By Zack Quaintance — One of the more interesting comics projects on Kickstarter as of late has been UNICO: AWAKENING, which is in the broadest strokes a re-imagining of Osama Tezuka’s Awakening. The book is a new 162-page manga by Gurihiru (the Eisner-winning illustration team behind Superman Smashes the Klan) and Samuel Sattin (a novelist and co-writer of Crunchyroll’s Essential Anime).

For those who aren’t familiar, UNICO is Osamu Tezuka’s story of a young unicorn who angers the Greek Gods by inspiring hope and positivity within humans (worth it, imo, especially these days…). The Gods subsequently punish Unico by banishing him across space and time, which leads to him forgetting who he was. Unico is then transported from era to era, where he must always escape the Gods before ultimately getting his memory erased…again. Through it all, the Spirit of the West Wind feels sorry for Unico and works to protect him.

Gurihiru and Sattin’s is inspired by iTezuka’s “The Cat on the Broomstick'' storyline, which ran in the original manga in the 1970s. Sattin had this to say about working with Gurihiru on the project:

With UNICO: AWAKENING, our goal is to reimagine this story for a new generation of readers. Gurihiru and I are working directly with Tezuka Productions to make sure that we accomplish this goal successfully. Gurihiru is the perfect artist team for this project. In line with Tezuka's tradition of collaboration, iteration, and homage, they blend Japanese and Western comics styles in a unique fashion.

You can back the project via the link below, and — most importantly for our purposes — you can find exclusive content from the Kickstarter down there as well, including Maddie Copp's pages from the UNICO children’s book, and process artwork from Junko Mizuno, who illustrated one of the incentive prints…enjoy!

Learn more about UNICO: AWAKENING on Kickstarter

UNICO: AWAKENING Kickstarter

First up, we’re honored to have the exclusive unveiling of this gallery of (absolutely adorable) pages from Maddie Cop’s UNICO kid’s book…

This is such a fun aesthetic choice for this re-imagining of Osamu Tezuka’s Awakening. Not only does it somehow make Unico more adorable, but the gold edges on the covers are also a fantastic touch. Copp had this to say about the artwork:

Since Unico was a big part of my childhood, I decided to draw inspiration from another part of my childhood for this project: Little Golden Books. I thought that the soft crayon- and pencil-like drawings from those would suit Unico well. I only had a few pages to tell a story, so I tried to convey both the deep feelings of loneliness and those of joy and wonder that are present in Unico stories. It was truly an honor to be a part of the Unico: Awakening project and I can only hope I did Osamu Tezuka's legendary work justice.

In addition to those Maddie Copp kid’s book pages, we’re also exclusively unveiling process artwork from Junko Mizuno, who created one of the collectible prints re-imagining Unico for this campaign, which you can also find the completed version of below…

Back UNICO: AWAKENING:

UNICO: AWAKENING on Kickstarter

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He has written about comics for The Beat and NPR Books, among others. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.