Phoenix, Vol. 2: Future

火の鳥 [Hi no Tori] #2

by Osamu Tezuka

First published in the 1960s, Phoenix remains relevant today. Civilization has gone underground after several nuclear wars. Masato, a resident of the underground capital of Tokyo, is discovered owning an outlawed alien animal with hallucinogenic properties. Fleeing for his life, he learns the secret of the Phoenix as the world veers toward Armageddon.

Genres: Manga, Comics, Graphic Novels, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction, Japanese Literature

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Dr. Osamu Tezuka (手塚治虫) was a Japanese manga artist, animator, producer and medical doctor, although he never practiced medicine. Born in Osaka Prefecture, he is best known as the creator of Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion. He is often credited as the "Father of Anime", and is often considered the Japanese equivalent to Walt Disney, who served as a major inspiration during his formative years. His prolific output, pioneering techniques, and innovative redefinitions of genres earned him such titles as "the father of manga" and "the God of Manga."

Reviews

[Drew Canole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Phoenix is a collection of novel length stories that are tied together with a recurring character being the phoenix who's blood is supposed to give immortality. The phoenix is typically a background character, a macguffin with characters trying to capture him, or a Deus ex machina. Each volume alternatives between stories set in the past and future.

Phoenix feels like Tezuka's platform to share any kind of story he wants to tell instead of being tied to a long series like Astroboy or Buddha which have more restrictions. The creativity he shows here is astounding.

This volume is, obviously, a tale of the Future set in 3404AD.

[Aphrodite Urania · Rating 5 out of 5]

Se potessi dargli più di 5 stelle, lo farei!

[Ellie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Osamu Tezuka's self-described masterwork is Phoenix, a collection of manga novels that are tied together by the appearance of the immortal Phoenix bird. The volumes alternate between being set in the past and being set in the future, such that they gradually converge towards a present-day time. Sadly, the epic series never reached a conclusion because of Tezuka's death; happily, each story can be read as a standalone work so this incomplete status isn't too unsatisfying.

I mean to read the entire series but I wanted to start with a reread of the only one I had experienced beforehand, "Future". Viz must have thought this one particularly notable because it was translated and published before the others as a standalone title called "Phoenix: A Tale of the Future" and it was in this form that I first encountered it. At age 9 I found this melancholy, epic tale of the death and final decline of the human race to be very emotionally affecting. I think it actually gave me nightmares not from any particularly frightening elements but rather from the overall tone of hopelessness and decay. (Side note: Why did I read so much age-inappropriate manga when I was in elementary school? Christ.)

Revisiting this as a more mature person I appreciated it more and it wasn't as bleak and frightening as I remembered. Despite chronicling the death of all humanity there is a current of hope and optimism that runs through it all especially in the benevolent godlike character of the Phoenix and the surprisingly touching romance between the main character and his Moopie [a shape-shifting alien] girlfriend. I have to note that her portrayal as the story's only female character was perhaps a bit sexist but not egregiously so for the era this was written in.

The art is excellent. I love Tezuka's cartoonish art style and he frequently provides the reader with unexpected and unconventional page layouts that really draw in the eye.

Highly recommended to all fans of science fiction, especially real classic dystopian, sweeping sci-fi tales; or to anyone who loves manga and is curious about a classic 60s example of the art form.

[Emmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phoenix: A Tale of the Future first popped up on my radar as a young undergrad while browsing the campus library. This was before I was willing to admit that graphic novels are not just comics for babies, and honestly, I was a bit embarrassed to be seen with it, so I only read snatches of plot once in a while. About four years later, I finally requested it from the library, sat down, and was amazed about how much I had been missing.

This was probably one of the best manga I've read, period. And I read a lot of manga. I read a lot of everything, in fact, and I would say it's easily made its way into my favorites. The story was great! It was imaginative, and it was so different from Phoenix, Vol. 1: Dawn. It was an amazing story that drew me in, made me smile, made me cry, and made me think about life for a good long while before I finally drifted off to sleep. One of my measures of a good book is how much sleep it causes me to lose. Judging by how tired I was when my alarm finally went off this morning, I'd say it was exceptional.

I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the series, and I encourage readers to pick up the books in order. However, I would also agree that since this particular volume can also read as a stand-alone story, this would still be worth a go. Either way, read it. It will break your heart, and make you really think about the world. It's deep, but it's also simple. It's pretty much an amazing story, and one that deserves to be read and reread. It comes with my highest recommendation for a manga.

[Vicente Ribes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Igual de bueno que el primer tomo, Tezuka teje una historia futurística donde no faltan el cientifico que quiere salvar a la humanidad, el heroe bueno y su amada y el villano que pretende acabar con todo. Todos ellos muestran sus rasgos más humanos en una historia preciosa.

[Elfo-oscuro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Si en el primmer tomo te enganchaba la trama, el contexto historico y los personajes, aqui en este segundo tomo pasamos de tematica historica a tematica de ciencia ficcion y algo de evolución con escenas en la parte final que ya has leido en el tomo 1. La cerdad es que me ha costado mas su lectura y veo que ira alternando historia con belico y ciencia ficcion. Espero que nuevas tramas con nuevos personajes hagan mas interesante las continuaciones

[fonz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tezuka se marca una particular versión de "Hacedor de estrellas" de Olaf Stapledon que hay que leerla para creerla. Extraordinaria en el más amplio sentido de la palabra.

[Coke Fernández · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una maravilla.

[Dias Wuri · Rating 5 out of 5]

This comic book was given to me by my dear friend form Japan, named Hisashi Itoh. I was once not so interested by Tezuka (I don't really like Astro Boy), therefore I wasn't emotionally frantically happy when he handed me this book, looking beautiful in a nice purple package along with a gorgeous bookmark shaped like a Japanese fan.

To be brief, I read the book and after that, I sent my pal Hisashi an email (he was already back to Tokyo then). The email was a true expression of my thoughts after finishing the book, so it's better to copy-paste that particular email for this review...

"I just finished the "Phoenix: Future". Oh my God, how incredible it is! Tezuka could make/write almost everything, couldn't he? His imagination was just beyond the beyond, I couldn't put "Phoenix" once I started. I admire the way Tezuka built such a post-apocalyptic world, with such complex characters and lines of story (recently I became a big fan of "The Hunger Games", which is also about post-apocalyptic world, and I was pretty stunned by it, but I think Tezuka's is better, not to mention he wrote it in the 60's)! The Phoenix character herself reminds me of the firebird appeared in C. S. Lewis' Narnia, but this Phoenix is more mythical, more I don't-know-I-just-can't-explain. Pure awesome.

And the story. I didn't think Tezuka could be so... you know, cruel, in a good way. He could "kill" characters easily and left readers in a hollow feeling over the loss of those characters. The story moves so fast, we don't have time to cry, yet in this heart we feel a deep agony. God, how could he be so genius! I was amazed, Tezuka transformed the theory of the origin of the universe in his own unique way (SLUGGO ERECTUS!!!!! :O). And I feel sorry for Yamanobe, I got goosebumps just to imagine how someone, all of a sudden, is unable to die, and just lingers there forever, and ever, ever, for thousand, millions, billions, zillions of years, and becomes a cosmic itself. But I'm happy because in the end Yamanobe ended up with Tamami.

Man, Tezuka's imagination!!!

Okay, I'm sorry, I know I'm blabbering and totally uncontrolled, I can't help myself."


YAAAAAAAY. Now I can say, "Tezuka-san, aishiteru."

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phoenix: A Tale of the Future is the second volume of Osamu Tezuka's lifework, Phoenix. Even though I'll be reviewing the second volume, every volume of Phoenix stands on its own, so if this one sounds interesting, you don't have to read the first volume before Future. The basic concept of Phoenix is that there's this immortal bird, the Phoenix, and it can make you immortal. This volume of Phoenix takes place in the far future, where large underground cities are ruled by old-school computer brains. These things look giant computers from the 50's, though they don't look out of place with Tezuka's art style. I sincerely enjoy Tezuka's art. It doesn't have the stereotypical manga look and it has a nice retro feel. Anyway, the story involves a guy named Masato who ends up making enemies with one of the cities and escapes to the Earth's surface. There's much more to the story that that but I'm not going to spoil it for you here. The story creates a fantastic atmosphere. Everything is very serious and interesting without being impossible to understand (*cough* Angel's Egg and Evangelion). I liked it a lot until the end, which introduces weird Buddhist metaphysics. It's not that I didn't understand it, it's just that this philosophy doesn't fit with the rest of the comic. Fortunately, the theme of Phoenix is actually pretty cool. The message of the comic is basically that humans should strive together to be awesome. I think everybody can agree with that moral. The characters are great, the art style looks neat, and the story is deep without being nonsensical. Phoenix: A Tale of the Future may be one of the best comics I've read. Read it now.

