Unico

Manga review: Unico
Over the years I have become somewhat numb to romance stories, and the more emotionally evocative or convoluted the plot twist, the less I seemed to enjoy the simple tale of love between two people.
And here enters Unico, a story about an infant unicorn with magical powers that only work if she is loved. And I rate it an 8/10, so obviously something is wrong with me.
Or maybe not. Because, yes, on the surface, Unico is a story for children who want some colourful adventure to immerse in. But as I read the story, it was clear to me that there is more than meets the eye, which did not surprise me seeming as this is Tezuka we’re talking about.
The 2 volumes cover 8 different short stories as Unico travels on a flying spirit that leaves her in the company of a variety of different people and other furry animals. Each story conveys a different type of love, some of which are: young love, mature love, the love between friends, the love of family, the love of pets, and even forbidden love. The majority of these stories starts with two people meeting and ends with them falling in love. And with the two characters falling in love, without the need for Unico’s love, they discard her, leaving her to once again travel alone. And quite appropriately, one of the later stores delves a little into the isolation of not being loved by anyone at all.
The charm this manga conveyed caught me by surprise, and the raw feelings shown through very obvious means (giant hearts in the sky for example) humbled me. Sure there were simple and cliché plot twists, and the “love” could be seen as mere lust or affection, but I like to think that Unico is somewhat of a cupid, bringing two people together in the name of love.
Many questions are pondered by our little one-horned friend, such as what even is love? What does it mean to be alone? And does it really even matter either way as long as you’re happy? By no means do you have to take these as anything meaningful – which is why Unico is so family-friendly – but if you choose to, then the story can actually have some merit even for hardened adults. Just be aware that the cutesy film covering the story is not all this series has to offer.
I will quickly end saying the art style is good old Tezuka, but with a twist. Because I am yet to mention that the entire series is in full colour. I need say no more.
Overall, I give Unico an 8/10, as any lower would be a mockery and any higher would be an overstatement, as yes, there are inherently “better” stories written by Tezuka (namely MW and Ode to Kirihito).

Osamu Tezuka is known in Japan as Manga no Kamisama, or the God of Manga, for a reason. He has written works in every genre, for every age, seemingly for every mood or situation one can find oneself in. I have personally read very little Tezuka that I was not instantly engrossed with. Unfortunately, Unico is one such book.

Unico is a book intended for children. It is short and simple, full of moral lessons and a surprising amount of heartbreak. It is one of Tezuka’s more cartoony books, with plenty of small gags and a focus on the cutesy. It is not, in any way, a bad book, but it does not contain the charm and depth that is normally found in Tezuka’s work. Each of the nine chapters stands alone, and I often found myself bored with them. All the stories were quite cute, but they were also extremely repetitive and shallow.

The biggest problem I had was not with the story, but the printing. Words were often somewhat buried into the center of the book, making me have to crack the spine much further than should have been necessary. The layout, though, is otherwise clever and very different from what one normally sees in any sort of graphic novel. This being said, I was also extremely disappointed in the end, or lack thereof, of the book. One more chapter would have closed the story up nicely, making a far more satisfying work.

Unico is a tad boring and rather shallow. It is not a perfect representation of Tezuka’s genius. It is, however, a wonderful book for children or for someone looking for something a little lighter. A good introduction for younger audiences to Tezuka’s work.

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Unico is a fairy-tales-like shōjo manga from Osamu Tezuka. It was started in 1974 in the short-lived magazine called Ririka.


Tezuka is known for crafting some of the first notable shōjo manga, with for examples Ribbon no Kishi in 1953 or the shōjo version of Hi no Tori in 1956. Those stories were for their time quite interesting ; definitely cute, stereotyped but with some little twists here and there, with cartoonish humor and compelling stories.


But then, 20 years after, in 1974 Tezuka did a new shōjo again, Unico.
Basically Unico is the same than those two manga, but without any humor, the little twists aren't there either, and there no real story anymore : you just repeat again and again the same motif because Unico forget everything between each chapter.
That's the main issue of that manga : no story, and thus no real character. It was really a boring read.

