Purposeful Panels: Structure as Content in The Mysterious Underground Men

     When first opening Tezuka's The Mysterious Underground Men, I was surprised to be met with several successive splash pages, rather than moving into the regimented panel format we see later, and have seen throughout this course. As I continued, it occurred to me that Tezuka wanted his pages to fulfill the mood of the action. The splash pages that open the work are action-based, overflowing, and pack tons of emotion into a short span of time. When we come to know this sequence as Young John's flashback regarding his father's death, we can see how the form simulates memory in a lot of ways. The most notable of which is the closing on Young John's fallen face on p. 8 as he weeps over his father, the space literally compressing around him and shutting us as an audience out. The following moments, locked behind a closed door, are not meant for us.
     Tezuka, more than any creator we have seen so far, fits content to form and treats the panel as a malleable object. We have seen the same sense used to distinguish thought and speech bubbles or even tonal changes within speech bubbles, but not the panel itself. What this suggests to me, is that Tezuka is concerned with his worlds being relatable only as far as the audience can grasp the moral behind them. The panel, and narrative for that matter, is a vessel for morality and emotion.
     Looking beyond the opening, we are also greeted with atypical panel formations later in the piece. On p. 24, Mimio gets his first up-close glimpse of the outside world, which is framed in a post card type panel with rounded corners and bold exterior lines. It's almost as if Tezuka wants us to cut this out and keep it as a souvenir, relishing in Mimio's newly-found freedom. Later, the entirety of p. 42 is used to detail the different fossils Young John and Mimio see on the rocket train's maiden voyage with no real connection to the surrounding narrative. I interpret this as a small bit of learning Tezuka has hidden amongst the fun narrative, something for his young readers to absorb without knowing.
    All of this experimentation, I think, is used by Tezuka to underlay the story with clear intentions. He wants us to learn first and foremost, though he draws to induce enjoyment. He wants us to judge, and correct, our treatment of others, but lets us empathize with a talking bunny rather than a disenfranchised people. Tezuka seems to have higher standards for his work that we haven't seen since Tintin's outspoken rant against stereotypes in The Blue Lotus. But he doesn't want to hit you over the head with it or give you a reason to back away from his lessons. And here I can't help but think he succeeds.