Osamu Tesuka

Yesterday Noah had to go to a check up at 1:40 which meant there was no point in me heading home with Jonah. So we hung out at the Copley Library. I grabbed a manga to keep me occupied. I read a few books to Jonah too, actually mainly I read the same Caillou book over and over because that's what he wanted. He wandered, colored , played with the puzzles and talked to the Librarians. Then it was time to go and I actually had to take the manga I was reading out to finish. I had hoped to just finish it there.

I was first introduced to Osamu Tezuka through his series about the Buddha. Then I read his Phoenix saga too. Both of these works were very Buddhist with some Christian metaphors (like Noah's ark). The book I picked up looked like a Catholic themed crime thriller. Now it was good, but it was not what I expected. Even the description on the back called it the "anti-Osamu Tezuka" written by his own hand.

There is a priest as a main character and various quotes from the Bible throughout but basically there isn't a main character in the novel that is good. I say that because anyone that is reasonably good is actually not a main character at all. Even though the whole thing takes place in Japan and seems to have been from the 70's alot of stuff really fits in with my generation growing up in the Boston area. It's very anti-American or "Nation x" and also touches on the pedophile priest scandal even though I'm not sure when it was written if victims had started coming forward yet. Did that stuff happen in Japan too? Was there any truth to the plot of the novel? I'm not sure but basically the whole novel is a nightmarish dystopia, except for it is so familiar to our world right now. But still I had to finish it.

Now his other novels do have violence, but overall you get a nice warm feeling of the Universe making things work out for the better and you feel spiritually uplifted. This novel doesn't do that at all. It doesn't even seem to have a Title except E and then a backwards E. Well, it distracted me from boredom yesterday as well as made me question any worldview I ever had about bad vs. good. I definitely want to read something light now.