Meet the author

Osamu Tezuka.

Writer · Japan · b. 1928

Osamu Tezuka: the 'god of manga' behind Astro Boy and the gentle unicorn Unico, a canonical, endlessly influential storyteller whose all-ages comics still brim with kindness and wonder.

Osamu Tezuka (1928–1989) was the Japanese cartoonist known the world over as the 'god of manga', the towering figure who shaped modern comics and animation. Creator of Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion and the epic Phoenix, he drew tens of thousands of pages across a prolific career, many of them for young readers. His gentle unicorn hero Unico, a little creature whose gift is to fill hearts with love, has been lovingly revived for a new generation in the full-colour Unico manga (Awakening, Hunted, Lost), keeping Tezuka's tender faith in kindness at its heart. Warm, wondrous and emotionally rich, his stories pair sweeping adventure with a deep moral seriousness. Decades on, Tezuka remains one of the most influential storytellers in children's and all-ages comics.