The other issue is simply that between Ribbon no Kishi and Unico, the content didn't really evolved, yet there is 20 years of difference between the two works. During those 20 years, there was some authors like Hideko Mizuno, Moto Hagio, Yumiko Ooshima and others who really changed the face of the shōjo manga, with more deep and complex stories and characters.
Tezuka said it himself in the postface of Unico : Unico is anachronistic, by being too smooth, too cute for being cute and with too flat, one-dimensional characters. You can't compare Unico to, for example, Wata no Kuni Hoshi from Ooshima, another manga for young girls from the same period than Unico.
Tezuka is known for being a precursor, but with Unico, he was really has-been.


Is Unico a bad read? No.
But if you are planing to read some old shōjo from Tezuka, you might as well read Ribbon no Kishi or even Hi no Tori that are more interesting in my eyes, more compelling.
And anyway, Unico was published 10-15 years too late.

Long before My Little Pony ever became a thing, Osamu Tezuka, a famous mangaka who would go on to lay the foundations for and popularize various genres all over with his work, created a manga about a baby unicorn who was made to travel all over the world bringing happiness to everyone he sees. That manga was Unico, first published in 1976. It didn't achieve the amount of success that Tezuka's other manga did, but it did manage to gain enough of a loyal fanbase that genuinely loved it for what it was. In 1979, a pilot OVA was made as a prelude to a potential TV series, but that wound up going nowhere. Anyone who knows Unico may have seen the two movies made by Sanrio, The Fantastic Adventures of Unico and Unico and the Island of Magic. However, the original manga never made it stateside until a company called Digital Manga Publishing decided to launch a Kickstarter to publish the manga in full color in 2012. The feat was a success, and the manga would finally be released in the US in 2015. But at that time, I didn't have money or a job, and from what I heard, the manga was really expensive. Thankfully, now that I have a stable job, I managed to find a relatively cheap copy of the hardcover edition, so now I own the manga!

For anyone who's seen the anime movies, the manga is VERY different from them. For one, while Unico being born from a family of unicorns is made the focus of one chapter, it's not where the story starts, nor did a bunch of Gods banish him to the Isle of Oblivion. Instead, Unico starts out as the beloved pet of a mortal woman named Psyche. However, the goddess Venus is jealous of Psyche's beauty, kindness, and endless supply of good fortune and happiness, which she finds is because of Unico. Because she can't stand anyone to be more beautiful and happier than her, Venus steals Unico from Psyche and commands the West Wind to take Unico as far away as possible. Time passes, and with every destination the West Wind takes him to, Unico's memories of his friends and previous lives are always erased, but he always finds some way to make new friends and help them with their problems, from helping a cowardly baby sphinx to be stronger and more self-sufficient, to leading forest animals to take back their forest when an animal-hating human tries to kill everyone there just for his own selfish gains.

It's rare for manga to be published completely in color, as that usually takes a lot of time and money. Most manga are in black and white, with a few exceptions. From an art standpoint, Unico does have a lot going for it. The colors are bright, the characters all have unique, cartoonish designs (Tezuka did say Disney was a huge influence on his art style), the panel layout is good, and sometimes the art bleeds outside the panels at the edges. I don't know if it was a deliberate style choice, and I think it probably is, but that part I found a little odd. Plus, Tezuka's backgrounds are lush and detailed. Not as much as other manga that would come out later, but they really stand out against his deliberately cartoonish character designs. And yes, Tezuka still uses his trademark giant noses from time to time. You know he would never pass up an opportunity to stick those in when he feels like it. And yes, Unico is adorable. I mean, how can you not love this little guy?

As far as the characters go, they're...not much to write home about. They're not bad or anything, and many of the side characters Unico meets are all very interesting and fun to read about in their own way. But some of them are either undeveloped or just stereotypically good or evil, with Unico being the former. Being an innocent kid, Unico is portrayed as unfailingly kind, passive, and nice, but also gently chastises people when they do something they shouldn't or are in the wrong in a conflict. But Unico isn't really given huge character flaws to make him more engaging and three-dimensional as a character, and he's pretty much the stereotypically nice, idealistic hero. There are several villains in the manga who fall on the opposite end, just stereotypically evil Saturday morning cartoon villains who do bad things just because they want something, with absolutely no sense of subtlety or humanity whatsoever. The rest of the characters fall somewhere in between, and even their development and character arcs are about as predictable as they come, and they also lack background as well. But your mileage may vary.

