Osamu Tezuka made something that shouldn't exist: a three-episode meditation on time, mortality, and Japanese history that feels complete. The Dogo Onsen hot spring becomes a threshold between lives, between centuries, between the living and whatever waits after. A man soaks in the same waters for generations, and every ripple asks the same question: what does it mean to survive when everything you knew turns to ash.

Tezuka Production brings Osamu Tezuka's manga Phoenix to Dogo Onsen, the historic hot spring bath house in Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture, in this original three-episode ONA from 2019. The short was made as a tie-in with the prefecture's Dogo Reborn Project, a revitalization campaign supporting the restoration and repair of the 125-year-old building, parts of which were due for renovation.