Tezuka Manga Museum in Takarazuka

Since I'm almost over with my holidays, in the past few days I visited several places that I didn't visited until now: Nara, the Osaka Castle and yesterday I went to Takarazuka.

Takarazuka's main touristic atraction is the Takarazuka Kagekidan, an all-female musical theater with strong yuri overtones because women play both male and female roles.
Sakura Taisen series is heavily influenced by the Takarazuka Revue, as well as several shoujo manga like Ikeda Riyoko's Versailles no Bara and Shoujo Kakumei Utena.

The Takarazuka Grand Theather.

An statue near the Takarazuka Grand Theather entrance representing Oscar and André, from Versailles no Bara.

Cherry blossom on the street to Takarazuka Theather, the Hana no michi.

But the main reason for my visit to Takarazuka was Tezuka Osamu Manga Museum.
Tezuka Osamu is often called the "Father of Anime" and "the God of Manga", so as an anime and manga fan one should, at least once, make a courtesy visit to his museum.

A statue of the Phoenix from the manga Hi no Tori in the entrance.

Details on the lampost.

Concrete handprints and footprints of his most famous characters. In the photo, Atom (Astroboy).

The museum is not as cool as the Ghibli Museum and it's rather small, but I spent a good 3 hours inside.The first floor contained an elaborated reception hall with a Tezuka's self portrait in mosaic on the floor and a stained glass panel with Tezuka's characters in the ceiling. I'm not sure if it was allowed to take photos inside; except for a few places, there was no sign saying that it was prohibited but none of the visitors was taking any, so I sneakly took just a few.

Stained glass panel in the ceiling.

Painted tiles on the floor.

Also in the first floor it's the permanent exhibit, with manuscrits and originals despicting life and work of Tezuka and a screening room displaying a 20 minutes documentary about him.

The basement floor is a little animation workshop oriented toward children, so I briefly looked arround and left.

In the second floor is the temporary exhibition room, right now displaying the early works of Mushi Productions, Tezuka's animation studio, with an exhibit of settings, cels and storyboards for Tetsuwan Atom, Jungle Taitei and Ribbon no Kishi.

There is also a bunch of statues: Leo (almost not seen in the photo), Atom, BlackJack, Sapphire and the pretty much unknown in the west Sharaku and Unico:



The rest of the floor was a book display of Tezuka's first editions books, a little and expensive cafe and an also little and expensive shop.
In the shop I purchased:

A shitajiki with Sapphire from Ribbon no Kishi, Atom aka Astroboy from Tetsuwan Atom and Leo aka Kimba fom Jungle Taitei. Incidentally, those are the only Tezuka's animes that I watched; I watched the first 25 episodes from Tetsuwan Atom (the 2003 remake), and long, long ago I saw both Jungle Taitei and Ribbon no Kishi, but only vaguely recollect.
In the case of Ribbon no Kishi, I recall that the Spanish version had the most bizarre and unfitting ending of all times: an 80's styled band of girls and a retarded kid dancing and singing in an scenario, that can be viewed in YouTube. In spite of that, the song was catchy.

And a keychain. They didn't had the iconic Atom, so I picked Leo from Jungle Taitei because we share the same name.