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Dogo Onsen Bath House PR Anime Releases Final Episode
posted on by Kim Morrissy
The Dogo Onsen hot spring bathhouse collaboration anime with Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix released its third and final episode on Friday. The anime is part of a revitalization project for the Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture bathhouse that began in January last year.
The episode was released on the monitor at the bathhouse venue, as well as the establishment's official website.
The episode depicts the famous Buddhist monk Ippen Shōnin (played by Itsuji Itao) using the energy of the Phoenix (played by Nana Mizuki) to travel to the present.
The prologue and first episode were released in May last year. The second episode debuted in May this year. The third episode was originally scheduled for mid-2020.
The anime was produced by Tezuka Productions. It was storyboarded and directed by Fumihiro Yoshimura (Black Jack). The screenplay was handled by Shōichirō Masumoto (Yamishibai: Japanese Ghost Stories) and Taisuke Nishimura. Shinji Seya (Black Jack: Child from the Sky) was both the character designer and chief animation director, and the music composer was Yuuji Nomi (Phoenix).
Viz Media published the Phoenix manga in North America, and it describes the series:
Considered by many the peak of Osamu Tezuka's artistic achievement and called his "life's work" by the author, Phoenix is made up of twelve complex stories linked by the presence of the mythical bird, an immortal guardian of the universal life force. Read in order, the separate stories jump across time, alternating between a distant future and a distant past, converging on the present, with characters from one story being reincarnated in another.
The manga has inspired a series of anime films and OVA adaptations from 1978 to 1987, each adapting a different story in the manga. The manga also inspired a 2004 television anime.
Pony Canyon has been livestreaming a view of the Dogo Onsen on YouTube since March last year.
Source: Asahi Shimbun (Ryūta Kameoka) via Yahoo! News
