Osamu Tezuka Retrospective - Helen McCarthy Interview
In September 2008 The Barbican will be running a retrospective of anime works from the famous and highly regarded ‘God of Manga’, Osamu Tezuka. With screenings of his works ranging from short films, television series, experimental erotic films and everything in between, it is a unique chance for people to see works that would otherwise be unavailable in this country. The retrospective also offers the opportunity to witness the Kami-shibai theatre, a traditionally popular form of storytelling that is rarely seen in Japan today, so it’s an even rarer chance to see it over here as it enjoys its first UK tour.
Responsible for both seasons is Helen McCarthy, a true expert in the anime and manga field. Her work includes being the editor of Anime UK/FX and Manga Mania magazines as well as writing books such as The Erotic Anime Movie Guide, Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation and The Anime Encyclopedia.
With me being keen to find out more and Helen just as keen to tell us more, she agreed to an interview to discuss Tezuka’s work, the UK scene and hopes of the near future on both.
EoA (Chris) - How did the idea of an Osamu Tezuka retrospective idea come about?
HM (Helen McCarthy) - It's been developing for quite a while. I'd been getting more and more excited about Tezuka's work over the years; the more I saw, the more I was intrigued. I always thought there should be more information about him and a couple of years ago I realised that 2008/9 would be major Tezuka anniversaries - he would have been 80 this November, and next year is the 20th anniversary of his death. I started thinking of ways to celebrate his work and make his achievements better known in the UK. I've been working with the Barbican Cinema for several years now, and the team there has always been passionate about bringing anime to a wider public and presenting it intelligently, so I approached them with the idea.
I'm really delighted that it's all worked out. We have an exhibition coming direct from Tezuka's own studio, Tezuka Productions, that not only gives an overview of his work but sets it in the context of the development of Japan's anime and manga industries. We've got screenings of material that has never been seen in the UK before, and even a couple of titles that have never been screened outside Japan before. There are a few real rarities, like Tezuka's own Lion Books episodes and the film Rintaro made for the Tezuka Manga Museum in Takarazuka. There's a strong focus on TV with episodes of seven TV series plus all three of the TV specials he made for Japanese TV. There's even documentary footage of Tezuka himself.
This is the most complete overview of his career ever shown in Britain. Anyone new to Tezuka will get a pretty good idea of what his anime work is like, get an overview of his manga, and hopefully be encouraged to find out more.
Of course, we're also very excited that the season will host London's first professional kamishibai performances. Kamishibai is a Japanese 20th century street art that's beginning to be acknowledged as one of the major forerunners of anime. It was so universal and so beloved that when TV came to Japan most people called it 'electric kamishibai'. Ironically, TV then almost killed off kamishibai, but a few traditional performers kept on working and training apprentices.
Yuushi Yasuno, who normally performs at the Kyoto International Manga Museum, is a traditional kamishibai performer who will give two shows, one based on Japanese superhero Ogon Bat and one on the childhood of Tezuka. Tickets are restricted but I hope as many people as possible will see him. I'm so happy that we'll be able to include an art form Tezuka knew well as a child, and that had such a big influence on anime, as part of this season.
It's the first time in Britain that kamishibai has been performed alongside anime, the art form that grew out of it, and to see both together will be a really amazing experience.
While I'm telling you how great this season is, let me give you another good reason to book for all of it - the more you see, the less you pay. You get big discounts off the usual Barbican prices if you book for three separate shows at once, and even bigger ones if you book for seven.
EoA - Of the anime based on Tezuka’s work, do you have a personal favourite?
HM - It's always hard to pick a favourite in any area, and of course like everyone else I find my favourites change with my mood! I love his short films; he was a gifted art-house animator and if he'd never done anything else he'd still be a major talent. I've always had great affection for Phoenix 2772 aka Space Firebird, and I love the two Unico movies, which have a near-perfect balance of cuteness and darkness.
I suspect, though, that I may find a new personal favourite during this season, because there are a couple of titles coming over that I've never seen, and one or two I've never seen uncut. I'm getting very excited about one of the Lion Books episodes, Rain Boy, and about 1001 Nights.
