EXCLUSIVE: First Look at Scholastic’s Manga Line Reimagines a Beloved Character

Scholastic will debut its new manga line in August with a reinvention of a beloved Japanese unicorn character created by the god of manga, Osamu Tezuka, in the 1970s.

Unico: Awakening brings its eponymous hero into the modern day with writing by Samuel Sattin and artist Gurihiru, and The Mary Sue has an exclusive first look at the brightly-colored new book.

In Tezuka’s serialized Unico manga, the baby unicorn can make anyone around him feel happy, including his friend, a stunning young girl named Psyche. The envious goddess Venus cannot stand Psyche’s beauty and seeks to diminish it by taking away her happiness, which Venus believes to be solely attributed to Unico. She commands the West Wind to take Unico to the Hill of Oblivion, where he won’t remember Psyche and will wander for eternity, alone.

However, the West Wind—much like the hunter in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves—takes pity on Unico and instead sends him to various places in space and time where he makes new friends and brings them happiness. The West Wind wipes Unico’s memory of each place when they leave to avoid Venus’s detection.

In Unico: Awakening, he wakes up on Earth and befriends a cat named Chloe when he saves her from being hit by a car. Chloe develops a protective streak toward Unico, which he returns. The pair get into mischief together and eventually meet a kind, lonely old woman who lives in the forest near a small village.

To help the old woman, whom Chloe believes is a witch, Chloe begs Unico to transform her into a human girl. Unfortunately, their act of kindness puts Unico’s magic on the map—literally. It alerts Venus to Unico’s location and she becomes hellbent on destroying him and Chloe for helping him. As her hunt begins anew, Unico and Chloe must band together and figure out how to survive Venus’s wrath, without hurting anyone else along the way.

Check out an exclusive preview from Unico: Awakening below.

“My view on Tezuka is that—as far as comics go—he was simultaneously a classicist and a pioneer. His work is timeless, but it also pushes boundaries at every turn. From a cartooning perspective, he discovered countless ways to express emotion, action, downfall, and triumph. His characters are hemmed in by encroaching darkness when they’re undergoing transformations or strain. Action moves at the speed of sound and then slows when scenes come into focus. His characters contain such a wide span of emotions. And the stories they star in are massive in scope,” Sattin said in a statement for The Mary Sue.

“Another wonderful thing about Tezuka’s work is that he could write books like Unico, Astro Boy, Dororo, and Black Jack, and then turn towards dark, gekiga (adult) stories like MW, Ode to Kirihito, The Human Insect, and adaptations of classic western works like Crime and Punishment. You can’t hem Osamu Tezuka into any one age group genre because he’s simply too complex. Too human. Oh, and there’s the fact that he essentially created the entire modern manga and anime industries single-handedly,” Sattin continued. “In short, Osamu Tezuka was a worldbuilder both inside his stories and in the actual world itself. He’s beyond comparison. A God in the truest, most mortal sense of the word, which is to say that his human hands reached the stars.”

Sattin is a panelist on the San Diego Comic-Con 2024 panel, “Discover the Magic of Osamu Tezuka: New Adventures for a New Generation,” with translator Ben Applegate (Search & Destroy) and editor and journalist Deb Aoki (Mangasplaining podcast, The Beat), from 2-3 p.m. in Room 28DE on Thursday, July 25. In addition to a discussion about Tezuka’s legacy, the panel will also reveal an exclusive preview of the second chapter in the new Unico series from Scholastic.

Unico: Awakening will be available everywhere books are sold on August 6.