Osamu Tezuka Forum

This is a really, really cool story. 
 
Apparently Brazilian comicker Mauricio de Sousa-- the "Disney of Brazil" --was planning a joint work with the "Disney of Japan" and godfather of manga, Osamu Tezuka, until Tezuka's unexpected death in 1989. The project, a movie about world peace, was never made-- but a comic version by de Sousa has been published, featuring some of Tezuka's most beloved characters, the first time a foreign comic creator has used Tezuka's characters with permission from his estate.

The original movie was going to be a story featuring de Sousa's Monica's Gang characters and Tezuka's Astro Boy and Princess Sapphire (of Princess Knight/Ribbon no Kishi), which were popular characters in Brazil thanks to TV broadcasts. The characters would go on an adventure of some kind or another and wind up with world peace-- sounds great, doesn't it?

But while they plotted and planned during de Sousa's trips to Japan, between those trips Tezuka passed on. It wasn't until last year, when he met up with a Tezuka Productions editor at a book fair in Italy, that de Sousa was finally able to get permission to use the characters to make a comic version of the movie.

The comic will come out in Brazil in Portuguese in June (though we don't seem to have a title for it yet); de Sousa also hopes to make a Japanese version. I, for one, hope that we'll get an English-language version, too. (Hey, Vertical? Pounce!)

Well, I knew about Mauricio's connection with Tezuka, however, I didn't know about this project between the two of them. Having grown up reading Turma da Monica comics, I expect great things from this comic. I'll definitely buy it. =D