Quite an interesting and ambitious work for 70's adult comics. What I find fascinating about Tezuka his the way he plays cultural telephone with WesteQuite an interesting and ambitious work for 70's adult comics. What I find fascinating about Tezuka his the way he plays cultural telephone with Western stories and ideas. Here, he takes the story of Apollo Pursuing Daphne and attempts to create a modern re-telling/understanding the concept of sex, gender, and love through the contexts of science and metaphor.
Our main character Shogo, is brought to a mental institution after being caught killing animals seen to be in love. Everyone around him is convinced he is a sadistic killer and not worth saving. His doctor however, sees his trauma and painful childhood as the keystone to his inherent misunderstanding of all things love (or rather sex). During electroshock therapy, Shogo sees the vision of a goddess who condemns him to a repeated cycle of lost and unrequited love. Through these visions of a past, present, and future, along with his subsequent relationship with a mysterious older woman who continuously appears in his dreams, does Shogo learn to not only understand feelings of love and sexual desire, but the roles we play within it.
While I understand some complaints I saw in other reviews about this story being gender essentialist and hetero-normative, I found the general meaning and concept of the story to be quite compelling. I believe that through Tezuka's own flawed, cis hetero-normative way, he was trying to understand the evolutionary need to procreate versus the sociological understanding of love and sacrifice. While the story of Apollo Pursuing Daphne can be seen as a metaphor of unreciprocated love, I think in a modern context, it can equally be seen as a metaphor for rape - something that the animal kingdom is often to do.
However, animals are shown in this story to be loving and devoted partners, humans not so much. Shogo, on the other hand, while barely understanding the appeal of human connection (and thus lashes out violently), does not rape - he demands attention, but he does not pursue. I think in a way, you have to be some what tolerant of Shogo's personality, I personally like that he's kind of a little shit. But his lack of agency in both his reincarnated lives and present one, makes him a bit more sympathetic to me.
I think where Tezuka really shines is when he is trying to get his theme across, not the detail per se. He has a great affection for animals and the environment; as well as stories about humanity's nature in the face of destruction. While definitely not perfect, I found to have held up better than some of his other adult stories, ...more
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