If you're coming here expecting a continuous, linear story, you might want to turn back, because Unico as a manga is intentionally episodic in nature. Every chapter focuses on Unico being taken to a new place, making new friends, helping them with their problems, the West Wind coming back for him to take him to another place, rinse and repeat. So yeah, the manga is very formulaic. Granted, the situations Unico gets into are always different, what with him visiting new places every time, so the settings never stay static. He travels to ancient Greece, very early America, a town that's very heavily polluted by a factory, a deserted island inhabited by a devil, lush forests, and so on. For those of you who saw the Unico movies, you may recognize characters such as Beezle, Katy/Ciao, and Baron DeGhost, as their scenarios are in the manga as well, but they play out very differently here, Katy and the Baron's in particular. In the movie, Baron DeGhost was a demon who ruled the forest and could turn into a gigantic Chernabog lookalike. In the manga, he's just some cruel hunter who hates animals and murders everyone he doesn't like with his rifle just because he can, and all the animals in the forest drive him out by working together. Yeah, I bet you didn't expect that, now did you?

Reading the manga, I also noticed one other huge flaw: Unico seems to have a lot of issues with continuity and consistency in terms of how long Unico has been taken away by the West Wind. When he's first taken away from Psyche, the manga mentions that the West Wind just...carries Unico around in a bag for centuries, possibly millennium, before he's dropped off and magically has no memories of her. What? That makes no sense! How did his memories get erased? The manga never explains who erases his memories and how, other than implying that the West Wind does it...somehow. Also, how did he manage to not die from being stuck in a sack for thousands of years? Plus, it's implied that many years pass whenever Unico travels to a new place, but all throughout that time, Unico never ages or grows up. He still stays a unicorn foal. Where's the logic in that? Or is he just somehow immortal? Again, the manga never explained this. In the movies, this issue isn't present, and just imply that it's been a few days or weeks since Unico was taken from his home, which I find to be much better. Also, the very first chapter contains a rather...outdated and stereotyped portrayal of Native Americans and their conflicts with the Europeans, along with a really soppy, hokey as hell love story between a Native boy and a white girl. "Oh, hello young girl who I just met a few minutes ago! You're my true love! Let me take you to my family's teepee so I can kiss you a lot!" "Oh yes, Native boy who I only just met a few minutes ago! I love you so much! I want to be your wife! Let's have Unico magically turn us into adults so we can kiss each other a lot and show how much we love each other!" Yeah...no. Too cheesy and dumb for me. Plus, some readers might not like that Unico never seems to be allowed to stay in one place. In one chapter he's reunited with his unicorn family...but can only see them for a day before the West Wind takes him and erases his memories yet again. What the hell?! Come on, manga! Let Unico catch a break for once!

One of my favorite bloggers mentioned that while he respected Tezuka's contributions to the anime/manga medium, he wasn't a perfect writer or storyteller, and felt that a good portion of his work would be better off in the hands of more capable people who would come after him. After reading the Unico manga, I'm inclined to agree, even though I admit to not having seen a good chunk of his work other than this, some episodes of Kimba The White Lion/Jungle Emperor Leo (the movies and specials included), and some episodes of the 2003 Astro Boy anime. The Unico movies, while having their own sets of flaws, took some of the stories in the manga and smoothed out a lot of their most persistent problems. But the manga does still have a lot to offer on its own, and I think it deserved to finally be brought over to the US after so many people saw the movies in their childhood. Unico fans have definitely earned the right to read the source material where Unico originated from. The manga isn't perfect, but after all the hard work it took for DMP to bring it over here, it absolutely deserves to be read by not only manga fans, but Tezuka enthusiasts and anyone who loves a good children's manga. I know it'll have a permanent place on my shelves for sure!