Random Anime Review: Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix 2772 — Space Firebird (1980)
There’s a first time for everything. At six years of age, the English-dubbed PAL VHS version of Osamu Tezuka’s 1980 Phoenix 2772 — Love’s Cosmozone (as Space Firebird) was my first anime movie. I was far too young back then to properly appreciate what is a psychedelic masterpiece of theatrical animation, but certainly some of its striking imagery seared itself into my mind for almost four decades afterwards. I had no idea then who Osamu Tezuka was, nor that his Phoenix manga series was a career-spanning magnum opus, the entirety of which would eventually be published in English by Viz Comics in the early 2000s. It’s weird to think about it now, but when I first watched Phoenix 2772, Tezuka himself was still alive. (He died tragically early, at the age of 60, in 1989.)
Last year, I reviewed the more recent adaptation of one of Tezuka’s other Phoenix stories — Reminiscence of Flower, adapted by Studio 4°C from the manga Phoenix: Nostalgia, and in the review I discuss the history of the entire series. If you’re unfamiliar with Phoenix, I urge you to go have a scan of that article first.
This Phoenix 2772 review was prompted by my contribution to an upcoming multi-author article on Anime News Network about the first anime that made us cry. Identifying exactly what that is for me is a difficult question to answer. Over the years I’ve had quite profound emotional responses to a lot of anime. Back in the 1990s I recall being moved by the tragic ending of Battle Angel Alita’s second (and sadly final) episode. In 2001 when I visited Canada, I was able to rent a VHS copy of Grave of the Fireflies, which didn’t become available in the UK until its eventual DVD release a few years later. That movie just about destroyed me. More modern shows like Violet Evergarden have continued to perpetrate emotional violence on my fragile soul.
However, for little 6-year-old me in the mid-to-late 1980s, the localised Space Firebird was a doozy of a first anime movie, because of its brutal execution of the entirety of its cast, scenes of disturbing violence against humans and animals, and the general apocalyptic nihilism of the conclusion. Despite the multiple jaunty musical interludes and sweet, funny animal sidekicks, this is a dark movie. It definitely coloured my opinion of anime for a long time after — though not necessarily in a bad way. While many scenes were upsetting to me as a kid, and my mum thought it was an incredibly weird film, I’ve returned to it a couple of times as an adult, and appreciated it greatly.
Tezuka’s twelve-volume Phoenix manga yo-yos between distant future and distant past throughout its volumes, with each successive volume gradually moving closer to the present day. Phoenix 2772’s place in the timeline appears closest to second volume Phoenix: Future, which is set in the year 3404, or sixth volume Phoenix: Resurrection, which is set between 2482 and 3344. Tezuka was never a huge fan of strict continuity, so it doesn’t really matter that Earth is seemingly destroyed more than once, in both Future and 2772. (Spoilers for a 44-year-old movie, I guess…) What Tezuka did like doing was to reuse character designs repeatedly across his entire oeuvre of work, regardless of genre.
For example, his popular renegade surgeon character Dr Black Jack starred in his own multi-volume manga series (which is now mostly, sadly, out of print in the US). Black Jack shows up in animated form in Phoenix 2772 not as a surgeon, but as the gruff commandant of an Icelandic prison mining facility. Similarly, Astro Boy’s beloved teacher Shinsuke Ban (Mr Mustachio) cameos. Metropolis’ Rock shows up as a main antagonist, and he’s as cold, detached and ruthless as ever. Recurring Phoenix star Saruta prominently appears, with his enormous karmic schnozz following him through reincarnations.
As Tezuka was so closely involved in this theatrical edition of his lifelong masterwork, it’s clear he tried to cram in as many of his favourite characters as possible, and their designs are identical to their manga counterparts. That means their appearances can be incredibly cartoony, and owe much to the early works of Max Fleischer and Walt Disney. In particular, Phoenix’s debt to Disney is obvious — Tezuka himself intended Phoenix 2772 to evoke similar vibes to the peerless Fantasia, with spectacular animation, prominent musical scenes, and trippy, phantasmagorical visuals. It’s clear very little expense was spared during Phoenix 2772’s production, even now, viewed via YouTube from a cleaned-up VHS rip, it’s obvious how artistically significant and gorgeous a film this is.
Take an early scene where protagonist Goto and his android companion Olga drive into a futuristic city. The entire sequence is painstakingly hand-drawn as the camera starts behind the car, buildings enlarging and shrinking out of view. Then we swoop over and above the vehicle, high into the air for a panoramic view, then dive back down to street level for a close up and rotation around our main characters. To a modern generation raised on the labour-saving possibilities of CG animation, perhaps such a scene now wouldn’t conjure much wonder, but it’s frankly incredible that a single animator worked on this entire scene. Key animator Junji Kobayashi created an entire 3d-model of the city to use as a reference before spending the best part of a year solo animating the scene. It’s that kind of bonkers attention to detail that contributes to making this such an important and incredible film.
Phoenix 2772 is full of standout scenes, beginning with the extremely unusual but hypnotically fascinating 12-minute opening montage that depicts protagonist Goto’s childhood without dialogue, only music. Goto is a literal test tube baby who is raised in a hermetically sealed environment where he is constantly monitored, tested and even fed by faceless robot arms and automatic machinery. It’s a cold, sterile and small world, yet Goto seems mostly happy. We see him grow from tiny baby through toddlerhood and into adolescence then eventually young adulthood.
It’s during this sequence that Goto is given the shapeshifting Olga, a beautiful blond-haired robot whom he becomes emotionally attached to — she’d the closest thing in this bleak Brave New World-esque place that he has to a mother. Olga seems pre-programmed to be maternal and loving, she’s playful and humorous. It’s only when Goto receives his first video call from the outside world — the officious and serious Rock — that Goto learns that one generally doesn’t interact with other adults by pulling silly faces. His innocent confusion is at once both pathetic yet understandable.
Goto’s place in this society is to become a fighter pilot, so he is enrolled in the appropriate academy. He’s given no choice in this — every human being’s potential is assessed prior even to birth, and their role is assigned. His instructor Volkan is a particularly brutish, sneering man, and his teaching methods are cruel. One scene that scarred me as a kid has Volkan urging Goto to murder a group of small furry alien creatures who have been presumably bred or captured purely to act as trainees’ cannon fodder — a way to blunt the candidates’ empathy. Goto recognises the light of sentience in their terrified eyes, crying “they’re human beings!”, so when he refuses to kill them in cold blood, Volkan does it himself. He slaughters them ruthlessly and efficiently. Life is cheap in this not-so-utopian future Earth.
Society’s stratification is so complete, that in this world, marriage is permitted only for the social elite, and relationships are forbidden between individuals of different classes. (Though to be honest, is it really that much different today? You don’t see many of the yacht-owning super rich dating people from inner city housing estates. Our modern society is more fractured and unequal than it has ever been, it’s just these social differences aren’t so much encoded in law than enforced by strict but unofficial restrictions on social mobility.) Goto meets and falls in love with the beautiful yet passive Lena, daughter of Lord Eat. Lena is engaged to be married to Rock, whom she doesn’t love. Lena and Goto’s relationship is doomed, and the furious Rock condemns Goto to prison for his “crime” of loving someone.
Goto’s sent to a mining facility in Iceland, where the prisoners work to enact Rock’s plans to use the Earth’s mantle for energy, after every other natural resource has been already consumed by mankind. It’s a grim, dark place, with interior scenes lit only by an ominous, oppressive red glow. Chief warden is Black Jack, instantly recognisable due to his facial scar and two-tone hairstyle. He doesn’t seem to be medically trained in this version, and he seems like a hard but pragmatic man. I suspect Tezuka just wanted some way to squeeze Black Jack into his movie, and this was the role that fit the best, even if it doesn’t make a huge amount of sense. Black Jack says he’ll let Goto escape if he wins a fist fight — though it seems Black Jack lets him win.
Along with fellow prisoner Dr Saruta (Salter in the dub, but Phoenix manga readers will recognise him as a character who appears in almost every volume, reincarnated across the ages with the same comedically oversized lumpen nose, after being stung by hornets in his first incarnation in Volume 1: Dawn), Goto takes the “Space Shark” spaceship, and once reunited with Olga and her funny furry friend Pincho, they leave Earth. Saruta is obsessed with locating the Phoenix, or “Cosmozone 2772”, a monstrous bird of fire that so far has resisted any human attempts to capture it. Rock also desires the Phoenix, believing its abilities will somehow revitalise the ailing Earth. Throughout history, man has lusted after the Phoenix for its blood, seemingly the source of eternal life.
The Space Shark is animated incredibly smoothly, and I wondered how they managed this with the technology available in the late 1970s — turns out they used rotoscoping: a spacecraft model was filmed, and the cells painted over. It works extremely well here. The ship itself has a simple, but sleek and functional design, which looks very good in motion. There’s a bizarre dogfight scene where the Space Shark is chased by some prison officers, and Olga fights them off by straddling the front of their fighter jets and bending their guns. It’s all a bit suggestive, especially the fanservice scene where a pilot leers at her shiny robot butt.
Saruta takes everyone to a planet where his friend Shinsuke Ban lives, along with a bunch of weird aliens. Two of them eventually join Goto’s crew — a blobby bagpipe-like thing, and the unfortunately-named Crack, who is a tetchy little irritant who seems to live inside a six-sided die. These characters, along with the fluffy and neurotic Pincho, provide a lot of deeply out-of-place comic relief in a film that really shouldn’t have any. They bicker and fight, do bizarre things, and also partake in completely random musical interludes. Again, I think Tezuka was aping Disney here, but getting the tone completely wrong — especially considering what happens to each of these three creatures.
Eventually Goto and friends do locate the Phoenix, and promptly attempt to capture her. Suffice to say the Phoenix is pissed and raging, she relentlessly attacks the ship. Seemingly losing control, the Phoenix is terrifying in berserk mode, like a rage-filled force of nature. Not only does she mind-control Saruta with her ultra-creepy fried eggs, but she then proceeds to kill everyone (except Goto)— including the cutesy alien sidekicks, plus she roasts Olga to a blackened crisp. Then, bizarrely, she exits berserk mode and offers Goto a peaceful life on a random alien planet, with resurrected sidekicks and a sort-of-repaired Olga.
Now I just don’t get the Phoenix’s inexplicable heel-turn here. A minute ago she was a frenzied harbinger of fiery death, now she impersonates/inhabits Olga’s corpse because… she wants to experience love or something? The storytelling in this film is pretty disjointed at times, and I wonder if perhaps the original script was much longer and needed cut prior to production. If only they’d cut the extraneous musical scenes and included proper exposition and character motivations instead…
Goto isn’t happy living on this random planet with Fake Olga and decides to bring much needed vegetables back to Earth to feed his fellow men, who eat nothing but bland artificial muck. He hopes that reintroducing living vegetation to the planet’s sterile surface will help to heal the doomed planet. Of course, this is Osamu Tezuka we’re talking about. Things could never be that simple. For reasons I’ll never understand, Goto returns to the Icelandic Prison Colony, of all places. Conveniently, Rock is there too, and he’s as self-absorbed and selfish as ever. His actions lead to Lena’s pathetic death, and the Space Shark and all of its vegetables fall into a lava-filled crevasse. I remember being really upset about the vegetables. Not about Lena.
Turns out Goto was too late, the Earth is beyond saving, and deep volcanic fissures proceed to rip apart the globe. We’re treated to an incredibly visceral, violent montage as the Earth erupts, the continents crack, cities fall, and people die screaming. Now Disney never tried to pull this stuff, not even in Fantasia. Can you imagine Mickey Mouse as the Sorceror’s Apprentice tearing the Earth asunder with his master’s magic? (I can, that would be an amazing movie. Mickey Mouse: Destroyer of Worlds. I’d go see it.)
So the world ends, everyone dies, though Rock sort of survives in a weakened blinded state, before eventually dying. Goto and not-Olga seem to be the only survivors. Not-Olga is really the Phoenix in disguise, who seems to want to… I don’t know, settle down with Goto on this dying husk of a world for some reason? She offers him immortality, but instead he elects to sacrifice himself so that she can use his life energy to resuscitate and revive the planet. It’s all a little vague, but to be fair the Phoenix has suggested this as a possibility earlier. Sadly, the Phoenix accepts his sacrifice and the Earth is saved. Yay…?
This then leads to the ending that had me scratching my head aged six, and still has me scratching my head now. Goto’s reborn as a tiny baby, and Olga’s reborn as an adult human being. Now they have a chance to relive their earlier mother-child bond, despite becoming romantic lovers during the course of the movie. Tezuka just loves cramming his Phoenix stories full of these really uncomfortable family dynamics. I mean, the ending of Phoenix: Dawn is full of incest, so is volume 6: Nostalgia. Why, Tezuka, Why? As supposed God of Manga, Oreimo was your fault.
As you can no doubt tell, Phoenix 2772 is an absolute trip of a movie, one that mostly flew above kid me’s head. It’s full of remarkable images and concepts though, many of which have stuck with me for almost four decades. Visually it’s hardly aged at all — it looked timeless back then, it remains timeless now. In general, Tezuka’s cartoony character designs are a little more grown-up looking than in his manga, the backgrounds are beautiful, the colours vibrant, the classical score excellent, and some individual virtuoso animation cuts are quite incredible.
Like many of Tezuka’s stories though, it’s crammed so full of so many random things, it’s awkwardly structured, unfocused, and at times both undercooked and overstuffed. What Tezuka really needed was an editor to say “no” to him. Despite this, it’s a thoroughly entertaining and even mesmerising film. Its faults are more charming than irritating, and I wish it had a more accessible release other than extremely out of print VHS tape. I re-watched it via a very decent YouTube upload that I’ll link below, at the bottom of this review. It is the dubbed version — and the dub is one of those awful stilted Hong Kong monstrosities. Imagine how good it would be if someone like Discotek acquired the rights and somehow gave it a modern dub? I’d buy that blu-ray in a heartbeat.
Sadly, most of the rest of the animated Phoenix adaptations are unavailable to easily watch. The most recent adaptation of Phoenix: Nostalgia is available to stream in episodic form on Hulu/Disney+ as Phoenix: Eden 17. Outside of its limited theatrical appearances, the movie edition Reminiscence of Flower hasn’t been released domestically. There’s a 13-episode Phoenix TV series available on US DVD/blu-ray that I should really try and acquire, but the various other OVAs/films have never, to my knowledge, been licensed. Space Firebird 2772 is the only original Phoenix anime though, the rest are direct manga adaptations.
It’s been fun to revisit this harrowing childhood experience to discover that, yes, it’s just as messed up as I remembered it. Don’t show this film to six-year-olds, it will break their minds. For older kids though, it’s an entertaining, often baffling, almost always gorgeous movie. It belongs in every serious anime movie fan’s collection, but sadly that’s currently an impossible dream. Thanks for reading!
Phoenix 2772: Love’s Cosmozone / Space Firebird
Chief director: Osamu Tezuka
Director: Taki Sugiyama
Screenplay: Osamu Tezuka and Taki Sugiyama
Music: Yasuo Higuchi
Based on: Phoenix by Osamu Tezuka
Production studio: Tezuka Productions
JP distributor: Toho
JP theatrical release: 15th March 1980
UK Distributor: Mountain films
UK PAL VHS release: 1982
US Distributor: Celebrity Home Entertainment
US NTSC VHS release: 1987
2nd US Distributor: Best Film & Video Corp.
2nd US NTSC VHS release: 1995
Runtime: 121 minutes
Languages: Japanese audio, English audio
BBFC rating: Unrated (The BBFC did not rate VHS tapes until 1985.)
