This is a weird one- Tezuka's Buddha series was a great blend of comedy and sadness, and worked well with his drawing style and hokey sense of humour. Kirihito doesn't really work as well with that style, but on the other hand, he's turned down the hokum and the slapstick more than few notches.
What's crazy is how completely bleak this is. Of dozens of characters, two are even remotely close to being decent human beings. They're both raped and one of them is a dog-woman. The 'hero,' Kirihito, is balanced; he's awful sometimes, but you can understand why. His friend is awful, and we're told why. Everyone else is just horrible - self serving, hateful etc etc...
That's fine, I happen to think it's a pretty accurate representation of the world we live in, and Tezuka seems more open minded about finding solutions to this problem than most writers. But don't come to this expecting Buddha, or anything like that. It's just brutal. ( )

Hilarious and horrifying, Osamu Tezuka serves up the story of a righteous doctor turned into political pawn for the sake of those he trusted and of the staggering guilt of his best friend. The story is both a satire on the medical establishment and of self-serving politicians. It is a critique of private health care systems for the refusal of doctors to treat the poor and of society's dehumanizing responses to those with contagious diseases. The book is also a story of individuals and their capacity to find meaning and love and to persevere regardless of the circumstances.

Summary: In the early 70s, a young doctor named Kirihito Osanai is drawn into a nightmare when a patient in Room 66 has a mysterious and fatal disease that is turning him into a dog. Dr. Osanai has an idea of what is happening and his department director, Dr. Tatsugaura, ostensibly sends him on a mission to a remote village to meet with another patient.

Blending medicine, society behaviors and a mix of religion, Ode to Kirihito is a 20-chapter epic of a man's drive to reclaim his humanity and a medical quest to find a cause to the mysterious disease.

Impression: Originally serialized from 1970 to 1971 in Shogakukan's Big Comics, Ode to Kirihito is an example of Osamu Tezuka's range as a storyteller.

The art is typical of Tezuka which means that it appears simplistic but has a complexity of its own in the various expressions and movement.

Yet the story is a tightly wound medical mystery with a large cast that spans several countries and cultures.

Kirihito starts out as a naive, overly deferential junior doctor who is as idealistic as his director calls him. He is talented but also driven, much to the despair of his lovely fiancee, Izumi Yoshinaga.

When his life takes the bitter turn at the remote village of Doggondale, he has no choice but to flee.

The reason why the story held my interest was because Tezuka doesn't hold back from showing the reader the ambiguity that exist in people. Dr. Urabe, for example, is Kirihito's friend, but he also covets Izumi. He does both heroic deeds and horrible misdeeds. Reiko is another character who is never static. When we meet her, she seems an innocent, then she takes a turn, only to take another turn again.

There are stereotypes in the story but they aren't too distracting. There are good guys and bad guys and guys who are neither who serve to move the story to a new scene.

The middle chapters are a bit of a drag and oddly enough, Kirihito isn't quite as compelling as his friend Urabe.

Still, the story holds together in a fascinating way from its depravity to its strange use of faith. It holds together because at its core is a suspenseful mystery that is surrounding the cause of the disease. Is it caused by a virus? Or is it endemic? Why are people willing to kill to keep the truth of it from coming out?

These are the questions that consistently and legitimately come up through the story and to Tezuka's credit, he wraps up the answers to those questions in a plausible fashion (unlike some of other series that I could name).

As an overall score, I gave it a 3.5 because the middle chapters really did drag; however, I wouldn't be surprised if upon a re-read, I change that score to something higher. ( )

Wow! I feel like I've been fundamentally, historically ignorant on the topic of manga - which, while it may be a pleasurable and ultimately minor activity, thoroughly good (like sex) when situated firmly in its limited place in life but nothing worth getting frothed up over, is still enriched by learning a bit about its past. As are we. Knowledge of cultural products! Subcultural prestige! Fetishism makes the economic world go round.

It's all pretty sick, but ultimately kinda nice. Which dovetails nicely with what Osamu Tezuka, the bullied kid and medical doctor who grew up to creata Kirihito, Astro Boy, and some other jerks, and earn the unfortunate epithet "The Japanese Walt Disney," seems to be trying to say. An ambitious senior research physician infects his noble-hearted subordinate with a mysterious disease that causes atavistic regression into a dog-like state. Osanai Kirihito travels the world and has weird adventures in Japanese Deliverance country, a Taipei that puts a weird Japanese-colonial spin on the "cruel Celestials" orientalism more often associated with Fu Manchu and Hong Kong or Shanghai or Singapore. As Osanai struggles toward reclaiming his sense of agency (to attain the "active-literal", in Salman Rushdie's fantastic terminology, instead of the merely "active-metaphorical"), and as the other characters discover their own powers of movement and if and when to hinder and harm within an allegory whose purpose is initially unclear - how to be the symbols they were meant to be - it becomes clear that nobody ends up what they were meant to be. And it's not because of ambiguity or antiheroism or shades of grey. It's because we're all sick, but ultimately kinda nice. Tatsugaura may be the villain of the piece in one sense, but give the guy a break, he was just trying to get elected. It's no different than Barack Obama going back on his public-financing pledge. Reika the Human Tempura may fuck dogs, but she also has amazing hair. And high-beam powers of love. This is a goodhearted book, and the older and sicker I become, the more goodhearted I will find it. ( )