Osamu Tezuka Illustrates Fire Safety With Astro Boy and Black Jack

Between the regular Daylight Savings Time reminders to change the battery in your smoke detector to Spider-Man taking time out of his busy schedule of web-slinging and Goblin-punching to talk to the kids, the very important topic of Fire Safety has been on my mind quite a bit lately. But for my money, the single best set of tips on how to avoid burning your house down came from legendary manga creator Osamu Tezuka in a series of posters created for a department store in 1979.

Recently posted by the awesome Pink Tentacle blog, these posters aren't just good advice, they also showcase some of Tezuka's many famous creations, like Astro Boy, Black Jack, and Kimba the White Lion. And that's why today, as part of our commitment to the safety of our readers, we're posting them here with both Tezuka's tips and a few other things you can learn!

One would think that a pair of sophisticated nuclear powered robots (one of whom is armed with machine-guns in his butt) would be capable of raking a pile of leaves without unleashing what appears to be a 5-hit dice Fire Elemental (who actually does look pretty friendly), but it seems one would be mistaken. Either way, I sincerely hope with all my heart that Pluto creator Naoki Urasawa is currently working on a darker, grittier reimagining of this poster.

Also, it is probably not a good idea to allow your tiny homunculi to play near the stove, even under the best conditions.

You know, I've used a lot of space heaters in my time, but I have never once opened a box to find so much as a palm frond, let alone a white lion to tie it to. I knew I should've sprung for the deluxe models.

Well, humanity, we've had a pretty good run, but now that the adorable unicorns have formed an alliance with THEM!, it's pretty much over. Now that they've learned to conquer fire, our greatest weapon against them, it's only a matter of time before we're overrun and forced to labor for the glory of the Anticorn Empire in the sugar and/or rainbow mines.

WARNING: In the event of an emergency, slapstick comedy will be slightly less hilarious!

You know, completely apart from the topic of fire safety, this is just pretty good general advice. Which is good, because in context, it doesn't make a lot of sense for a phoenix to not want things to burst into flames. That's kind of their whole deal.

Now, I'm no psychologist, but even I know this: If you put a sweet-ass slide on your house and then tell your kid that he can only use it when there's a fire, you're going to be raising a pyromaniac. That's just common sense.

Again, this one's just pretty good advice. Also good advice? Do not cook what appears to be a pot of fire.

Also, maybe -- and this is just a thought here -- maybe don't light a fire inside a tree and then go to sleep. There is no way that works out well.

I think the lesson here has less to do with fire safety and more to do with the fact that this girl is clearly the worst babysitter ever. Seriously, letting a kid with a head injury sit on a gigantic space heater? Yikes. But on the bright side, Tezuka could've easily recycled this image for another department store display if they ever ran a special on hidden cameras for parents.

(via Pink Tentacle)