This was one of the first examples of an effort to collect all of a major manga creator's work, notable for being started during Tezuka's prime rather than towards the end of his career or after his death (which became the more common practice). Unlike similar efforts by other prolific creators from Tezuka's era, there was never any intention to reprint all of Tezuka's work as even some of his most famous series' have stories that have never been officially reprinted due to his wishes and that of his estate.
Although some material was first collected in this format, that was not the norm. Many of the final volumes to get this format in the 90's were some of Tezuka's later work that was produced after this collection process began. Presumably this was related to the fact that those works were already being put in print at their original publishers while this project was in motion (or after it had "ended"). However, works that were first published by Kodansha did not seem to have this problem as a major serialization like Mitsume ga Tōru was one of the first books in this series despite the fact it hadn't even put out its final volume in its original Kodansha Comics edition.
This project was revived just over a decade after it ended to rerelease everything in a bunko format of only 200 volumes. Some material was not carried over to the new collections but other material was reprinted for the first time (though most of the major outliers that don't get reprinted were still avoided).
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