Written by: Ollie Kaplan
The “God of Manga” is finally getting his defining work back into English readers’ hands. Osamu Tezuka’s magnum opus Phoenix (Hi no Tori) finally returning to print, Kodansha revealed during its Thursday afternoon industry panel at this year’s Anime Expo, which takes place at Southern
California’s Los Angeles Convention Center from July 2nd to July 5th. This announcement is a welcome surprise to die-hard English-language Tezuka fans who have been waiting approximately 20 years to see Phoenix return to print.
Kodansha announced at AX 2026 that it was publishing a lavish new hardcover edition of Tezuka’s Phoenix, the sprawling, genre-defying series that the creator himself considered his life’s masterpiece, Known as Hi no Tori (“firebird”) in Japan, Phoenix is less a single story than a meta-series spanning wildly different eras and settings, unified by Tezuka’s recurring “Star System” cast and a persistent set of obsessions: mortality, legacy, love, ego. At its center is the phoenix herself—sometimes a mythic creature nesting in a volcano, sometimes a cosmic presence adrift in space, never fully explained.
Read the official description below:
The defining masterpiece of modern manga—the series that “God of Manga” Osamu Tezuka considered his life’s work—is finally available in English once again, in a beautiful, cloth-bound hardcover featuring fully restored art and new introductions by translator and author Fredrik L. Schodt (Manga! Manga!) and Hugo finalist Dr. Ada Palmer (Too Like the Lightning).
Vol. 1 includes the first two stories in publication order—”Dawn” and “Future”—presented in a large size with silkscreen-printed and gold foil–stamped covers and including color pages recovered from the original serialization and other material never before presented in any English edition: 670 pages of manga and bonus material.
Despite Tezuka’s massive English-language footprint—from Astro Boy‘s 1963 TV debut through modern releases of Buddha, Princess Knight, Dororo, and Black Jack—Phoenix has remained a conspicuous gap in his available catalog since Viz Media’s translation went out of print after its 2002–2008 run.
This new edition doesn’t start from scratch. It revives the original Dadakai translation, which was first commissioned during Tezuka’s own lifetime and helmed by Jared Cook, Shinji Sakamoto, and Frederik L. Schodt, the inaugural inductee of the American Manga Awards Hall of Fame—with Schodt and Cook returning personally to update the text. The artwork itself is sourced from a 2020 Japanese restoration effort aimed at recreating exactly how Phoenix looked to readers first encountering it in COM, Tezuka’s seinen manga magazine, back in the 1960s. That means reviving two-, three-, and four-color art treatments that had gone unseen for decades, paired with fresh lettering from master letterer and font designer Sara Linsley—all wrapped in a cloth cover finished with screenprinting and foil-stamped trade dress.
Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix Deluxe Edition arrives in Spring 2027.
Source: Kodansha
