Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Kyoto Tezuka Osamu World Closed

The Kyoto Tezuka Osamu World, a store and theater in Kyoto Japan, closed down on January 16th. While there are several official Tezuka stores in Japan, and other stores that sell Tezuka related merchandise, the closing of this particular location is notable because it had a theater screen that played exclusive Astro Boy and Tezuka-related short movies, not available anywhere else.

It is unknown at this time what will happen to these movies. There is some speculation that, with 2011 being the 60th anniversary of Astro Boy's manga debut, there may perhaps be some sort of DVD collection, but there have been no announcements at this time.

This news came to me from a couple of different sources, so thanks to everyone who alerted me to this. You can read more about it on Dr. Jerk's Astroboy Online thread.

2 comments:

Robert Ring said...

Oh man, that's a huge bummer. It looks like an awesome store, plus the (hopefully temporary) loss of those movies is huge.

Anonymous said...

Yes, I hope this means they'll come out on dvd, they're bound to do it. It'd be silly if they didn't because I'm sure there's fans who'd buy them, I will if it happens.

I mean, it'd be dumb if those films were wiped off the face of the Earth for no one to ever see again, that wouldn't be Tezuka friendly. =(