As exclusively reported on Crunchyroll, Scholastic will be partnering with Tezuka Productions to reimagine five Osamu Tezuka series to be released by its kids-oriented imprint Graphix. The series included in this partnership are Atom Cat/Astro Cat, Princess Knight, TheThree-Eyed One, Triton of the Sea and Zero Man.
Considered to be one of the most influential artists of all time, Osamu Tezuka‘s works are still read by many from all ages and they still provide inspiration and fresh ideas to contemporary artists such as Naoki Urasawa, whose reimagining of of Tezuka’s Astro Boy, Pluto, was both commercially and cirtically a success. Just two weeks ago, a Princess Knight-inspired animated movie Ribbon Herohit Netflix’ library globally.
Scholastic and Tezuka Productions have had already partnered in 2024 for a UNICO respin, and now they will be bringing five new reimaginings which will be available from Graphix. These series are Atom Cat/Astro Cat, Princess Knight, TheThree-Eyed One, Triton of the Sea and Zero Man.
Similar to UNICO, the author behind these reimaginings will be Samuel Sattin. However, who the Japanese artist or artists who will illustrate these series in manga form are not disclosed as of yet.
The moves were also announced at Scholastic’s “Day of Manga” event at the publisher’s New York Headquarters. Reporting on the event,ICv2 noted:
Saylor noted that the third volume of Unico debuted at number 121 on the USA Today best-seller list. “The arc of the of the sales has been really amazing,” he said, “and the way people have responded to it has been amazing. I think partly what kids are responding to is that they’re not afraid of the complexity of the story and they like the fact that there’s hard stuff to deal with.”
Among the announced series, the only original title that is currently available to read in English is Princess Knight, from Kodansha. Considered one of Tezuka’s most influential manga, it tells the gender-switching story of a princess with both the heart of a boy and the heart of a girl.
Astro Cat/Atom Cat began as a parody of Tezuka’s own Astro Boy and the original features a highly adorable main character.
