Barubora
1973/07/10-1974/05/25
STORY
The Devil or the Muse? A popular novelist, Yosuke Mikura takes a mysterious homeless drunk girl named Barubora home by chance. But the filthy girl, who looks like a flippant beggar, repeatedly leaves Mikura but comes back. Indeed, she is free from any rules and devoid of vanities. Yet Mikura feels much more inspired when being together with Barubora. She is exactly the Muse of poetry for him. He succeeds and achieves fame thanks to her, but soon loses everything to destruction as all other artists who gained the favor of Barubora have experienced.
DESCRIPTIONS
1973/03/19- 1974/05/25 Serialized on Big Comic (Shueisha)
Tezuka incorporated aesthetic Beardsley-style illustrations, the Greek Muse, Mnemosyne, Verlaine’s poetry, some European philosophers’ old sayings, and decadent art theories in this work, and such gimmicks effectively stimulate the curiosity of readers who love art and literature. Interestingly, Tezuka made the Muse a filthy-looking beggar, and he made the same attempt in his other work. The God of Manga appearing in Gacha Boy’s Life Story is a middle-aged man who looks like a shabby-looking beggar. Tezuka’s concept of the Gods or Muses of Art may have been ragged and offbeat, nothing like the Muses in Greek myths, like the symbol of beauty. Barubora would be a work that gives a glimpse of his art theory.
