History Main / Phoenix

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* ''Manga/Phoenix1954'', a long-runner manga series.

* ''VideoGame/Phoenix1980'', a 1980s arcade game.
* ''Series/Phoenix1992'', a 1990s Australian police miniseries.

* ''Manga/{{Phoenix}}'', a long-runner manga series.
* ''VideoGame/{{Phoenix}}'', a 1980s arcade game.
* ''Series/{{Phoenix}}'', a 1990s Australian police miniseries.

* ''DarthWiki/{{Phoenix}}'', a series created by Tropers/{{SmilingCyclops}}

* ''DarthWiki/{{Phoenix}}'', a series created for Tropers/{{SmilingCyclops}}

* Music/{{Phoenix}}, a French band.

* Phoenix, Arizona.

[[redirect:Manga/{{Phoenix}}]]

''Phoenix'' (火の鳥) is a manga series by {{Osamu Tezuka}} that ran from 1967 to 1988, and is considered by the latter to be his life's works.

The series is focused on the Phoenix, a cosmic entity that looks like a peacock and whose blood grants immortality towards whoever drinks it.

The volumes take place either far in TheFuture or in FeudalJapan. As the series progress, the timelines grow closer. Typically, the story contains much more humor in the feudal Japan stories while the science-fiction stories are more dramatic.

The VIZ edition has edited the following volumes:
* 1- Dawn
* 2- Universe
* 3- Yamato/Space
* 4- Karma
* 5- Resurrection
* 6- Nostalgia
* 7- Civil War (Part One)
* 8- Civil War (Part Two)
* 9- Strange Beings/Life
* 10- Sun (Part One)
* 11- Sun (Part Two)
* 12- Early Works

There have been two {{OAV}} and two animated movies.

Not to be confused with ''PhoenixWright'', the band ''Phoenix,'' the (unrelated to each other) coin-op videogames Phoenix or ''Space Firebirds'', TheNineties [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_%28TV_series%29 Australian police mini-series]], the Phoenix air-to-air missile, or Phoenix, Arizona.

See ThePhoenix for the mythological creature Phoenix.

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Tropes in this manga series include:

