ODE TO KIRIHITO, BY OSAMU TEZUKA

I saw this in the comic book store, realized I had never read any Tezuka, so I picked it up. This is a very odd, rather amazing book, and no paltry little summary of mine will really do it justice, but here goes anyway: it’s 1970s Japan, and group of high-flying doctors at a hostpital are investigating a condition called Monmow Disease. The stricken take on the appearance of dog men, growing hairy and developing elongated snouts, before dying. A good portion of the book is medical drama, tracking the disease to it’s source, emergency medical procedures, etc. There’s also a globe-trotting adventure component to it, a weird psycho-sexual storyline (well, several), comments on racism, Christianity, all depicted in some absolutely marvelous black and white linework.

This is one of the few comics works that feels like it was made by a master of the medium. The writing is fairly awful at times (possibly only in translation), but graphic elements, both the illustrations and narrative flow of the layouts, are genuinely wonderful and often novel (well, to this Western inexperienced reader). Here are some examples I noted

(p. 17 & p.26 cartoony abstraction)
Early on in the book Tezuka uses even more cartoony abstraction in moments of heightened motion and emotion (think Loony Toons). I haven’t noticed this convention much before. Perhaps it’s just a manga convention I’ve missed? I found the effect a bit jarring, sort of kicks you out of the story for a panel or two.

(p. 43p3)
Another interesting convention was using hatched shading in place of solid black to indicated asides. One would think thought bubbles would have been the convention, which Tezuka used rarely.

(p. 625p1 great cartoon of shocked guilt)

(p. 650, p. 654) poor people depicted with much more realism. Is this intentionally done to distance them from the reason? Or the opposite?

One final though I had while reading was on translating works like this. There is a line on p. 528 that goes, “I’m sorry but I have zero interest in you as a woman.” This was either awful in the original Japanese, or the translator did Tezuka a serious disservice. This is an especially bad example, but overall the text was awkward and simplistic. I was wondering, though, if the text was equally abysmal in the original Japanese, what should a translator do? Replicate the quality of the prose, or write better passages so English readers won’t overlook a great work of comics due to infantile text?