Amusingly Trivial

From ANN today, "A Most Bizarre 6-Fingered Story".

A very light article about manga trivialities. There's something about the way the story is structured, where the author goes to great lengths to develop and support a thesis that happens to be relatively trivial, that greatly amuses me.

There is one particular quote that I hadn't heard before and is an interesting data point for the record:

Tetsuwan Atom (Astro Boy) initially had 4 fingers. It is well-known that the inspiration for Atom came from early Disney films, and a character called Mickey Mouse.

Mickey Mouse had 4 fingers, so Atom was drawn with 4 fingers as well. Later, when Mr. Tezuka met with a Disney employee who had worked on Mickey, he asked why Mickey only had 4 fingers, to which he got the following response:

"Because if you animate him with 5 fingers, it looks like he has 6 fingers when he's moving."

After that, Atom was drawn with 5 fingers.