Osamu Tezuka's Star System
Over the course of his career, Osamu Tezuka reused the same characters in different roles in different stories. The way that Tezuka used the characters in his "star system" can be seen as somewhat analoguous to a film director frequently casting members of a regular "stable" of actors in different roles. For instance, the "actor" Shunsaku Ban or Shunsuke Ban, who played the detective in Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis, also played Astro Boy's teacher in Astro Boy. Tezuka jokingly made a list of how much they were paid and based them on famous western actors in his time.
Because numerous kanji all have the same pronunciations in Japanese, characters' names are usually phonetically identical but written with different kanji from story to story.
Read more about Osamu Tezuka's Star System: Characters, Note
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