| | |  | SHOP BY IMPRINT | Home » » Phoenix, Vol. 1: Dawn | | | | | | | Description: | | Now in English is the first volume of the acclaimed Phoenix series, regarded as Tezuka's masterpiece. Osamu Tezuka painstakingly created his epic 12-volume series over several decades, stretching the limits of comics to address fundamental questions about existence. All 12 episodes of Phoenix are linked by the presence of the mythical bird, an immortal guardian of the universal life force. Beginning in A.D. 270, Phoenix: Dawn follows the ambitions of Queen Himiko, capturing with precise period detail the early phase of Japanese civilization. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Osamu Tezuka | | Paperback:
| 344 pages | | Publisher:
| VIZ Media LLC | | Publication Date:
| 2003-03 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 1569318689 | | Product Length:
| 8.16 inches | | Product Width:
| 5.76 inches | | Product Height:
| 0.9 inches | | Product Weight:
| 1.05 pounds | | Package Length:
| 8.03 inches | | Package Width:
| 5.67 inches | | Package Height:
| 0.87 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.06 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 8 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 8 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 Manga of HumanityMar 04, 2005
By -Ashi-
This is a very special manga and a piece of literature. First of all, for those who have never read a Tezuka manga, you'd be distracted by the inferiority of the artwork by today's standard. By if you can ignore that, you'll find the storyline is one of the greatest achievements in literary history.
The entire series is shifting between past and future. And the interval between time will become smaller and smaller. For example, the story started from pre-historical Japan, then shift to circa 3000 AD in the future, but the jump between time will become shorter as it goes.
The series is incomplete, due to Tezuka's untimely death, though in other sense, it's completed because I think Tezuka probably knew he probably didn't have time to finish it, so the last published chapter already nailed the point that you can't really miss.
Each episodic story is clearly told, but once you began try to link the point of each story, you'd realize it's actually a collage of pictures with a repeating theme that tries to tell you about this vicious cycle of life. Every story is essentially the same, about how human being overwhelmed by their own greed and do stupid things over and over, disregard the passage of time.
So what's the main conflict? There are some side stories, but all the core stories are united with this Phoenix figure, which essentialy the god figure of the story. The Phoenix is immortal. According to the legend, anyone who drinks her blood, will become immortal as well. That's our conflict. People will do stupid things and kill each other just to become immortal (or become god-like).
Anyways, the original title of the series is called "Hi no Tori", which literally means Bird of Fire in Japanese. The Bird of Fire symbolizes sun in East Asian culture and sun is the source of life. It's highly ironical that the source of life is also the source of death. The translated title "Phoenix" isn't too far off, because there are chapters in the stories that will refer to the immortal bird as the Phoenix when the story is set in China (as that's the Chinese name for such bird).
The story transcends time. One of the chapters is about human cloning (not yet translated into English at the time of this review). Now that's something everyone should read about before one go gaga over this cloning issue that's hotly debated right now. It's about how a Reality TV show ran out of ideas, so he started this new show about clone hunting. Now, I'll let you guys read the story. Keep in mind this story is decades old. That's how ingenius this series is and no wonder Tezuka is called the God of Manga.
Major Spoiler now:
You may at some point feeling lost why Tezuka kept the stories going even though they just repeat itself despite of cosmetic changes (rather similar to life, as I see it). Well, just keep on reading to the end of the last published chapter, things become much clearer (as shift of time become narrower and therefore, more focused). The Phoenix will reveal she is sick and tired of being immortal as she will have to oversee human repeat their stupidity, doing a greedy but pointless quest. If you can see it from this way and draw a parallel to our own existence, you'd be enlightened. It's essentially the same enlightenment Buddha is trying to tell us, but Tezuka was smart enough to make another story that's easier to digest than Buddha's teaching. (btw, Tezuka also have a manga called Buddha, but that's a historical fiction about Buddha's life)
It's a masterpiece no one who is interested in humanity should miss. BTW, EmDee stands for MD. It's an in-joke made by Tezuka, because Tezuka was a medical doctor before he abandoned it to become a manga artist.
2 of 3 found the following review helpful:
GREAT!!!Apr 12, 2003
This book is outstanding. The characters are really life like in the minds eye. The main characters and minor characters burn themselves into your mind. The book has a lot of action in it to keep you in suspense!
 the weakest one I've read so farAug 26, 2008
By Jesse Haller
I liked this volume of Phoenix, but felt the three different stories are not given equal weight, and a long times would go by between checking back in with one of them. Even though I found the pages of text about Japanese history interesting, they broke up the story. You can tell Tezuka was still figuring out the series. Still good over all.
Great story, some oddities in editingSep 27, 2007
By G. Bahlman
If you are reading this, you are probably already familiar with Osamu Tezuka's work. There is little need to discuss the quality of the stories and art contained within as most agree that Tezuka is without peer. Having said that, I wanted to point out some strange things about these english editions.
First of all, I have looked through the first five volumes of the original Japanese first run printings. I say "looked" as I can't read japanese. The first thing I noticed about these english editions are the size, they are significantly smaller than the originals. However, the new printings seem to be on better quality paper.
My conversation with a japanese friend who read both editions revealed that the translation was a good as could be expected between two such different languages. Some dialog will seem odd, and some of the context will invariably be lost. That said, the stories are still captivating.
Finally, I noticed a strange thing about the book as a whole. The english version, naturally will read from left to right, as opposed to the japanese edition. The pages are in reverse order from the japanese version. However, I noticed that not only were the frames rearranged in reverse order to facilitate english-language readers, but each frame seemed to be reversed as well. For example, the character Nagi, who is a right-handed archer in the japanese version, becomes a left-handed archer in the english edition.
These are minor quibbles which in no way detract from the quality of the art within. I simply thought every one should know what's inside. Enjoy!
2 of 4 found the following review helpful:
Undescribably buetifulJan 13, 2004
By Reincarnation
Osamu Tezuka amazes me, I'd throw everything away just to be like him, words short of god fail to describe him. He is a master of his art, invoking feelings from sadness, to hope, to despair, to joyfulness, and back again. I'm a guy who has gone through pain unlike what you could most likely imagine, at the very least I've hardened to the point where I couldn't care less, to do this to me, to make me feels exactly what the characters are feeling as they are feeling it, is beyond indescribable. I don't know japanese or french, if what they say is true, then that just means I'll have to create my own masterpieces in english.
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