Creator: Osamu Tezuka
Publisher: Vertical, Inc.
Age Rating: Teen
Genre: Action
RRP: $14.95
Buddha v6: Ananda
Reviewed by Michael Aronson

Look, I realize I gave the last volume the same score, but really, I don’t go handing out A+’s like they’re candy canes on Christmas. An A+ book has to be the pinnacle of its art form, elevating the industry to new heights and eliciting an emotional reaction from the reader. I can’t help it if Ananda utterly succeeds. In between reading this volume and the last, I started browsing some of Tezuka’s older and less stellar titles and wondered if I was being a little too generous to his later titles, but time has only showered more and more kindness on Buddha.

I’m not kidding. This series is the best of the best of the best of the best of the best. Plus eight. Times a hundred. Imagine if Maus, Bone and Watchmen got together and decided to meld into an exponentially better comic and you’d be almost there.

The art this time out is simply breathtaking. Panel composition, figure position and expressions, environment and atmosphere are all rendered to perfection. Tezuka’s art is hardly very realistic and not often detailed, but that didn’t stop page after page from distracting me from the text. It can be said that very few artists continue to improve with age, as most tend to peak younger, but I’m not sure I’ve yet witnessed Tezuka’s peak, and he created Buddha near the end of his life.

As the subtitle declares, this is Ananda’s story and he completely steals the show. Though part Faustian, Ananda’s deal with the devil was made for him while he was but an infant, and this deal safeguarded his body and health throughout his existence. As suggested metaphorically on the cover, Ananda is in the grasp of the devil itself, which offers him protection so long as his career of murder and plunder leads him into confrontation with, and triumph over, Buddha himself. The crux of the tale revolves around the question of whether Ananda is the wielder of his power or its victims.

This volume may be the preachiest in the series, but that would only be a negative if there was no moral or philosophical value in the lessons told. Rather, the lessons and parables are timeless examples of virtuous behavior, and though I’m no professor of any religion, I noticed a number of similarities between Buddha’s teachings within and parables in the Christian Bible. While popular culture rages over how literal an interpretation should be extracted from the Bible, Tezuka has no qualms with presenting Buddha as historical fiction, and thus offers readers a greater freedom to take from the story what they will. In that respect, it’s exceptionally inspiring.

There is only one bit of obligatory preaching I must impart: Buddha is a must read!

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6 October 2009
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