Phoenix’s first volume took us back to the dawn of Japanese history, detailing the selfish ambitions and overwhelming violence of the island’s origins, how “Japan was formed as a nation through invasion, war, and slaughter.” Its second volume sped forward to the end of human history, offering a vision of the future where our shortsightedness and distrust of the Other led to the destruction of not just our species, but life on earth altogether. Though the phoenix itself embodies hope of a better way, that hope is clearly a distant one; for as Tezuka has continuously demonstrated, individual acts of charity or enlightenment cannot halt the overall tide of tribalism, indolence, and desperation for personal glory that seems to define our greater nature.
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Phoenix – Volume 2
The first volume of Phoenix offered a bleak portrayal of human nature, emphasizing how we are fundamentally little different from the ants and the beasts, and how our superstitious clamoring for eternal life is ultimately a self-destructive fool’s errand. Though individuals were occasionally able to rise above the small-minded perspectives and fanatical loyalties that defined them, the overall portrait of humanity was a grim one, a detailing of a species too preoccupied with personal glory to even achieve the philosophical unity with nature of animals. The only balm against this scorching condemnation was the assurance that at the very least, the events taking place were far, far before our time, a reflection of a less civilized era of humanity.
Phoenix – Volume 1
I’ll admit I know embarrassingly little about Tezuka’s life and work, beyond the obvious impact he had as both one of the pioneers of manga and the originator of TV animation. There was short-form anime before Tezuka, but it was the cutthroat bargain he struck in terms of “limited animation” that allowed anime to be in any way financially viable as a weekly television medium. And to be honest, his bargain was itself a pretty loose interpretation of “financially viable,” a labor-heavy yet nonetheless bare-bones adaptive method that still has repercussions in how animators are criminally underpaid today.