Phoenix, Vol. 4 : Karma

Rating:
Summary: Best of the Series? No way.
Review: I'm relatively new to the Pheonix series, having only recently purchased "Dawn" and "Future". I was so very impressed with the content and artwork in these two books, I lent them to everyone I knew. I could only afford one more book, and Karma it would be.

Now, after having ordered "Karma", I finally get to review the black sheep of my three book collection. Why the black sheep? Put simply, the philosophy in this book makes too little sense. It's like Tezuka made it up as he went along. The explanation of Karma in the book is confusing, and is rarely exemplified by the events. Ultimately, most of this book is simply a long trail of brutal, explicit tragedies and horrors - and I can't figure out what on earth they're there for. Only at the very end of the book do one or two characters actually receive the "Karma" that the book is named after ( but never fully explains ). Even then, the philosophy will bend your mind - not with constructive thought but with the desire to sort out the mess.

The Artwork is as top notch as the rest of the series, but there are a few brazenly obvious translation errors.

I'm not saying this is a terrible book by any means, but I didn't find it as good as the first two books. Don't get your hopes sky high.

Rating:
Summary: The Flaw That Unites
Review: Out of the three Phoenix volumes I've read I'd have to say that I think that this is the most effective. Karma follows the journey of two men, Gao and Akanemaru, on seperate but related journeys towards spiritual enlightenment and takes place during the early to mid 8th century, a period when Japanese society was apparently being reshaped to emulate China. Gao is born in a poor fishing village, and as a baby is dropped on his head from a great height when his father tries to take him to give thanks to the Mountain Spirit. The father dies and Gao is left missing an arm and an eye.

I'm realising that this kind of offhand brutality happens all the time in Tezuka's work. Babies getting dropped on their heads is just a start; Gao is ridiculed and maltreated as a child and eventually becomes a thief who kills his neighbours, accomplices in crime, lovers and strangers. He does it all without regret or compassion and with the complete confidence that is he is living in accordance with the nature: "Those that cannot survive are caught by the fisherman and eaten, leaving only a few. The people left alive are the winners." I didn't ever get the feeling that Tezuka was necessarily contradicting Gao's version of Social Darwinism. As those of you who have read The Future might agree, Tezuka's view of the Cosmos and man's role in it could be pretty bleak. Making sense of it may be outside of the scope of human imagination; although we grasp at the meaning, there's no reason that Gao's role in the cosmic scheme of things should easily fit into our system of morality.

"Society made me who I am!" declares Gao, but somehow I got the feeling from the sequence that even Gao didn't believe his own rationalisation. Aside from that, there's really not much hand wringing about his victim hood. Tezuka didn't strain to make the character sympathetic and in a lot of ways it's his very 'badness' that gives him the opportunity to evolve spirituality. One of Tezuka's greatest skills was to make the reader identify and feel pathos for his complex characters, no matter how silly, weird, evil, or devious they may seem.

Akanemaru is the opposite of Gao in almost every way; from birth he is naturally gifted and spiritual, kind, loving and determined. But in Tezuka's view of existence, there is no guarantee that he will remain that way. His privileged incarnation seems to be one of the main obstacles on his journey enlightenment. That said, even Akanemaru has trials that he must surmount and at one point, after Gao slashes his arm, making it useless for sculpting, Akanemaru seems to have actually achieved the next level towards true enlightenment. The Cosmos has other plans.

This is the first volume that I've read that really deals with the role of the artist in the world. Akemaru is forced to sculpt the Phoenix within three years on on pain of death. He succeeds, and is used as a pawn in political and religious maneuvering. This is story with a very Buddhist outlook, but Tezuka seemed to realize that religion is a creation of man and as such, destined to be flawed and corrupt as well as beautiful and true. Gao's mentor, the Abbot Roben observes: "Buddhism is only a vehicle for the authorities to deceive people and make them obedient and willing to pay taxes." As a result of efforts to save his own life (a rationlisation not far removed from Gao's) Akanemaru becomes the puppet of the corrupt government. He is commissioned to create a huge Buddha statue, the greatest in the land, and sees in his task the promise of immortality through its renown.

Meanwhile, Gao has also become a sculptor motivated to create haunting figures from whatever materials he finds in his journeys with his Master, the Abbot Roben. He sculpts hundreds of tortured faces from clay and dead trees in attempt to exercise his personal demons. While Akemaru wishes to give to the world through his art, Gao's motivation is purely personal, but in spite of this his fame begins to outstrip Akenamaru, leading to their final confrontation as artistic rivals. Again, Tezuka was not making a simple one-sided argument that one motivation is superior to the other, that would be too simple.

In the Pheonix stories Tezuka was dealing with one of the central paradoxes of human existence; it is natural for beings to strive to survive, but when the self-awareness of man takes this drive to its logical conclusion it becomes the desire to achieve immortality. However, it's a shallow concept of immortality that man often pursues, and seems to represent a resistance to change, and a fear of death more than anything else. The Phoenix, endlessly pursued by man, symbolises an endless cycle of death and then rebirth. Death is still an essential part of the equation and denial of this is the flaw that unites the ancient citizens of Dawn to their counterparts in Karma and, unfortunately, The Future.