Today I'd like to talk about a manga that is often overlooked in the West, but has a small following among Japanese Tezuka fans.
虹のプレリュード, or Rainbow Prelude was an attempt at tapping into the shoujo market, which at the time often featured 19th century European milieus, unlike most of Tezuka's work until that point, which usually featured either fantasy/sci-fi, fairy-tale milieus, or a Japanese setting.
While clearly an attempt to follow in the footsteps of Tooma no Shinzou, Rose of Versailles, etc, the story also features some hallmarks of Tezuka's work. Women crossdressing to survive in a male world, revolt against ruling powers, and interestingly, a musical introduction, which was something that generally showed up in older Tezuka stories drawn for girls' magazines.
(Note that I might be incorrect - I've not been around this fandom for ages, and I'm no native Japanese speaker, it was a long time since I read the story.)
Unmarked spoilers below.
The story is set at a music academy in Warzawa, during the early 19th century. It follows the sister of a fictional Swedish wunderkind, Rune, who takes the place of her brother, and ends up meeting and falling in love with the sickly Chopin.
Thankfully, the very pretty bunkobon edition came with an explanation in English, very helpful to international readers, especially in a time when Tezuka manga just didn't exist in the west.
There is a lot to enjoy in this story - Despite being set after male/female relations became acceptable in girls' comics, the story focuses more on the things around the characters, and the love story doesn't really take central stage, which gives the story a stronger focus, and makes Louise shine brighter as a character.
It's not hard to understand why this story has captivated many readers throughout the years - Chopin is a very cute hero, the ill-boy-moe is real, and the fact that the two aren't slotted into a standard happy ending, leaves a specific sort of yearning.
This was one of the first manga that I in (very bad) Japanese, read from start to finish. I learned about it from Japanese fan sites while scouring them for Tezuka content. It had Chopin, whom I had an awful crush on at the time, so I ended up finding it on Mandarake. This was before smartphones, so I sat there with an electronic kanji dictionary on my NDS, painstakingly translating word after word, with absolutely no sense of grammar.
I recall bursting out laughing at learning that the MC's name was 'Rune'. I'm sure it sounded romantic and foreign to Tezuka's ears, but in Scandinavian, it's one of the crudest names on the planet. 'Rune' is the old man who sells you firewood, or a middle-aged small-time gangster who lives out in the forest. It is not an attractive name for a romantic hero.
