The Crater is a collection of 18 comics Osamu Tezuka produced, with one exception, over the course of 1969 and 1970. Based on the foreword, these aren't the only stories he wrote and drew in that time, but the ones he felt were the strongest.
A lot of the stories veer towards a Twilight Zone vibe, usually with some sort of twist or surprise ending. "Good Fortune" involves two boys vying for the same girl, and trying to use a pipe that leads to a strange river that lets you travel back in time to gain the advantage. One boy ultimately gets swept away by the current and is taken to a point before he was conceived, and ceases to exist. "Two Dramas" appears to be about a poverty-stricken young man in the U.S. named Jim, who keeps finding himself briefly in the body of a well-to-do Japanese teen named Ryuichi. Each chafes under the expectations of their parents, and each eventually falls in love with the same girl. The end most likely is, and isn't, what you'd expect from that description.
Several involve either supernatural forces, often with specific rules that need to be followed. On some occasions, like in "Sacrifice," the main character follows the terms of the agreement. It's unclear how much of a choice she had, but she doesn't attempt to dodge her fate In others, like "The Octagonal House," the protagonist doesn't follow rules and pays the price.
There are a few stories that don't involve otherworldly forces. In "Sergeant Okuno," a pilot is presumed to have died heroically crashing his damaged plane into an enemy radio tower. Really, he made an emergency landing on a desert isle and it took a while to make a raft and return home. But he's already been declared a hero, so the brass are insistent he must live up to the story they told, regardless of his disinterest in dying for his country.
"The Jumbo" (written in 1974, the on exception to the time frame) revolves around passengers panicking because a presumed to be deadly spider is loose in the cabin. It's one of those stories where the stress reveals the true nature of the passengers, as a white journalist from South Africa immediately blames the black woman in the row behind him for bringing the spider on-board. Another passenger seems attractive to the spider and is increasingly covered in webs, while her boyfriend refuses to help her at all.
There's an afterword written by an Ada Palmer, titled "The Cruelty of The Crater," which investigates the different stories within the apparent framework of a karmic cycle Tezuka seemed to explore most fully in a longer series titled Phoenix. I defer to Palmer on that. Rebirth or second chances do come up in several stories, but what seemed to recur to me was that once a decision was made, it had to be lived with. The consequences might be known or not, but they'd have to be dealt with.
The Ryuichi in "The Octagonal House" tries a different life, and when it doesn't turn out better, when throwing away his career for love backfires, forgets there's no going back. All the characters in "The Bell Rings" are haunted by decisions they made that can't be taken back. Some were made of spite, others of fear. At least one seemed to be of ignorance. But the reason is irrelevant; the action and its consequences remain with them, even as they continue to live.
The heads of the military in "Sergeant Okubo" can't accept the lie they told the public is just that, and try to force reality to conform to their wishes. They get the dramatic, destructive plan crash they wanted, just not where they wanted it. The main character in "Bag Containing the Future" time travels in the hopes of stealing another person's, better, future, only to find the quality of no one's future can be determined simply by outside appearance.
Tezuka's tends towards rounded, smooth-faced main characters. Ryuichi is the name of a bunch of different characters, but his look is generally the same. The women all fall in a general range of "slender limbs and necks with long, flowing hair," unless there's some specific reason to make them look different. The supporting casts or sidekicks tend to be more distinctive. The guy who eventually erases himself in "Good Fortune" has fat pursued lips like a puffer fish (or a butthole). It's a malleable enough style to allow for exaggeration for comedic effect, but also work for the frequent fistfights that break out.
(Tezuka himself appears as a supporting character in a few stories. Always as he does in the image at the top of this post, though usually with a slump-shouldered posture that says he's heard one too many diatribes from his bosses about deadlines. His survival rate in the stories isn't great, either.)
He rarely gets graphic with his violence. People are shot, but it's shown with them wincing or falling over, the area hit stained dark. A black character is repeatedly branded in "The Two-Headed Snake", an even is hit in the face with the brand, but the marks seem to disappear later. But Tezuka he knows when to use it for effect. The end of "The Octagonal House" is one example. "The Man Who Melted," which is a story with a bit of a "repeat history if you don't learn from it" vibe, is another. Even in "Bag Containing the Future," the way he draws the bag (attached to each person's butt) makes it seem incredibly gross that anyone would want to cut it off and attach it to themselves.
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