Kirihito and his best friend, Urabe, suspect that the sickness, known as Monmow’s disease, could be caused by some sort of toxin in the environment, especially since all the known cases of the disease originate in one tiny town in the mountains on an isolated island. The story centers on Kirihito Osanai, a young doctor among the staff of a prestigious university hospital, and his friends and colleagues, as they face one of the toughest cases they’ve ever encountered: a strange disease that transforms the body of its victim, changing them into dog-like beasts before eventually killing them. So, the copy of the first of two volumes in Vertical‘s reissue of Ode to Kirihito that we at Colony Drop received fresh from our grocer’s freezer ( BUY VERTICAL PRODUCTS) is an exciting new experience for me.

I’ve heard it said that Tezuka was a very competitive man, and works like Kirihito were something of a response to the independent gekiga (“dramatic pictures” - think “graphic novel”) movement of the times, a chance for him to try a hand at more experimental styles of storytelling and presentation. Not to mention that Kirihito is aimed squarely at an adult audience, rather than the boys’ comics he’s more famous for. Oh, sure, I’ve got a couple of volumes of Astro Boy, a shelf filled with Black Jack, and somewhere I’ve got a couple of the books from Tezuka’s “life’s work,” Phoenix, but none of these series feature a single continuing plotline for more than a few hundred pages at a time - Black Jack features plenty of continuity, but wraps up every individual story in a single chapter, and Phoenix is about recurring themes and elements rather than one cohesive narrative. Ode to Kirihito is the first long, serial work from Osamu “God of Manga” Tezuka that I’ve read, even in part.

Ode to kirihito