Buddha vol 1 - Kapilavastu (5 points)

 The first Buddha vol from Osamu Tezuka was a pretty interesting read for me. Throughout reading the volume, I was really impressed with how Tezuka delivered important aspects of Buddha while making it feel like I was reading the story of a hero going about his journey. Buddha is a hard story to nail down, because there are so many versions and convoluted information, as well as the fact that Buddha is so old. I liked how the story was both combining outside factors with Buddha's internal issues, as well as having multiple protagonists that flesh out the world and its story. It created complexity within the plot. The character designs were pretty nice for the most part, though I was a bit sad to see that the manga didn't really reflect the character's race/ethnicity as much (since pretty much all the characters are Indian/South Asian). Occasionally, some of the background characters have features that are kind of similar to harmful racist caricatures, albeit this is most of a side note since it doesn't look like Tezuka is really following any harmful racist caricatures. From a design standpoint, it's weird to see.