You have to remember, too, that some remarkable Tezuka animation has been made by his admirers and his own studio since his death. Metropolis is a fantastic movie with a wonderful score.
EoA - Tezuka is generally more regarded for his work in the manga field than his animation despite being a pioneer for both in Japan. Would you say there’s a reason behind that, or is it just the way the cookie crumbles?
HM - I think he's more highly regarded for manga in the English-speaking world partly because a few farsighted publishers have picked up some very good titles, but mostly because his animation was made too early to attract the younger mass-market fans. Remember, he died just a few months after Akira opened in Tokyo, and that was the movie that really started anime's current success in the USA and UK.
But looking beyond market forces, in his manga Tezuka had complete control of his world. Very few people have that with anime, even today when you can make your own show on a home computer. In Tezuka's day, when you needed a studio and money and staff, it was very hard to bring your own pure vision to a screen, with no outside influences. In manga, though, he could make whatever story he wanted, and because he had helped to create such a wide market for manga post-war, he could find an audience for everything from children's adventure tales to romantic stories or thrillers.
For a great storyteller, which is how I see Tezuka above all else, that's heaven - to have the scope, the audience and the reputation to write and sell just about anything you can imagine. He took full advantage of it. He had so many stories in his head, they just poured out of him in a continual stream, and those that were too left-field or radical or niche to be animated, he could make as manga.
EoA - Is there a manga series that has yet to be animated that you think would do well given half a chance?
HM - There are literally dozens.
My personal favourite Tezuka manga is MW. Some fans think Tezuka is a historical curiosity who did stories about cute robots and sight gags with funny animals; when I meet them, I love to tell them about MW. This is the story of a dying twentysomething psychopath who is having a gay affair with a priest, while he plans to destroy the world, using the chemical weaponry that brought about his illness, after he takes revenge on everyone who caused the accident and then covered it up.
There are no cute robots and no funny animals. Instead, it's got drama, sex, humour, crime, roles any actor would kill for and fantastic action sequences. In fact, it would almost be wasted on anime - I'd love to see it as live action. if I could make it as a BBC drama series, I'd cast David Tennant as the priest and Colin Morgan as the psycho, and there are lots of other great roles - it would be amazing.
I also love Ayako, which is about family and social breakdown in an increasingly corrupt postwar Japan. Of course, Tezuka's science fiction and fantasy for children are great fun, and he handled some serious themes in very memorable ways. I'd be the last person to deny the importance of Astro Boy, either as a pioneering piece of TV animation or as a legendary archetype - we have some wonderful movies and the first TV episode in the season. But Tezuka was such a wide-ranging creative force that it can be annoying to hear people talk as if all he did was children's material, or sf and fantasy.
EoA - What would you say is the main appeal of Tezuka’s work to modern audiences who might not see what all the fuss is about or be aware of his influence on moulding the manga and anime world?
HM - I never really know why things appeal to modern audiences - I just don't get Big Brother and so-called reality TV, or this tendency to watch minor celebrities get paid large sums to try out new dances or sports for audiences consisting largely, it appears, of couch potatoes. So much successful contemporary TV appears to be about mindless consumption of a fairly uninteresting set of images. Tezuka's work might not have much appeal for the audience that likes that kind of pap at all.
Anyway, there's never any point watching or reading somebody's work just because they're important or influential, unless you're a critic or a historian. People should watch and read Tezuka if they're interested in strong narrative, in stories and characters with multiple layers and all kinds of ideas, and in a visual imagination that was completely off the wall. You need a brain and a heart and a sense of fun to appreciate Tezuka. That's why small children still respond well to his work - they haven't yet been forced into conformity.
EoA - It’s been nearly two decades since his death, but would you say Tezuka still holds an influence over today’s creators?
HM - I don't need to say it. The creators themselves, people like Otomo and Rintaro and Urusawa, say it. Guillermo del Toro says Tezuka is terrific. I was on a panel at the Bristol International Comics Expo in May where a number of young artists and writers who were babies or toddlers when Tezuka died said that he's important to them and their work.
