, whether you’ve seen any of them, your thoughts on the ones you’ve seen, what you think about experimental animation in general and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk and amazon.com for all of your needs!