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Osamu Tezuka's Layouts for Unpublished Manga Discovered

Rittorsha announced that it will publish Tezuka Osamu Missing Pieces, a book collecting previously unreleased layouts and drafts from the "God of Manga" Osamu Tezuka, on November 14. The book will include the layouts for three manga and other materials that Tezuka Productions only unearthed this past summer. 

Tezuka Productions discovered the layouts in two cardboard boxes while organizing documents in its art storage facility in Niiza City, Saitama Prefecture in June. Tezuka drafted and sketched the layouts' panels, character, dialogue, and other elements in pencil. Tezuka Productions thinks the layouts date from around 1973, when the creator was caught in a bind with the bankruptcy of his anime studio Mushi Productions. According to the company, this is the first time that this much unpublished layouts were discovered at the same time.  

Tezuka created these layouts to pitch his manga plans to magazine editors, and two were never published. One 27-page layout follows a high-performance computer reborn as a feral, wildcat-like boy. Another 28-page layout follows a young man solving the mystery of his big brother, who died in a wreck on the northern face of the Eiger mountain in Switzerland. 

The third layout is apparently the 44-page prototype for the 1975 one-shot story "The Lowly Angel" about a protagonist who takes care of a young girl.

The book will contain the draft for Tezuka's short manga  Mansion OBA (The OBA Condos), which ran in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine from March to June 1972. The book will also publish various layouts and character sketches that have so far only appeared in various mooks (magazine-style books) and bonus materials.

Aside from material from Mansion OBA, the book will also contain layouts and drafts from the following Tezuka works:

• Gucchan to Paiko-san
• Antenna Ichizoku
• Hyōtan Komako
• Alabaster
• Kirihito Sanka
• Microid S
• Doronko-sensei
• MW
• Miraijin Chaos
• Dotsuitare
• Hidamari no Ki
• Nanairo Inko
• Prime Rose
• Goblin Kōshaku
• Phoenix: Sun

Rittorsha has previously published three similar Missing Pieces books focused on three other Tezuka works: Black Jack, The Three-eyed One, and Princess Knight.

Sources: Mantan Web, Jiji Press, Rittorsha