I see traces of his influence everywhere in the anime and manga industries - so many of the story ideas and archetypes he originated, or synthesised by combining traditional and classical influences in new ways, are still being mined. Even those who react against his influence can't avoid it. Hayao Miyazaki famously wrote about that, about his view of Tezuka as an older brother - someone against whose influence he had to assert his own individuality.
EoA - Is it worth putting in a word regarding the whole Kimba/Simba debate, or should we just let sleeping dogs (or should that be cats?) lie?
HM - I'm glad you brought that up, because as an old fan I still feel regret and some distaste for the way Disney handled the whole affair. When fans raised the issues of similarity between the hero of the Disney movie The Lion King and Tezuka's TV series known in America as Kimba the White Lion, I think Disney behaved very ungraciously. In my eyes they made themselves look petty, which was entirely unnecessary. For a long-established animation studio to assert that nobody on their staff had heard of or seen a recognised animation classic, widely televised when most of them were children, is frankly incredible. For them to assert that their professional team is unaware of the work of an acknowledged world authority in their own field is rather worrying. I mean, if I were running a car manufacturer and none of my senior team had ever heard of Honda, I'd have concerns about their competence.
EoA - The Barbican seems to have become a refuge for anime fans over the years. Can we expect this relationship to continue in future, possibly in form of more anime retrospectives?
HM - I'm sure the Barbican Cinema team will continue to champion anime. We're very lucky in London - with the Barbican and the ICA and Sci-Fi London, we usually get several chances to see anime on the big screen in the course of a year. What I'd really like to see is the work we do at the Barbican rolling out to provincial cinemas and arts centres. Of course I want to do more seasons and festivals at the Barbican, but wouldn't it be great if we could then take them around the country?
Think about it - the Barbican goes to a lot of trouble to organise screenings, clearing the rights, getting me to introduce things and write about them, and then it happens, and we start again. Wouldn't it make much better sense for other cinemas to get the seasons and screenings after the Barbican? I contacted quite a few cinemas and arts centres to see if we could tour the Tezuka season, or incorporate material from it into their programmes, but very few responded and only one, Urbis in Manchester, is showing any Tezuka material. It really wouldn't be difficult to talk to the Barbican and talk to me, and replicate the work we do there in other parts of Britain.
It isn't possible to do everything - some material isn't licensed for cinema release in this country, some Japanese companies don't respond to requests for screenings, and some local authorities have policies regarding screenings that aren't as adventurous as those of the City of London. But we could still spread some of the fantastic work that the Barbican Cinema team do to the rest of the UK.
EoA - You’ve been writing about anime before most people in the UK even knew what it was! The local scene has had a few ups and downs since the days when Anime UK magazine was around, but just how far do you think things have come and how much further it can go?
HM - We're always going to be an offshoot of the US market, even though their modern anime market was heavily influenced by ours when Manga Entertainment went American. Our local market is very small by comparison. But when 25,000 fans hit the Excel Centre for London Expo and the organisers say the majority are here for anime and manga, "small" is obviously a relative term.
The problem is the same as it's always been - translating interest and enthusiasm into enough sales to keep a commercial market going. If even a quarter of those 25,000 fans bought every DVD that came out, the UK market would be in a better position than it's ever been. Of course, a great many current fans are very Internet-savvy and are spending their spare cash on cosplay and downloading their anime free of charge. Like all entertainment, anime and manga can go as far as the market will carry it.
EoA - What of your work can we look out for in the near future?
HM - I have a new book, 500 Essential Anime Movies, out now from Ilex Press. It's a roundup of titles legally available in English that have something interesting about them. Unfortunately, to keep it to a manageable size, we had to restrict it to standalone films and short series only, which means some of my absolute favourites aren't included - so I hope it sells well enough to encourage the publisher to commission 500 Essential Anime Series next!
One of the fun things about it is that it's copiously illustrated in full colour. Ilex is a very design-conscious publisher and the book looks stunning. I'm also working on a new book for them, which I can't say much about yet - but it's a completely new direction for me, and takes anime and manga into new areas. There are a couple more writing projects still under wraps. I'm starting a new Barbican lecture series in October and I'm giving an evening class in anime at Warwick Arts Centre in the autumn, too.
