From the man who brought us Astro Boy, Buddha, and many other acclaimed works, Tezuka Osamu brings us Kitarubeki Sekai, or better known as NextWorld. Nextworld is a story about the epidemic crisis of the Earth coming to an end. Threatened by an unknown substance our heroes Kenichi, Rock, Dr. Mustache, and many other faces try to save the world and prepare for the worse, as they face tribulations of war, greed, fear, and other obstacles along the way in this 1951 tale by Tezuka.

The story is told in a series of non-linear events, where the world is soon coming to an end, and being invaded by aliens. Human nature displays its gruesome nature, as fear and greed causes the nations to go at war with each other. In the meantime our cast of characters all find themselves in different situations as they try to do what they can to survive this epidemic. Tezuka uses a non-linear style to tell his story. At times the un-parallel events come together greatly, but at other times the fluidity of the story runs amok. The transitions between certain events is executed poorly, but it doesn’t take away from the overall style of the story.

The cartoonish style that Tekuza uses in his story adds to the light humor of this Sci-fi story. The looney events that he has when he displays the chaos depicted in his story really brings out the best of his characters and surrounding settings. At times though, the cartoon-like style does overwhelm his panels as there is too much going on in such a small panel. Although at times the cluster of events in one panel would overwhelm it, there were multiple moments where the art would definitely shine at depicting the great fantasy world that Tezuka had built for this story.

Nextworld is definitely one of his more vibrant works. Full of overlying dialogue and at times spontaneous events. A manga full of cartoonish and non-linear ingenuity, which displays a fun and adventurous story waiting to be read.