Alabaster

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Alabaster succeeds in telling an engaging story of how an innocent character falls from grace and becomes a truly evil person. It’s a quick and easy read and i’d recommend it to most fans of manga.

Tezuka has been credited as saying this is one of his works he’s the most ashamed of, citing a bout of depression as the impetus for this extremely dark story. This is a tale of evil, death, destruction, corruption of goodness, betrayal, hate and death. While I can understand where Tezuka is coming from looking back on ‘Alabaster’ i’m going to be far more kind to it. I think it’s ... good, nearly great even, as long as you’re prepared to follow chaotic evil protagonists facing off against lawful evil antagonists with very little respite from hate, especially in the back half of the story.

Although I want to position myself as someone who enjoyed this manga, I do want to talk about some negatives. Alabaster has a bit of a tonal problem, frequently diverging from its serious subject matter to gag manga territory, only to bounce back on the next page. This whiplash was not conducive to the manga and I would have preferred most of these gag elements be excised, at least near the mid point. Also, the characters occasionally suffer from bouts of spontaneous character development that don’t feel built up enough. The characters are entertaining, but not very nuanced. Lastly, (no spoilers) the end of the manga, while perfectly fine, seemed as if it had a chance to be more profound than it ended up being. This isn’t a reason not to read this, just a notable flaw. I’d call it a 7/10 ending when it seemed like a 9/10 was coming.

If the premise sounds interesting, you should check it out, you’ll probably enjoy it, and if you like it, try Devilman by Go Nagai next.

Definitely not the best from Tezuka, but still a nice one. Its themes reminded me of Black Jack, so I advise you to read some tomes of it before Alabaster.

There are some nice ideas and thoughts, especially the concept of Beauty, and the Envy inside everyone. The main characters are well-developed, but others are just completely useless. The art is Tezuka-like, so you will like it if you like his style, I cannot be entirely objective about it.

I advise you to read another manga from Tezuka (like Dororo, Adolf ni Tsugu or Black Jack), and then go back to this one.

Alabaster, not your regular or I say typical Tezuka Manga or Story.
As you have already read or seen Osamu Tezuka's other works like Astro Boy, Black Jack, Dororo, Buddha, etc. You can grasp the magical world of aestheticism, science fiction, and drama of his craftsmanship. But what makes Alabaster different from any regular stories of Tezuka is the framing of our anti-hero, Alabaster as the Hater of Beauty. As African-Amerian, James Block, being a professional sportsman, becomes the victim of racism. And this changes everything for him, he begins to hate his skin color. The story takes a great turn of events when this unfortunate ... victim of racism meets a mad scientist in jail and he gets to know his invention 'Invisible Ray Gun' by which any object can get invisible. Hating his skin color, he makes his mind to invisible himself but this decision backfires by leaving him to be half invisible; up to his outward skin, leaving his veins and skull visible. And abhorring his new gory look he generates a tendency toward hating anything beautiful. This gives birth to crimes like mass murder, terrorism, animal cruelty, and assassination.
Later, we get to meet a character called Ami, the granddaughter of that mad scientist, being raised by a lawyer. This kid is no ordinary kid but a result of mad research in which her mother becomes the victim leaving her fully invisible to the core. And to live with this extraordinary power, she has to put on makeup like a clown and become the victim of bullying. She becomes the foil for Alabaster, suffering the same torture of society but having a different view of its punishment.
Through Cosmic Conspiracy, they meet and commit the crime of murder and terrorism throughout the world. And they build an organization for these crimes.
Some may find this Manga as not par as Tezuka's another works but the characters like these are very few in the world of Tezuka. You can compare Alabaster to Black Jack and Hyakkimaru, they suffer the same pangs of society's term of 'irregular' or 'monster' but what differentiates Alabaster is his radicalism. As for me, I didn't hate the story but we have already seen these kinds of the story very much everywhere. But still, I find it very interesting, the approach of Osamu Tezuka's view upon the creation of an Anti-hero who loathes everything which discards him as irregular. I advise you to don't criticize this work just because you have already read or watched Astro boy or Dororo. This is a very different work with very criticized views. But I think you may, I repeat, you may find it interesting if you forget about other work and enjoy one of Tezuka's brilliant works.