"If I were an editor and producer, I would have asked Mr. Matsumoto to go in this direction and not let him look the other way."-Takao Saito, winner of the 13th Osamu Tezuka Cultural Grand Prize.
Another history of gekiga drawn by the advocate of "Komaga", the root of gekiga, is now available in book form for the first time!
Around 1955, the book rental business, which rents out books for 10 yen a day, was about to reach its peak. At the time, there were four manga publishers in Osaka that catered to the book rental industry, and the Hinomaru Bunko in Semba was filled with the energy of young people who were poor but had dreams, including Takao Saito, Masaaki Sato, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, and Masahiko Matsumoto. This is the story of these people, who would later spread the manga expression known as gekiga, and the beginning of the history of gekiga!