Postby Higeoyaji » 13 years ago
Ah, this is a very interesting topic. I wish this wasn't true but unfortunately it is. I'm almost 41 now, I teach an English class at a high school to kids in either their Sophomore or Junior years. I'd prefer not to get to personal, but my father was a Japanese immigrant who came to the US in 1967. He wanted to work in animation like Tezuka, which unfortunately didn't work out.
He showed me all of these Japanese cartoons and most of them were by Tezuka.(Excluding Speed Racer, and Tetsujiin 28. Those are two off of my head that I can remember that weren't made by him.) I didn't get too into Astro Boy until I was around 9 or 10 when the first color series came on television. At that age I wasn't bothered by the English dub. Today I own the box set to this series and every time I watch it I have to watch it so that it's the Japanese dub with English subtitles. But the point of this part is that I loved this series as a child and I've had knowledge of Japanese Anime for pretty much my whole life.
I've actually had conversations with students of mine who are into anime. Most of the time I hear that they're into shows like Bleach, Naruto, Pokemon, Dragonball, and many others. I know all of these shows, I can't say I like all of them but I know of them. Of course there are others like Naruto which I have never heard of but don't have time to watch. When I mention older anime series, half of the time the students know of Astro Boy but never watched it. (Or they're more familiar with the 09 movie.) Other times they never heard of it, or know of it, but know anything about it. Most of the time they don't even know what I'm talking about when I mention Metropolis, Phoenix, or Buddha, they have no clue what I'm talking about when I say these names. (Some know about Kimba the White lion. But I mostly hear "Oh, my mom/dad used to watch that!" I also get a little disappointed when I mention Castle in the Sky,Ponyo,or Akira even and they don't know those either.)
I know this is mainly American youth that I'm talking about, but to me this does show that not a lot of people like Tezuka's works, or aren't even aware of it. To me this is a bit sad because there are a lot of anime fans in America that don't even know who Tezuka is or how much of an impact he had on anime and manga. These kids don't even know who the God of Manga is! Anime might not have even existed outside of Japan if it weren't for people like Tezuka.
In my personal opinion, I think it's important that Western anime audiences are more aware of Osamu's works and hopefully appreciate all of the hard work he did over the years.
@Prettywitchiusaka
You know the word "the" is spelled T-H-E, correct? It's not T-E-H. Just thought I'd let you know.
Last edited by
Higeoyaji on Sat Feb 11, 2012 3:24 am, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Had to add more after I read some more recent posts.