Osamu Tezuka's vaunted storytelling genius consummate skill at visual expression and warm
humanity blossom fully in his eight-volume epic of Siddhartha's life and times. Tezuka
evidences his profound grasp of the subject by contextualizing the Buddha's ideas the emphasis
is on movement action emotion and conflict as the prince Siddhartha runs away from home
travels across India and questions Hindu practices such as ascetic self-mutilation and caste
oppression. Rather than recommend resignation and impassivity Tezuka's Buddha predicates
enlightenment upon recognizing the interconnectedness of life having compassion for the
suffering and ordering one's life sensibly. Philosophical segments are threaded into
interpersonal situations with ground-breaking visual dynamism by an artist who makes sure never
to lose his readers' attention. Tezuka himself was a humanist rather than a Buddhist and his
magnum opus is not an attempt at propaganda. Hermann Hesse's novel or Bertolucci's film is
comparable in this regard in fact Tezuka's approach is slightly irreverent in that it
incorporates something that Western commentators often eschew namely humor.
