Phoenix volume 1
One of the supposed masterpieces of Tezuka! Let's see how it is.
In a way, it's very ambitious as it tries to tell Humankind's story, from the ancient times to the future. It's like a Civilization game! It does by telling 12 stories, in different ages, and from what I read, the stories are interconnected both by the titular Phoenix and by reincarnated characters.
This first volume is the first story, Dawn, which chronologically it's also the first one. The second volume for example is the last story chronologically (3000 A.D.) so it jumps quite a bit. It's the story of the dawn of the country of Yamato empire, founded by invaders, and the fall of the previous kingdom ruled by a Sorceress-Queen, respected as god on Earth. And it does it with a lot of action, Tezuka usually does pretty fast paced manga, and it's the same here. In a few dozens pages you have treason, deaths, invasions by armies, promises of vengeance, slavery, all intertwined with story of people who wants to kill the mythical Phoenix who lives in a volcano to obtain immortality.
The art is typical Tezuka, but even if looks simple at first, he was a master of his craft and it has some very cool parts playing with shadows and lightning, and the flow between panels is excellent.
