"Jumping" a short film by Osamu Tezuka

by Chris MaGee

I'm posting this for no other reason than it's neat. It's a short animated film by the king of Japanese animation and manga Osamu Tezuka called "Jumping" and the title is pretty self-explanatory. It's shown from the point of view of a boy who's jumping down his street and whose jumps become higher and further apart. It's a dead simple concept, but Tezuka, the genius behind such animated icons as Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion and Black Jack, turns it into a dizzying journey from country to city, land to sea and from peace time to war time and beyond. And when I say dizzying I mean dizzying. Be glad you're not watching this on a 42" plasma screen otherwise you'd start suffering vertigo!

"Jumping" won Tezuka the Grand Prize at the World Festival of Animated Films in Zagreb, Croatia in 1984, only 5 years before his death on February 9th, 1989 from stomach cancer.