Week 10 Tezuka

For week 10 we looked at Manga and the comics tradition in Japan. I chose to read Buddha Volume 1 by Osama Tezuka which touches on Indian culture and the ideas of Buddhism. While I have read Manga before, I am not well familiar with it and I found this work to be particularly interesting since it combines Indian culture with a traditional Japanese style of comic which was not what I was expecting. Reading this comic was a good experience for me because as I said, I’m not very familiar with Manga and Buddism so I enjoyed being exposed to something new and learning about something that I don’t know much about. I also enjoyed the artistic style which combined many illustration techniques such as hatching and “Ben-Day dots” which added contrast and layered texture to the line art. Some of the panels weren’t squares but instead fragmented shapes that fit together to form one big rectangle which I found to be interesting and unique. While I did find some of the storyline to be confusing which lead me to focus more on the images and less on the words, I did enjoy reading this comic.