* ActionGirl: Kajika in ''Yamato''.
* AnachronismStew: As in his other works, Tezuka works in a lot of quick and mostly insignificant gags involving absurd anachronisms.
* AuthorExistenceFailure: Tezuka intended to close the series with an arc that took place in the present and somehow tied all the series' motifs together. However, he died well before reaching that point, leaving behind only the synopsis for a storyline, ''Earth,'' which was to take place in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, 1938.
* BackFromTheDead: In a sci-fi example, happens in ''Ressurection'' to the main character.
* {{Bifauxnen}}: [[spoiler:Sakon No Suke in ''Strange Beings'']].
* BigBadassWolf: Nerima in the ''Sun'' arc.
* BlackAndGrayMorality: Mostly grays, but you're more likely to find a totally evil character than a perfectly good character. Gao, for instance, is one of the more purely good protagonists... if not for his start as an indiscriminate thief and mass murderer. It is notable that killing seems to be considered acceptable if one does it to survive, as it is no different than hunting (one of the themes, especially in Gao's book ''Karma,'' is that all life is equal).
* CanonImmigrant: Robita the robot reappears in the 2003 ''AstroBoy'' animated series, recolored yellow, becoming a RobotMaid to Astro's family. He/she is not part of Tezuka's Star System, though.
* CloningBlues: In ''Life'', clones are made so they can be hunted and killed for a gameshow.
* CoolAndUnusualPunishment: The Phoenix's punishment on Nakamura in ''Space''. Nakamura thinks of it as AFateWorseThanDeath.
* ConvenientEclipse: Subverted, as it is quite inconvenient to Queen Himiko in ''Dawn''.
* DisproportionateRetribution: In ''Strange Beings'', Akon no Suke and her [[InnocentBystander completely innocent]] [[{{Nakama}} retainer]] are sentenced to [[YearInsideHourOutside several decades]] of imprisonment in an [[{{Oubliette}} inescapable mountain temple]] adrift in time and space, caring for sick and injured humans and monsters for killing an elderly nun who... wait for it... is the future version of the Samurai after spending decades of imprisonment for killing her older self, essentially commiting suicide. Furthering the MoralDissonance is that her younger self did so to avoid her future nun-self from saving the life of her EvilOverlord father so he would cease his warring and murdering. So basically the WarpedAesop is suicide is wrong, even if it saves countless lives, and decades of forced penance is not necessarily enough to balance your {{karma}}. The icing on this cake is that she came to realize her younger self would come and kill her, and [[FaceDeathWithDignity was powerless to stop her]].
** It's not so warped if you consider that the Yaobikuni was a healer, and she was willing to kill her - even though the Yaobikuni had saved many lives and would no doubt have gone on to save many more - in order to ensure that her father would die. She did the equivalent of ''[[MoralEventHorizon blowing up a hospital]]'' to kill a single petty tyrant. So no, it's not disproportionate at all.
*** Other characters performed their fair share of atrocities, yet Akon no Suke is the only one we know of who is forced to live through something on the the level of the loop of coming to the temple, killing herself, becoming the healer, realizing the truth, and wait to be killed by her past self. The situation does indeed come off as being a tract against suicide that ended up being {{Disproportionate Retribution}}.
** This also occurs with Saruta, where it's implied that everyone bad that happens to Saruta and his incarnations is because of Karma (which flows in both directions, past and future incarnations affect the present incarnation.) What was Saruta's horrendous crime? When confronting the Phoenix in "Space", he willingly and with malice aforethought... kills a plant.
*** Well, a plant that used to be human. It's... complicated. There was also the time he killed almost everybody in Nagi's village. And the time he was a bandit and killed a bunch of people.
* EverythingIsMessierWithPigs: With a potion made from pig's ''excrement'', you can turn a whole alien race even more corrupt than the humans! This happens in the end of [[spoiler:''Nostalgia'']].
* ExecutiveMeddling: Pretty much any attempt at making Phoenix into an anime has been faced with massive changes to the plot.
* AGodAmI: Subverted with Masato in ''Universe'', who is forced to become the god of the new world, against his will.
* {{God Save Us From The Queen}}: Himiko from ''Dawn''.
* {{Gonk}}: The king in ''Yamato'' is meant to be ''ugly''.
* GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe: Nakamura meets a race of bird people, and gets engaged to an attractive bird-woman (though he makes fun of her legs). [[spoiler:It ends poorly with him eating "her legs for dinner"]].
* HeelFaceTurn: While he doesn't have any sides to switch between, Gao in ''Karma'' more or less goes from CompleteMonster to TheMessiah.
* HollywoodEvolution: In ''Nostalgia'', the two genders of an alien race evolve to be part of the "same body" and rock evolves to be alive, becoming the dominant predators.
* HumansAreBastards: All over the place, it being one of Tezuka's favorite themes.
* HuntingTheMostDangerousGame: In ''Life'', is created such a gameshow using clones to be hunted.
* InterspeciesRomance: Between a cyborg and a robot, an alien bird-woman and a human, a human and a wolf spirit.
* {{Laser Guided Karma}}: In the fittingly named ''Karma'', [[spoiler: {{Smug Snake}} Akanemaru is killed in a fire just after exposing Gao's past, which led to Gao's remaining arm being chopped off. The kicker is that Akanemaru will never again be reborn as a human.]]
* MadScientist: Doctor Weekday in ''Resurrection''.
* MagicAIsMagicA: The Phoenix's blood seems to work differently each time it is used on a character. Drinking it is meant to make the subject immortal, but Masato in ''Universe'' [[spoiler:still grows old until his body is destroyed but his mind lives on]] and Nakamura in ''Space'' [[spoiler:grows younger until he is a baby and then grows old again and so on]].
* {{Mayincatec}}: In ''Life'', the Incas in Peru have come in contact with the Phenix.
* {{Mood Whiplash}}
* NoKoreansInJapan: Subverted, as Nerima, the hero of the ''Sun'' arc is a Korean prince.
* PerspectiveReversal: ''Karma'', the artisan Akanemaru, first meets Gao as a fugitive and offers him his fire; Gao, disfigured from birth, rewards Akanemaru for his kindness by maiming him out of spite. By the end of the story, Gao has redeemed himself and become a master artisan in his own right, while Akanemaru has let his success get to his head and become a cold, heartless bastard: when Gao bests him in a competition, Akanemaru reveals Gao's sordid past, resulting in him losing his one good arm.
* RobotGirl: Chihiro in ''Resurrection'', although [[spoiler:she actually looks like a very unatttractive insect-like robot and Leon sees her as a pretty girl due to his artificial brain cells]].
** Also Olga in ''Hi No Tori 2772'' aka ''Space Firebird'', a 1980 animated movie that is only partially linked to the manga series.
* RobotMaid: Shiva in ''Nostalgia''.
* SceneryPorn: This being OsamuTezuka, there are tons of splash pages devoted to showing off gorgeously rendered landscapes and architecture. Note that his humans are always simple and cartoony despite backgrounds that range from simplified props to photorealistic environments.
* {{Sexbot}}: Fanny in ''Resurrection''.
* ShootTheShaggyDog: Although the interplay of events from previous and future volumes give it purpose, when taken on its own ''Yamato'' is a good example of this.
* SmugSnake: ''Karma'' follows Akanemaru's transformation into one even though he starts out as a nice guy.
* SocietyIsToBlame: Gao in ''Karma'' says "Society made me who I am!" about why he had become a nihilistic mass murderer. The priest he says this to partially agrees, saying that reincarnation and karma are what put him in those circumstances to begin with.
* StarfishAliens: Some extra-terrestrial life forms are quite weird, such as living stones, trees with mammaries and spider-plants.
* StarSystem: Recurring characters who appear are Saruta (almost the hero of the series), Rock, Acetylene Lamp, Duke Red and even BlackJack.
* SweetPollyOliver: Kajika dresses as a boy to be employed as a worker in ''Yamato'' and get close to Oguna.
* {{The Caligula}}: Queen Himiko
* ThePhoenix
* TinMan: Robot Chihiro in ''Nostalgia'' says that it has "no heart" and does not feel any emotions. Despite this, it helps the protagonists accomplish their missions and Com asks Roomi how could a supposedly heartless robot be so kind to them while most the humans they have met were mean.
* WhatMeasureIsANonCute: Masato in ''Universe'' is very displeased that the new leading animals in the future are slugs, and has little sympathy for the last living one as it struggles for survival.
** Though this lack of sympathy probably has more to do with the fact that those damn stupid slugs went and wiped themselves out by having a world war.
* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: In ''Life'', a TV producer decides that in order for human clones to be hunted and killed without remorse, they'd have to have a misshapen anatomy to not be considered human anymore.
* WhoWantsToLiveForever: Obviously a recurring theme.
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* PerspectiveReversal: Karma, the artisan Akanemaru first meets Gao as a fugitive and offers him his fire; Gao, disfigured from birth, rewards Akanemaru for his kindness by maiming him out of spite. By the end of the story, Gao has redeemed himself and become a master artisan in his own right, while Akanemaru has let his success get to his head and become a cold, heartless bastard: when Gao bests him in a competition, Akanemaru reveals Gao's sordid past, resulting in him losing his one good arm.

