Osamu Tezuka's Star System
Over the course of his career, Osamu Tezuka reused the same characters in different roles in different stories. The way that Tezuka used the characters in his "star system" can be seen as somewhat analoguous to a film director frequently casting members of a regular "stable" of actors in different roles. For instance, the "actor" Shunsaku Ban or Shunsuke Ban, who played the detective in Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis, also played Astro Boy's teacher in Astro Boy. Tezuka jokingly made a list of how much they were paid and based them on famous western actors in his time.
Because numerous kanji all have the same pronunciations in Japanese, characters' names are usually phonetically identical but written with different kanji from story to story.
Read more about Osamu Tezuka's Star System: Characters, Note
Famous quotes containing the words star and/or system:
“The obvious parallels between Star Wars and The Wizard of Oz have frequently been noted: in both there is the orphan hero who is raised on a farm by an aunt and uncle and yearns to escape to adventure. Obi-wan Kenobi resembles the Wizard; the loyal, plucky little robot R2D2 is Toto; C3PO is the Tin Man; and Chewbacca is the Cowardly Lion. Darth Vader replaces the Wicked Witch: this is a patriarchy rather than a matriarchy.”
—Andrew Gordon, U.S. educator, critic. “The Inescapable Family in American Science Fiction and Fantasy Films,” Journal of Popular Film and Television (Summer 1992)
“For us necessity is not as of old an image without us, with whom we can do warfare; it is a magic web woven through and through us, like that magnetic system of which modern science speaks, penetrating us with a network subtler than our subtlest nerves, yet bearing in it the central forces of the world.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)