On the verge of his centennial, the legacy of Osamu Tezuka, one of the 20th century’s most influential artists, depends largely on where you live.
Inside Japan he is a colossus, revered as both the “God of Manga” and the “Father of Anime.” His characters adorn everything from vintage 1960s candy wrappers and train station billboards to hipster streetwear and gallery walls.
Yet outside Japan, especially in the West, Tezuka is still something of a cipher. When I mention “Astro Boy” to fans of a certain age at anime conventions in the United States, they light up in fond reminiscence. But when I ask them who made it, those same faces go blank.
That may soon change.
Tezuka was born in 1928 and died in 1989 at the age of 60, his lifetime spanning one of the most tumultuous eras in Japanese and world history. Plans for global celebrations of his centennial in 2028 are set to include major museum exhibitions; new manga translations, reissues and collectible box sets; and anime reboots, spinoffs and live-action adaptations.
Later this summer, Netflix is set to release “The Ribbon Hero,” an anime based on his groundbreaking manga “Princess Knight” (“Ribon no Kishi”), one of the original shōjo (girls) manga series and the first to incorporate a gender-bending protagonist.
To address the artist’s broader impact, a feature-length documentary film, “Tezuka: God of Manga,” chronicling the climactic arcs in both his life and his art, is being produced by American director Jason Cohn.
Cohn received a major grant from the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities in 2024. Less than a year later, however, his award and all others deemed irrelevant to President Donald Trump’s political agenda were rescinded.
Undeterred, Cohn scrambled for private funds and loose change and began conducting interviews with some of the titans of manga and anime, all of whom jumped at the chance to talk about Tezuka. I was also brought on in the role of co-producer.
“Our goal is to have the film ready for the centennial in 2028,” he says. “With the explosion of Japanese content as a cultural counterweight to Hollywood everywhere in the world, now is the time for Westerners to finally learn about the guy who catalyzed the whole industry.”
The film’s first teaser trailer, released last month, features interviews with creators Yoshiyuki Tomino, Katsuhiro Otomo, Naoki Urusawa and legendary producer and studio founder Masao Maruyama. These come alongside Mexican creator and voice actor Jorge R. Gutierrez, American writer Samuel Sattin and author and translator Frederik L. Schodt, who served as Tezuka’s interpreter.
Executive producer Glen S. Fukushima has been a Tezuka fan since the 1960s, when “Astro Boy” debuted as the…
