Thanks to the efforts of American publisher Vertical, I’ve become a big fan of Osamu Tezuka, particularly his really dark stuff like MW and Ode to Kirihito. I was totally pumped to hear about the live-action film version of MW, which is going to be released in Japan next year. And now there is a video online to stoke my excitement even more!

Trailer

OK, so it doesn’t show much…but damn that voice-over sounds kind of sexy.

Here’s the description of the manga from Vertical’s home page:

Comics god Osamu Tezuka’s darkest work, MW is a chilling picaresque of evil. Steering clear of the supernatural as well as the cuddly designs and slapstick humor that enliven many of Tezuka’s better-known works, MW explores a stark modern reality where neither divine nor secular justice seems to prevail. This willfully “anti-Tezuka” achievement from the master’s own pen nevertheless pulsates with his unique genius.

Michio Yuki has it all: looks, intelligence, a pedigree as the scion of a famous Kabuki family, a promising career at a major bank, legions of female admirers. But underneath the sheen of perfection lurks a secret with the power to shake the world to its foundations.

During a boyhood excursion to one of the southern archipelagos near Okinawa, Yuki barely survived exposure to a poison gas stored at a foreign military facility. The leakage annihilated all of the island’s inhabitants but was promptly covered up by the authorities, leaving Yuki as an unacknowledged witness—one whose sense of right and wrong, however, the potent nerve agent managed to obliterate.

Now, fifteen years later, Yuki is a social climber of Balzacian proportions, infiltrating the worlds of finance and politics by day while brutally murdering children and women by night—perversely using his Kabuki-honed skills as a female impersonator to pass himself off as the women he’s killed. His drive, however, will not be satiated with a promotion here and a rape there. Michio Yuki has a far more ominous objective: obtaining MW, the ultimate weapon that spared his life but robbed him of all conscience.

There are only two men with any hope of stopping him: one, a brilliant public prosecutor who struggles to build a case against the psychopath; the other, a tormented Catholic priest, Iwao Garai, who shares Yuki’s past—and frequently his bed.

Vertical\’s Home Page

My new favorite manga publisher Vertical has kindly put up a sample chapter of their new release of Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack on their website! Good to see they’ve kept Pinnoko as freaking annoying as ever.

http://vertical-inc.com/blackjack/index.html

I’ve been really pleased with Vertical’s releases of MW and Dororo, so I am excited to see Black Jack in its intended form. The first volume comes out September 28th!

Rating:  

Dororo is a series by the exceptionally talented and prolific Osamu Tezuka, Japan’s ‘Godfather of Manga’. While relatively little-known in America, the manga spawned an anime series, a Sega video game, and, most recently, a series of live-action films. American fans can thank publisher Vertical for finally bringing us the original.

The story begins during Japan’s Warring States period, when a daimyo (a feudal lord) conceives a desire to rule all of Japan. To this end he spends the night in a temple famous for its forty-eight fearful statues of demons. The daimyo pleads with the demons to fulfill his dream. In exchange, he offers them his unborn child. The demons accept, and the resulting baby is a disturbing sight: each of the forty-eight demons has taken a body part for himself, and the child looks like a slug with empty eye sockets. The daimyo’s wife wants to keep the baby, but her husband forces her to place it in a basket and send it floating down the river, Moses-style.

Luckily for the kid, he’s found by a kindly doctor who takes him in and feeds him. After a couple years the child learns to communicate telepathically, and to ‘see’ and ‘hear’ using a sixth sense. Encouraged by this development, the doctor gives him a name- Hyakkimaru- and some prosthetic limbs. As Hyakkimari grows and becomes proficient with his artificial body parts, he becomes a magnet for demons of all kinds, who sense his unnaturalness. Afraid for the doctor, Hyakkimaru sets off into the world to find his fortune (but not before the doctor makes some deadly modifications to his prosthetic limbs).

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