Tuberculose

(from TezukaOsamu.net )

"Tuberculosis" depicts the adventures of Kenichi and his uncle, Mr. Mustachio, inside a boy's body. After being injected with a drug called ZX that was discovered by Mustachio, Kenichi and his uncle have shrunk and become very small.

When they enter the body of a boy and reach his lung, they find that tubercle bacilli (bacteria) are opening a big hole in the boy's lung. Tubercle bacilli send Mode (a tubercle bacillus), a daughter of Dr. Iyoa (also a tubercle bacillus), to Kenichi and Mustachio to learn the human language.

The two make friends with Mode, but a war breaks out between the tubercle bacilli and the commandos in the boy's brain, and the two become involved in the war.

Published as a tankoban, Tuberculose is an early work of Tezuka's that has not been collected in any edition of the complete works, nor reprinted along with others in the Fukkan *Early Masterpiece Selection* boxsets.

A second attempt at the work was done by Tezuka in the form of *Monsters on the 38th Parallel*.