Good morning, everyone. I’m Noah Meyer of Apple Core, and I welcome you to the weekly Rising Sun blog. Here, we talk all things anime: what shows are worth watching, the philosophy in anime and even anime news. So let’s begin with Osamu Tezuka.

Tezuka is known as a “god of manga and anime”, and created hundreds of beloved works like Astro Boy and Buddha, pouring his admiration of Disney into his drawing style. He was the archetypal Japanese worker, having drawn thousands of pages of manga during his lifetime and practically begged the nurses to let him continue drawing on his deathbed. His life’s work was Phoenix, a saga of reincarnation, one that’s worth reading.

Each of the Phoenix stories is self-contained, but they’re all interlinked by the mythical Phoenix, an immortal bird that watches over humanity. The stories also zig-zag back and forth between the past and future until they converge. Unfortunately, Tezuka was never able to draw that one converging storyline.

The first story is Dawn, set in ancient times, and is about the fugitive hunter Nagi as he tries to capture the Phoenix and evade the forces of Queen Himiko. Future, the apocalyptic second story, is about Masato and his “moopie” Tamami as they try to survive the last days of humanity. In Yamato, a young prince tries to figure out what his purpose is in a political drama based on the famous Yamato Takeru myth. And Universe is a love story that’s doomed to end in tragedy on a distant prison planet.

There’s more stories than these four, but they’re all I read, and they’re really good. The point that these stories make is that all life is destined to end, and that immortality isn’t worth it. The bowman in Dawn only wants to shoot the Phoenix to challenge himself, and the conqueror Ninigi only wants to be immortal in memory. Masato becomes tormented and lonely as the last living being in Future, and Makimura’s immortality reduced him to a child on a wasteland planet in Universe.

Even though it’s incomplete, Phoenix is a must-read for any manga/anime fan. It has beautiful imagery, gripping plot-lines and a great message about savoring the time we have.