Not to be confused with ''PhoenixWright'', the band ''Phoenix,'' the (unrelated to each other) coin-op videogames ''Phoenix'' or ''Space Firebirds'', TheNineties [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_%28TV_series%29 Australian police mini-series]], the Phoenix air-to-air missile, or Phoenix, Arizona.

* SeasonalRot: Even Jared Cook and Frederick Schodt, who translated the manga in its entirety and fought for it to get published in English for 30 years, admit that the series really isn't worth reading after Resurrection.

* NightmareFuel: Some parts can be really creepy, such as in ''Resurrection'', which traumatized this troper for days.

* CompleteMonster: A few characters seem to qualify, but the unpopular king in ''Yamato'' stands out. Aware of how much his subjects despise him, he orders a hundred people to be sacrificed upon his death ''just to ensure that people will mourn his death.''

Not to be confused with ''PhoenixWright'', the band ''Phoenix,'' the (unrelated to each other) coin-op videogames ''Phoenix'' or ''Space Firebirds'', TheNighties [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_%28TV_series%29 Australian police mini-series]], the Phoenix air-to-air missile, or Phoenix, Arizona.

Not to be confused with ''PhoenixWright'', the band ''Phoenix,'' the (unrelated to each other) coin-op videogames ''Phoenix'' or ''Space Firebirds'', the Phoenix air-to-air missile, or Phoenix, Arizona.

Not to be confused with ''PhoenixWright'', the band ''Phoenix,'' the (unrelated to each other) coin-op videogames ''Phoenix'' or ''Space Firebirds'', or with Phoenix, Arizona.

Not to be confused with ''PhoenixWright'', the band ''Phoenix'' or with the (unrelated to each other) coin-op videogames ''Phoenix'' or ''Space Firebirds''.

See ThePhoenix for a creature Phoenix.

* AdaptationDecay: pretty much any attempt at making Phoenix into an anime has been [[ExecutiveMeddling faced with massive changes to the plot.]]

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*TheMostDangerousGame: In ''Life'', is created such a gameshow using clones to be hunted.