Buddha Volume 1: Kapilavastu
 Chapters four and seven of Buddha Volume One: Kapilavastu contains the birth of Siddhartha Gautama and the events immediately preceding and following his birth. The rest of the volume contains an interconnected story created to add entertainment and facilitate a further understanding of Gautama's path to enlightenment and transformation to Buddha.
My first thoughts, when purchasing the first volume of Osamu Tezuka's Buddha, were that that I was about to take an enlightening journey through another vision of the "Blessed One" and that I was privileged to read the work of an author of such high caste. For the most part I was satisfied and enjoyed the plot, characters, and unique drawings, but a few word choices had the effect of forcefully ejecting me out of the Buddha mood-a.
Page 72 panel 1, "Nobody sees my peeps as human, we're treated like beasts."
The use of "peeps" was referring to the characters human friends, not companions of avian likeness.
Page 85 panel 3, "They've set the town on fire! Yo, humans aren't barbecue meat!"
Those two lines seem like poor attempts at modernizing this manga and don't fit the rest of the dialog or story. I also believe that if comparable lines were actually in the original Japanese version, that they should have been altered, especially the second quote, which makes light of a horrible situation and is in poor taste.
Generally I am not a fan of older anime and manga works but Osamu Tezuka is an exception. His art is very original and his story telling is highly captivating. With his level of skill it easy to see why he is called "The God of Manga." Personally, I feel that Masamune Shirow is a better fit for the title but Tezuka does have many more comics and many other creative talents list him as one of their inspirations.
With a MSRP of $14.95, the 400 page paperback version of Buddha Volume One: Kapilavastu was released May 2006 by Vertical Inc.
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