Astro Boy Essays: Osamu Tezuka, Mighty Atom, and the Manga/Anime Revolution

[jeffbert]

I stumbled accross this while searching for something else:

It is available for pre-order & should be available Sept. 2007.

[Innocent_Eyes]

Oooh, I hope I can get it!
I have to do an essay on Tezuka for Visual Art studies

[jeffbert]

I just received my copy of the book, & to my horror, it contains a few items that I myself have published either here or on Tezuka-in-English. My reason for horror, is that some might think I plagiarized Schodt's book.

However, while his book does contain tables for both manga & anime, giving both the Japanese and English names and sequences, his book was first available in Sept of '07, while my works on this site began in '04, & my 1963 episode table was posted in July '06. Moreover, I have postmaked and sealed copies of the tables in my possession, whose dates go back to late '05.

Nevertheless, I am a bit nervous about potential legal action from either Schodt or his publisher. irate:

[fafner]

Nevertheless, I am a bit nervous about potential legal action from either Schodt or his publisher. irate:

If I understand correctly, they copy your work, and then would sue you for illegal copy? It would never stand before a trial, especially if you can prove that your work predates theirs, so what are you afraid about?

[jeffbert]

The problem is that I am a nobody, I cannot afford a lawyer, etc. Plus, Schodt obviously did not copy my work, but produced his work independantly. He obviously should know more about the subject than I.

I produced my 1963 anime table by comparing the episode descriptions on TOW with those few I had VHS and the descriptions on Astroboy.TV. Schodt had access to Tezuka people who knew more than I will ever know.

Likewise with the manga, although this was much easier than the anime, because I had my own set of all 23 volumes.

[strobe_z]

I wouldn't worry if I were you Jeffbert. I just got my copy of the book yesterday and I took a look at the tables you're talking about. Despite the fact that your work is documented well before the book was published, these are hardly based on highly classified material. Not to belittle your work, but I don't believe it's anything that anyone who was willing to put in the time and energy couldn't have sussed out. The fact that you and Schodt took publicly available information and ended up following established convention in organizing and presenting the data in what is basically a spreadsheet is hardly a case of plagerizism.

If you leave out the obvious lack of intent to copy his work, not to mention the lack of means... there's very little else to complain about. On the other hand, if you'd taken large tracks of his accompanying text and started trying to pass that off as your own work.... that's another thing.

[jeffbert]

I just finished the book last night, & although I found it worthwhile and interesting, I was a bit disappointed that it said nothing about the manga stories that were not reprinted in the 23 volume anthology.

However, it did provide information on other items of interest. I might write more about this later.

[Astro Forever]

I had a similar thing happen to me, jeffbert. I used to have a website about Astroboy and the French (as in from France) company who released the DVDs of the French 1980 Astroboy first used a part of my writings on their website (at that point, it's not that bad, they had put a link to my site at the bottom of the page), but then used the same text as a presentation of their DVDs on the website.

When I bought the DVDs in my country, they had taken the material from the French company and, I guess, a few other things because when I read the text on the back of the cover, I had a strange feeling of déjà vu. I checked my old site (it's not online anymore) and sure enough, it was extremely close to the text that was on my site.

It's definitely not worth a lawsuit, but I thought it was extremely rude and tasteless from the French company since it's making money out of it. I don't fault the Canadian company because I'm sure they had no idea about what the French company had done.

At the same time, it's a little bit of an honour, I guess, that they had found my presentation of Astro so good that it ended up on an official release, but I can't say that the way it happened pleases me. Not at all.

[jeffbert]

Looking at both Fred's and my own manga tables, I see a difference in the first 5 rows, the columns themselves are very similar, except that my version has the English title in col. 2, while Fred has his #2 column the Japanese title. This, I attribute to a logical design, rather than copying, the thing just makes sense this way.

I will use the headings from my own version:
Column

1. Publication sequence
2. Title (Dark Horse)
3. Japanese title (Fred includes both the romanji & Japanese script on his title column, & my version comes from TOW's English-language pages' alphabetically-ordered manga listing)
4. Date (My source was the TOW, except where data was unavailable)
5. Dark Horse Vol. #

Note that Where my 2nd column is called "Title (Dark Horse)" I could just as easily called it "Title (Frederick Schodt)," because he translated those titles.

Now the difference I first mentioned was this, I used the TOW titles & thus listed

0 Ambassador Atom Captain ATOM
1 Gas People* Astro Boy's Parents
2 Gas People* Gaseous Beings
3 Frankenstein Frankenstein

noting that 1 & 2 were listed under 1 title in the manga books, while the TOW listed individual titles. I just realized that I forgot to say why "Ambassador Atom" was number '0,' but I am sure I explained it on its review page. Plus Mission to Mars was likewise listed as 2 separate stories, but was listed as 1 in the anthologies. Thus, by his 10th column, Fred's list differs from mine by only 1 row, because the additional rows are offset by my placing Ambassador Atom zeroth rather than first.

In all, Fred's table has 63 rows of data, while mine has 65.

Also, I have only published the Shonen data, while Fred has published tables for the other publications.