[Tom Ewing · Rating 5 out of 5]

The same length as 'Dawn', 'Future' is at once tighter in story and more epic in scope: a parable of a declining human race which opens out into a meditation on cyclical time, futility and patience. There's a grandeur to the post-apocalyptic third act that's remarkable, like the rite of spring sequence in Disney's Fantasia rewritten by Olaf Stapledon - but it's also constantly leavened by Tezuka's gift for humour and the gorgeous fluidity of his action sequence. Future ought to be a bleak story - it's a study in folly and futility, and its main lesson is that there are no such things as easy solutions. But the warmth of the cartooning infuses it with a kind of cosmic optimism. It's a huge shame this is out of print in English - even beyond the world of manga, Future deserves recognition as a children's classic.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

WAAAA AMAZING!!!!!!! Wow this was a great book. I haven't read the entire series and I don't know if I'll ever get the chance to since these books are out of print (I wish I could) but DAMN I need to read more by Tezuka. The emotions he was able to stir in such a short amount of time; the deep and profound comments on existence, the earth, the universe, life and how limited man's conception is of all of these things and how humanity's arrogance will be and will always be its downfall. Life is more expansive than mankind cares to understand it. Everything is alive, though not in the way man sees it. Ughhhhhhhh this book needs to be taught and thought about on a global scale. The only lesson for which I'll stand up and shout: PREACH!

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

File it under "comics about existence". I didn't even realize this was a volume 2 until writing this. It's as open and expansively shut as I could imagine. I would love to see this as a live action movie but know that a movie would never do this justice. Likewise, a book would slow it it down. The pacing. The mystery. The very real fantastic. Yet more proof of the AW YEAH of graphic novels.

[Printable Tire · Rating 4 out of 5]

This started out as sort of a manga-through-a-philip-k-dick-lens, with Dickian concepts like identity and Dickian goofy names like the shapechanging Moopies and hackneyed fun manga language of the "Hey! Watch whey're you're going, y'know!" variety. I found the character design and dialog pretty unremarkable, though the backgrounds were pretty cool. Then the last one hundred or so pages enter a mindfucking saga of Star Maker proportions and everything is awesome.

[Yuki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh. My. Gosh. This classic manga left me completely speechless... I'd like to write more later about how good it is in detail. But maybe the best thing for you to do in the meantime is just give it a try.

[Onírica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cinco estrellas para uno de los mejores mangas que he leído en mi vida. Osamu Tezuka es el gran maestro por obras como esta, por extraordinarios tomos concretos como este. Y es que el tomo 2 de Fenix supera al ya de por sí impecable tomo 1.

[Lavanya Naithani · Rating 5 out of 5]

this volume (volume 2) in particular was the best and the most thought provoking piece of fiction i’ve ever consumed. what hurts more is that it is criminally underrated and this volume can easily compete with well known literary classics.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved its epic scope, but never quite connected with the cast and saw the ending coming a little too soon.

[Sarah AK · Rating 3 out of 5]

I definitely didn't like this volume nearly as much as the first. It was okay and I liked aspects of it, but I also found myself annoyed by it. Mostly by the women, or should I say womAn because there's really only one and she's basically considered a fuckbag to every male character in here (and she's not even human... just an alien sex doll?). However, I digress (1960s, got it... and it's not like I haven't seen glimpses of this in his other books). This has some cool ideas that I'm sure were pretty groundbreaking for the time (especially the Battlestar Galactica it pulled at the end), but this is the first Tezuka book I've read that really felt dated. I know he has more (a lot of his books now warn you at the front about it being from a different era) and I'm really not gonna judge it too harshly based on that. That said, I am still allowed to be annoyed by this book's one female character (and moreso by how the men treat her), but even without this complaint, I don't think this book was as good as Dawn (or any of the ten other books I've read by him).

