Digital Manga announces MASSIVE six-figure Tezuka Kickstarter

Digital Manga has been successfully Kickstarting publication of several books by God of Comics Osama Tezuka for a few years now. So far they’ve done Barbara, Swallowing the Earth and more. But Tezuka drew some 150,000 pages of comics in his lifetime, so this is a pretty big task to bring all his comics to English. The new project has ambitious goals: to publish the following titles:

• The Three-Eyed One Vol.1-13
• Rainbow Parakeet Vol.1-7
• Wonder 3 Vol.1-3
• Alabaster Vol.1-2
• The Vampires Vol.1-4
• Birdman Anthology Vol. 1-2

And to do that they are trying to raise a mere….$380,000. That will take many Tezuka fans. But he is a god of comics after all. Here are the books they are looking to fund:

The Three-Eyed One: Sharaku Hosuke is a 3-Eyed One descended from an unknown ancient race, and seems an innocent child at times, but when the bandages are removed from his forehead and reveals his third eye, he becomes a dark, merciless boy who will do anything to find his people’s history and a place to belong.

Kickstarter Release date: Vol.1-13: 7/2015

Rainbow Parakeet: An actor of wide renown as a master of mimicry and disguise who fills in difficult roles for a small fee: the employers must turn a blind eye to his thieving, but young and spunky detective Senri Mariko relentlessly pursues him, always a few steps behind.
Kickstarter Release date: Vol.1-7: 7/2015

Wonder Three: In the series, Wonder 3, it is the year 196X, and in a world beset with constant war can humanity redeem itself in one year before the galactic space federation decides to end Earth once and for all?
Kickstarter Release date: Vol.1-3: 7/2015

Alabaster: is about James Block, a once famous athlete, now infamous villain Alabaster, who seeks revenge on those who’ve betrayed him and revolts on anything he considers beautiful. He adopts a girl Ami who he regards as the perfect invisible woman, but will her hope of young love for another man be Alabaster’s undoing?

Kickstarter Release date: Vol.1-2: 7/2015

The Vampires: Has a young werewolf boy, Toppei, move to Tokyo in search of his missing father, but when he is witnessed killing a man in his transformed state he is embroiled in Rokuro Makube’s devious machinations for money and power. Will Toppei ever be able to free himself in order to find his father?

Kickstarter Release date: Vol.1-4: 7/2015

Birdman Anthology: In Birdman Anthology, it was decided through galactic intervention that humans were unfit to run society, so special seeds were scattered throughout Earth that evolves birds into the dominant sentient race. They believed they were better than the humans that lived on Earth, however it seems that history always has a way of repeating itself…

Kickstarter Release date: Vol.1-2: 7/2015

Tezuka is a bit of an acquired taste but once you’ve got the taste you want more. His works are problematic for endemic reflection of conventional racism and sexism, but no one approached stories with a more humanist slant. I think it’s pretty balsy of Digital Manga to try to get all of this done in one colossal swoop….and I wish them luck.