Tuesday 18 February 2020

Osamu Tezuka - MW Volumes One and Two


I went to Book Off again when I was in Japan, under the bridge in Akihabara and bought a big pile of super cheap manga. Here's one of them, Osamu Tezuka's 'MW'. It's available in English as well which I didn't know.


It's a weird one as Tezuka is trying to write a much darker style of manga. The antihero is this banker character here. As a child he was saved from a poison gas attack on an island by the hero, a priest. The gas caused him to lose all his conscience so he is very evil and does whatever he wants, such as bank robberies, kidnappings and murders.


The antihero is gay and so is the priest character. The antihero is always disguising himself as a woman to carry out his evil schemes, as he is here. The priest is a very conflicted character who blames himself for the evil antihero, who he is in love with, and is trying to save him.

There's a lot of action, brutal murders and very dark stuff. By the end the antihero is trying to get hold of the MW poison gas that nearly killed him, and release it, to kill everyone else on earth. It's very 1970's which is fun. I had to look up the English synopsis to find out what was going on by the end, as it was getting very busy.

No comments: