Note: Please check out part two before you tackle this write-up!

While Frederik Schodt talked a lot about the myriad projects he has been involved with over the years, the focus of his Sunday panel (with a few moments spliced in from his Saturday panel) was on Osamu Tezuka’s manga techniques, the way Astro Boy rose to iconic fame in Japan, and how this one title sparked an entire revolution in the Japanese manga and anime industries.

Schodt started with an image from the September 4, 2006 edition of the New Yorker, featuring a cartoony “cross-section” of the teenage brain, which in addition to having chunks labeled “PS3″ and “Family Guy,” also has a section for “Manga.” Schodt pointed out that manga has become a mainstream word and has pop culture status in the United States. Using this image as an entry point for his discussion, Schodt said he wanted to talk about the life of the man who established the framework for the manga and anime culture that has spread from Japan to the rest of the world.

First, he wanted to dispel the myth that because Tezuka is often labeled “the god of manga,” there was no manga before he started creating his stories. In fact, there was a lot of manga that came before Tezuka’s, but he is the one who is credited for introducing new perspective techniques, expanding the comic strip form and experimenting with the already existing artistic styles found in manga. Schodt provided an example of a Japanese comic strip from the World War II era, which was surprisingly static, featuring a single setting and characters that appeared and disappeared without any sense or indication of motion. Yes, this example was probably cherry-picked to make a point, but when placed side by side with a few panels from Astro Boy, Tezuka’s work practically explodes off the page, by comparison.

Connecting back to Tezuka’s “god of manga” status, Schodt spent some time discussing the mangaka’s various achievements—most notably that in his lifetime, Tezuka drew over 150,000 pages of manga. He produced massive tomes such as Ode to Kirihito and Apollo’s Song, and also created manga adaptations of Crime and Punishment, Pinocchio, and Bambi.

It was nice to see Schodt focus on Tezuka’s personal views and how they showed up in his manga. As a direct result of having survived the bombing of Osaka by the United States in World War II, it is not surprising that Tezuka harbored very deep anti-war sentiments. (Schodt even joked that Tezuka was “militant” in his “anti-militancy” views.) To back up this claim, a page of Astro Boy was shown in which Astro Boy flies into a U.S. war plane that is about to drop bombs on the Vietnamese, asking them to stop.

In addition to being a promoter of peace, Tezuka also had a love for nature. As early as the 1950s, Tezuka was including themes that touched on ecological awareness and nature preservation.

Schodt eventually shared a fact that I found to be astonishing (or one that highlights a severe flaw in my so-called anime fandom): before Tezuka created the Astro Boy anime, Japan did not have any weekly, domestically produced cartoons on television. When Astro Boy debuted on January 1, 1963, it generated a lot of national pride and served as a new way for Japan to pull in foreign capital. In the U.S., NBC picked up the series and began airing it in September of the same year. One of the saddest facts I later came across was that the Astro Boy manga did not receive a proper English release until Dark Horse started doing so in 2002.

The creation of Astro Boy, Schodt noted, was significant on many levels. Schodt views Astro Boy as a metaphor for science and a symbol to help teach kids. Since his powers and uniqueness come from (pseudo-)science, not magic, Astro Boy is considered to be a major influence on the enduring Japanese obsession with robotics—an obsession that no other nation on Earth currently pursues with comparable passion.

Astro Boy also rose to become a national symbol—or ambassador, if you will—for Japan. Today, Astro Boy can be found on stamps, security system advertisements, and even massage chairs. Even though, according to Schodt, Astro Boy is “a slumbering icon in the American consciousness”, he kick-started the Japanese animation industry that exists today. Tezuka proved that manga could be adapted into animation and broadcast on a weekly basis to an eager audience.

The main idea I took away from this experience was simple: whenever Frederik Schodt is talking about manga and anime, I should drop whatever it is I have planned and go listen to the man. You should, too.