Unico

I believe that my love of all things Tezuka is well-documented on this site, but I’ve always found his mature late-era works to be generally more entertaining than his early kiddie-skewing ones.  Here, we have a late-era work that skews towards the kiddie side of the spectrum and is less interesting as a result.  “Unico” is a series of stories about a little blue-haired, red-maned unicorn who brings love and happiness to everyone he meets.  However, this draws the ire of the goddess Venus and so Unico is constantly whisked from world to world by the West Wind making people’s lives better in the process yet at the cost of having his memory wiped whenever he has to move on.  That’s how nearly every story in this collection plays out, and there’s pecious little of Tezuka’s brand of insanity to enliven the proceedings. You won’t find Satan officiating any weddings here.

Still, even if the storytelling is predictable it’s still agreeable enough and with plenty of positive messages and strong characters that will appeal to a younger audience.  The last story does shake things up a bit and proves to be the most memorable as Unico finds himself in a world that is populated only by a bratty demon who wants his horn.  There’s an eeriness to this empty world that makes it stand out as well as a belligerence to the demon’s actions which stands in stark contrast to most of the other characters we see here.  It’s also worth noting that this is one of the very few manga I’ve read which was printed in full color and it looks fantastic.  So even though it’s not an essential read when it comes to the Tezuka canon, “Unico” still has enough merits to make it an enjoyable read.