Osamu Tezuka’s Scrappy (More or Less)

Almost seven years ago, I wrote about Scrappy’s seeming influence on Japanese animation—and, in particular, on the work of Osamu Tezuka. Among the legendary cartoonist’s early creations were two characters, Little Ma and Pete, who looked quite a bit like our hero. But it was all pretty tentative, since I had no proof that Tezuka was even aware of Scrappy—though it is well-known that he was a great fan of American cartoons and comics.

Well, Friend of Scrappy Noah Stone alerted me to a drawing by Tezuka that settles it. Kind of. Well, actually, there’s a surprise twist.

The drawing in question features Tezuka’s charming, pretty on-model renditions of Oswald the Rabbit, Andy Panda, Woody Woodpecker, Popeye, Olive Oyl, The Little King, Betty Boop, Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Mighty Mouse, Hoppity, Sourpuss, Krazy Kat, Tom and Jerry, Felix, Sylvester, Goofy, The Practical Pig, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Chip ‘n Dale, and (from Cinderella) Gus. And Scrappy.

Here it is:

I’m not sure when the drawing dates from, but I believe Tezuka drew it in 1951 at the earliest. That’s because its version of Krazy seems to be the one from Dell Comics’ odd Krazy Kat comic book, which debuted with an issue cover-dated June 1951. It owed little to either Herriman or Charles Mintz’s 1930s cartoons, but might have been the only reference material Tezuka had close at hand.

Curious about what Tezuka’s text said, I fed the image into Google Translate, which spat out a version in English. It did an impressive job, too:

You may have spotted some quirks in the translated version. The two pigs are bigs, for instance. Sourpuss is Soapas. Goofy is Fee. Gus is Gas. Chip ‘n Dale are Drip and Lip. Whether these relate to the characters’ names in Japanese or reflect glitches with Google’s translation, I’m not sure.

But the weirdest problem is also the one most relevant to this post: Scrappy is identified as a Fleischer character named “Binbo.” Correcting that to Bimbo doesn’t really correct anything. That definitely is not Bimbo, and definitely is Scrappy.

What gives? I’m not sure. Conflating Bimbo and Scrappy seems far-fetched, but … not impossible? It might help if we knew for sure whether Tezuka cribbed his drawing of Scrappy from a particular piece of art, which seems difficult to do if you think you’re drawing Bimbo. However, I don’t recognize it. So I can’t say for sure that Tezuka didn’t get very, very confused at some point between the 1930s and the 1950s.

For now, the bottom line seems to be: Osamu Tezuka knew Scrappy. But maybe not very well. If you have additional information and/or theories, I’d appreciate hearing them. And thank you, Noah.