[Melos Han-Tani · Rating 4 out of 5]

The extreme opposite of volume 1 in terms of time setting, was interesting to see the parallels between the mother computers in Future and the Oracle in Dawn (Vol 1). Was sort of grim/nuts/funny to see the last 5 human colonies just explode like that...

The last third of this volume, when the world ends - reminded me of later visual novels like Yu-No, which set their climaxes in those kind of broad, speculatively spiritual 'existence-wave-universes' that transcend time. Reminds me of the later Xenogears as well, which was attempting a Phoenix-like plot. I feel like those kinds of endings - at least when they go to the "infinity years after humanity is gone" - can be a bit bleak... sort of feeling thematically similar in some ways. But Phoenix manages to do it relatively well.

Curious where the rest of the series goes! I like the reincarnation device - reminds me of the 2020s novel All Flowers Bloom.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Tezuka's backgrounds, but I find his human and animal art far too comical for the story he's telling. Same for some of the dialogue, although this volume at least didn't have the out of date pop culture references the first volume had.

I enjoyed the sci-fi aspects at the start of this, city nations controlled by a central computer is a well-worn trope for a reason, and I would have liked to have seen more of those cities. Considering how much death and destruction there is in this story, you're never really given any reason to care. It all felt like a rush to the ending where Tezuka got to set out his thesis about humanity.

Overall, goofy art and goofy dialogue combine to tell a pretty depressing story about the futility of human nature, and also the hope that one day we'll get it right.

[Einar Steinn Valgarðsson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Framför frá fyrstu bókinni. Framan af dálítið geim-sápuleg og teikningarnar í fremur einföldum stíl, nema helst bakgrunnurinn. Þemun eru þó áhugaverð, heimsendastef og áhugavert t.a.m. að sjá tölvurnar sem tekið hafa við sem leiðtogar herja sín á milli, báðar sannfærðar um eigin óskeikanleika. Ástarsagan milli "moties"-ins og mannsins var ágæt, en það er þó fremur í seinni hlutanum sem sagan nær flugi og fer meira yfir í "epíska Tezuka", sem ég held meira upp á en barnateiknimyndahúmors-Tezuka. Þar nýtur hann sín líka betur, teikningarnar eru stórbrotnari og vandaðri, ekki síst bakgrunnurinn, svo sem hæfir stórum þemum. Þrjár til þrjár og hálf stjarna hjá mér. Buddha finnst mér enn það besta sem ég hef lesið eftir Tezuka, en þessi bók er góð.

[Anthony Wendel · Rating 5 out of 5]

When attempting to explore more of the works of Osamu Tezuka I explored the second volume of Phoenix. It is easy to see why Tezuka believed this to be his life's work. The story told is full of deep emotion, powerful messages, and beautiful art. The story goes from a simple one about a man trying to protect the woman he loves, only to cross paths with the mystical phoenix and find himself blessed/cursed with immortality. It becomes an insanely deep and philosophical look with every turn of the page and it's only a single volume in the works of Phoenix. I recommend everyone take the time to read this book and hopefully someday I will be able to finish the entire series.

[Clay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful

Exquisite art, simple in line, but full of detail (and sometimes any in-joke hidden in plain sight). Powerful story and an interesting "endcap"for the whole saga that is contained within the next 10 volumes.

[Sotofunkdamental · Rating 5 out of 5]

Obra maestra de ciencia ficción, ambientada en un futuro próximo a la extinción de la humanidad. "Futuro" presenta conceptos como el egoísmo, el control, la vida, la evolución, la experimentación, las guerras, la supervivencia, la inmortalidad, el tiempo y las formas de vida.

[Dylan Benedict · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked Volume One but this edition was a major step up. I found Vol 2 to be deeply moving and quite powerful.

[Brooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mind-blowingly beautiful

[Marjo_Aquene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wouah!!! J'ai adoré. Au travers de ce deuxième tome on voit à quel point Osamu Tezuka était un génie. Il a une vision assez critique mais juste du genre humain. Magnifique

[二六 侯]

孤獨的最後一人等待新生命誕生，說是未來篇，其實是「滅絕—演化—文明」的循環。

[Alex Johnston · Rating 5 out of 5]

My kind of 60s spiritual science fiction - I love stuff like this and Tezuka's cosmic universe of infinite recursion is incredible.