A to Z of Animation Studios: O Is for Osamu Tezuka's Mushi Production
The studio that built the foundation of TV anime, and nearly broke itself doing it.
O is for Osamu Tezuka's Mushi Production
The founder: Osamu Tezuka, often called "the God of Manga." He was a trained doctor who chose comics instead, and he created hundreds of stories over his life.
Founded: 1961. Tezuka started Mushi Production to bring his manga to animation.
Greatest hits
Astro Boy (1963). REAL: one of Japan's first weekly animated TV series, about a robot boy with a big heart and rocket boots. To make a cartoon every single week, Tezuka's team used limited animation and reused drawings, techniques that shaped TV anime for decades.
Kimba the White Lion (1965). REAL: Japan's first color TV anime series.
Princess Knight (1967). A princess raised to secretly act as a prince. One of the earliest anime aimed at girls.
The Tezuka formula
Big expressive eyes. Tezuka was inspired by Disney and Fleischer cartoons, and his round-eyed style became a signature of anime.
Heart and big ideas. Even his kids' shows dealt with life, death and what it means to be human.
Do the impossible on a budget. He figured out how to make weekly TV animation possible in Japan.
The struggle
Tezuka was a brilliant artist and a less brilliant businessman. He sold Astro Boy to TV at a very low price to get it on the air, and that made it hard for the studio, and later for the whole anime industry, to earn enough money. REAL: Mushi Production went bankrupt in 1973. Tezuka kept working through his own company, Tezuka Productions.
RUMOR, and still debated: fans have long pointed out similarities between Kimba the White Lion and Disney's The Lion King (1994). Disney has said the filmmakers weren't influenced by it. People still argue about it today.
Honorable mention: OLM
The studio behind the Pokémon anime since 1997, plus Yo-kai Watch and Inazuma Eleven. OLM has kept Ash, and now new heroes, on screen for decades.
The lesson
Tezuka shows how one person's vision can create a whole industry. He also shows that an artist needs a business plan, or the art can sink the studio.
Up next
P is for Pixar.
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