While I've reviewed some of Tezuka's more ambitious works here, UNICO is a serial devoted to one overarching plotline that loosely unites eight done-in-one stories. Of those stories, only one satisfies my criteria for a mythcomic, so I'll devote most of my critique to the tale with the odd title CLAWS OF ATHENS.
The structure of the series slightly resembles the American show THE TIME TUNNEL, in which the protagonists were thrust into a new environment in every episode. Venus, the Greek goddess of love, resents the way the locals value the younger deity Psyche over her, and Psyche thinks that Psyche's power stems from having a pet unicorn, Unico. Venus calls upon the West Wind, telling the spirit to transport the young unicorn to another era, where Psyche can never find her pet. In whatever era Unico appears, he loses his memory of all past events, recollecting only his name and the fact that his magical powers are enhanced whenever someone shows Unico kindness and/or love. And every time Unico finishes helping some marginalized person-- or trying to, at least-- the West Wind shows up and transports the unicorn to his next adventure. Only in the last one is suggested that Unico may be able to be reunited with Psyche.
CLAWS is interesting in that though it invokes the story of the Sphinx and her riddle, almost nothing about the associated Oedipus narrative proves important. Unico gets deposited in a desert where the Sphinx dwells. (Possibly Tezuka was thinking more about the Thebes in Egypt than the one where the Sophocles play transpires.) The monstrous female tries to subject the amnesia-stricken child to questions, but the exhausted Unico simply collapses. The Sphinx interprets this failure as her victory and takes the unicorn to her lair to feed to her only offspring, Piro.
Piro doesn't care for meat and lets Unico go. However, Unico gets turned around in the desert and ends up back at the lair. The unicorn learns that in his absence, the sage Oedipus accepted the Sphinx's challenge. He correctly guessed the answer to the riddle and used the wish he won to slay the Sphinx. (In some Greek stories the monster kills itself, but apparently there are variants wherein Oedipus does the dirty deed.) On the verge of death, the Sphinx asks Unico to help Piro become a healthy, powerful Sphinx.
Oedipus is mentioned in passing once more, but CLAWS is all about Piro's pedagogical journey, the "claws" symbolizing the young monster's ability to be aggressive. Unico, despite his own youth, is a pretty severe taskmaster, but Piro is dilatory and self-indulgent.
Then we finally learn why Tezuka worked in a reference to Athens, because the bulk of the story from then on is a very loose adaptation of Shakespeare's A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. We never see Athens itself, only "Athens Forest," where the elf queen Titania reigns with her husband Oberon. Titania wants to make Piro her pet, and when Unico puts his spade in, the queen gets her henchman Puck to trap the busybody unicorn. With Unico out of the way, Piro gives in to his worst instincts, inflated with self-importance.
Even while Unico is out of the picture, though, Oberon meets Piro and gives the Sphinx the same message Unico, telling him to "make yourself stronger." Humiliated, Piro tells Titania that he wants to leave, and she places on him the curse of Bottom in the Bard's play: making an ass of him. Oberon, tired of his wife's high-handed ways, gets into a fight with her. Meanwhile, ass-Piro seeks out Unico. Unico tells him to fetch an axe from a nearby mortal's cabin, but not to touch anything else. Once again Piro's self-indulgence gets the better of him; he filches some of the mortal's food gets captured and sold to a donkey-skinner.
Unico makes a deal with Puck, and the elf frees the unicorn. However, before they can find Piro, the West Wind obeys one of Venus' chimerical orders and comes to transport Unico to another realm. To the unicorn's good fortune, night is about to fall, and the Night Wind's power trumps that of the West Wind.
Puck gets the ides to run an impersonation scam on Oberon, so that he'll cancel out Titania's spell. Much Midsummer's tomfoolery ensues, but Titania finally removes the spell. Restored to Sphinx-hood, Piro finally stands up for himself against a pack of savage dogs. Having at last honored the wishes of his mother, Piro also plans to build a great statue to her-- but then the West Wind returns and spirits Unico away to his next exploit.
The rest of the stories in the collection are all good melodrama, but CLAWS is the only one where Tezuka manages to work a good epistemological pattern into his very eclectic approach to three unrelated narratives.
