Beste Manga der 1940s

Yutaka Aso's Children of the City is a manga published by Yodosha in 1947. It depicts two war orphans struggling to survive the postwar period, while being exposed to unreasonable violence, hunger, thirst, and prejudice. There are no lines, and the story is drawn so that the reader can understand it just by looking at the pictures. Yutaka Aso is known as the creator of "Easygoing Daddy," which was serialized in the Hochi Shimbun newspaper in 1923 and gained popularity. As one of the founders of story-based manga, he is a manga artist whose name is sure to be found in any book on the history of Japanese manga, but there are probably very few people reading his manga these days. His postwar works have been forgotten. This work fully demonstrates Aso's skills as a journalist and urban observer. The poignant loneliness of the two war orphans is reminiscent of later "gekiga."

Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. Oba Yozo's attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a "clown" to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness.