Alabaster Review: The Tezuka Manga He Wished He'd Never Drawn

I grew up on the gentle Tezuka. Astro Boy. Kimba. The round-faced, big-eyed humanism that made him "the god of manga." So when I first heard there was a Tezuka work that he himself disliked so much it was almost never reprinted, I had to find it. I went in expecting a curiosity — a misfire from a master. What I got was the most uncomfortable two volumes of manga I have ever read, and I could not put them down.

Alabaster is not a story you enjoy. It's a story that sits on your chest. Tezuka — the man who built his whole reputation on the dignity of life — drew a hero who hates everything beautiful and wants to destroy it. He drew it badly on purpose, ugly on purpose, hopeless on purpose. And the fact that the kindest man in manga had this inside him is more honest than any of his masterpieces.

Quick Take

• Tezuka's bleakest work — a "hero" who is a skinless killer driven by pure envy of beauty
• A direct, angry critique of American racism that Tezuka himself said he hated making
• M-rated and genuinely nihilistic; not a starter Tezuka, but essential for understanding his range

Story Overview

James Block is a Black athletic superstar — a celebrated American sports hero. The story breaks him in its opening pages: the woman he loves, Susan Ross, admits to his face that she only dated him for his fame, and that she would never marry a man of his color. The humiliation is not subtle, and Tezuka does not soften it. Block snaps, attacks her, and goes to prison.

In prison he meets a strange old man, "Dr. F," who tells him about an invention: the F Beam, a ray that can render any living thing invisible. When Block gets out, he hunts down the device and turns it on himself — but the beam is unfinished. It only erases his skin. His muscles, blood vessels, and organs stay visible. He becomes a walking anatomy diagram, a monster, and he takes the name Alabaster.

From there it stops being a revenge story and becomes something colder. Alabaster doesn't just hunt the people who wronged him. He decides to destroy beauty itself — the hypocrites, the boastful, the lovely. He's joined by Ami Ozawa, a girl rendered completely invisible (except her eyes) because Dr. F once used his own pregnant daughter as a test subject. Across the two volumes, an FBI man named Rock chases them while the body count climbs.

There is no redemption arc. Tezuka refuses to give you one. The ending is grim on every front: Ami, having been brutalized and used, kills herself as she tries to escape Block's factory, and Block himself is undone — caught by his own beam in the chaos. Nobody is saved. Tezuka later said outright that he disliked working on this manga; it was poorly received in its day and rarely reprinted. That bitterness is baked into the page.

Characters

James Block / Alabaster — The protagonist, and one of the most repellent "heroes" Tezuka ever drew. He starts as a sympathetic victim of America's racism, then curdles into something monstrous. His grievance is real — the racism that ruined him is depicted without flinching — but Tezuka deliberately does not let that grievance redeem him. Block's disfigurement (skin gone, insides exposed) externalizes his self-hatred: he can't stand beauty because he can no longer bear to be seen.

Ami Ozawa — Dr. F's granddaughter, born fully invisible because her grandfather experimented on his own pregnant daughter. Only her eyes are visible. She's the closest thing the manga has to a soul, and Tezuka punishes her for it — she's assaulted, manipulated, and finally takes her own life. Her arc is the part that haunted me most, because she never asked for any of it.

Rock — The FBI agent pursuing Alabaster. In this work Tezuka uses his recurring "Rock" star-system character as a narcissistic, racist official — not a clean hero, but another rotten piece of the system Block is raging against. The pursuit is less cop-versus-villain than two kinds of ugliness circling each other.

Dr. F — The scientist whose F Beam set everything in motion, and whose casual cruelty (experimenting on his own pregnant daughter) created Ami. He's the engine of the whole tragedy: a man whose "genius" only ever produces suffering.

What I Love About It

That Tezuka let himself be ugly. This is the thing I keep coming back to. The god of manga, the humanist, the man who drew Astro Boy crying — he made a manga where the protagonist's whole philosophy is that beauty deserves to die, and where the most innocent character is raped and kills herself. Tezuka disliked drawing this. He said so. And you can feel that revulsion in every panel; the work was so unloved by its own creator that it nearly vanished from print.

Most creators only show you their controlled, polished self. Alabaster is Tezuka with the lid off — the despair, the rage at his own country's idol (America), the part of him that didn't believe in the humanism he's famous for. Block being a Black man destroyed by American racism isn't decoration. It's Tezuka, watching the civil-rights-era United States from across the ocean, channeling fury into the bleakest shape he could draw. He didn't get everything right, and the depiction is rough by today's standards. But the willingness to root a monster's hatred in a real, historical wound — instead of pretending evil comes from nowhere — is braver than the safe version would have been.

Memorable Scene ⚠️ Spoiler Warning

The opening break is the scene I can't shake. Susan Ross, the woman James Block loves, tells him plainly that she only ever dated him because he was a famous athlete — and that she could never marry a man of his color. It's delivered as a casual, almost bored cruelty, which makes it worse. You watch a man's entire sense of self get demolished in a couple of pages, and Tezuka draws it without any cushioning, no comic relief, no narration softening the blow.

What makes it unforgettable is that it's the seed of everything monstrous that follows. Block isn't born evil. He's a hero figure — the literal American sports star — and the manga shows you the exact moment beauty and love are weaponized against him. Every horrible thing he does as Alabaster traces back to that room. When I think about why this manga unsettles me more than Tezuka's straightforwardly dark works like MW, it's this: MW's villain is poison from page one, but Block I watched get made. That's harder to look away from.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Tezuka completely off the leash — his bleakest, angriest, least-comforting work
• A villain-protagonist whose hatred is rooted in a real historical wound, not pure evil
• Body horror and an invisibility premise used as genuine psychological metaphor
• Essential context for anyone who thinks they "know" Tezuka

Cons

• Genuinely nihilistic — no redemption, no comfort, no one saved
• The racial and sexual-violence content is rough and dated in places
• Tezuka himself disliked it, and it shows in the uneven, rushed execution
• This is a hard "no comfort reading" book — that's either the point or a dealbreaker depending on you

Is Alabaster Worth Reading?

If you want the polished god-of-manga Tezuka, start almost anywhere else. But if you want to understand the whole man — the despair under the humanism, the rage he usually kept off the page — Alabaster is one of the most revealing two volumes he ever made. It's ugly, bleak, and unloved even by its creator. That's exactly what makes it worth reading.

Content Warnings & Age Rating

Age Rating: M (Mature) Content Warnings: Explicit racism and racial slurs; sexual assault; suicide; graphic violence and body horror; an overall nihilistic, hopeless tone

This is adult-readers-only. Do not hand this to someone expecting Astro Boy.

Yu's Rating

Category	Score
Story Depth	★★★★☆
Art Style	★★★★☆
Character Development	★★★★☆
Accessibility for Non-Japanese Readers	★★★☆☆
Reread Value	★★★☆☆

Similar Manga

Title	Its Approach	How Alabaster Differs
MW	Tezuka's other nihilistic villain manga, with a protagonist who is evil from the start	Alabaster's protagonist is made, not born — you watch him break
Ode to Kirihito	Tezuka body-horror transformation as a test of humanity, but with hope of recovery	Alabaster offers no recovery and no redemption
Black Jack	Tezuka's moral complexity in an episodic, far more popular format	Alabaster is a single bleak arc Tezuka himself disowned

Official English Translation Status

Digital Manga Publishing released the complete two-volume English edition, funded through a successful 2015 Kickstarter campaign. Both volumes are available in print and digital.

Where to Buy

Read the first volume. If it doesn't hook you, put it down. It'll hook you.

Start with Volume 1 →

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