I Am Completely Serious

Thank you for this. This is a very good summation of the difference between Uruasawa and Tezuka's narrative differences. It's something I've been struggling to put into words while reading Pluto, but having never read Astro Boy, I thought maybe it was just me. I haven't finished Pluto and I find it pretty cool, but it doesn't unsettle me the way Tezuka's work does. I find his work to be kinda freaky. The art is boisterous and animated and kinda cute and whimsical. The stories are often ugly, sorrowful and bleak. The combination usually leaves my head spinning and yet I am always pulled inexorably onwards. I think you have hit Tezuka's attitude towards evil on the head, and I think that, being conditioned as I am to want good to triumph over evil, for sacrifices to mean something and for something to be tangibly better in the world the narrative takes place in, I struggle with it. On the other hand, I think I keep coming back because Tezuka's point (in as much as his work have lessons or points) is that the world is as it is and you had better learn to deal with it, or not. I don't think it's pessimistic or fatalistic or nihilistic, which are all words I have seen used to describe his work. I just think there is an, I dunno, isness about his stories and maybe that's what I find compelling and even truthful, despite the less than hopeful outcomes. It's kinda Stoic in the sense that there is the world and there is you and the world isn't going to change, so what are you going to do.