Buddha by Tezuka

Buddha, by Osama Tezuka, is an incredible series interpreting the life of Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism. The first volume, Kapilavastu, wastes no time immersing its readers into the story. Tezuka establishes the story by means of a map of India, overlain with information marking important events in the life of Buddha, thus serving as a roadmap (if not quite a table of contents) of the story about to be told. There is a stark, almost rattling contrast of different levels of realism and simpler, more cartooned styles. Tezuka manages to balance them, however, by carefully choosing what to simplify and what to render more thoroughly. His drawing of the “Brahmin” icon looks as if it could be a realistic, black and white rubbing of art made in the time period from which it is meant to have been created; but his depictions of people and animals (in the manner of a firsthand account) are simpler cartoons that come to life much more readily than the characters he etched into stone. This abstraction, to invoke Scott McCloud, allows the audience to give them nuances and individualistic qualities in a way that would otherwise prove impossible were they more naturalistic in their representation. The abstraction also allows Tezuka to display some of the more gruesome events that take place in Buddha: Kapilavastu, like the rabbit’s suicide, the tiger attack, or the brutal scourging of the young thief; were these drawn more realistically, his readership would have to be much narrower. Coming into this week’s reading assignment with very little knowledge of Manga, Tezuka’s work adheres to familiar artistic and storytelling concepts, thus rendering this foray into Japanese comics much less daunting.