gekiga

is a style of Japanese comics aimed at adult audiences and marked by a more cinematic art style and more mature themes. Gekiga was the predominant style of adult comics in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s. It is aesthetically defined by sharp angles, hatching, and gritty lines, and thematically by realism, social engagement, maturity, and masculinity.

==History== In the 1950s, mainstream Japanese comics (manga) came from Tokyo and were aimed at children, led by the work of Osamu Tezuka. Before Tezuka moved to Tokyo, he lived in Osaka and mentored artists such as Yoshihiro Tatsumi and Masahiko Matsumoto who admired him. Although influenced by Tezuka's adaptation of cinema techniques, they were not interested in making humoristic comics for children in Tezuka's Disney-esque style. They wanted to write consistently dramatic stories with aesthetics influenced by film noir and crime novels. Gekiga were more graphic and showed more violence than the children's manga that came before them. Tatsumi explained, "Part of that was influenced by the newspaper stories I would read. I would have an emotional reaction of some kind and want to express that in my comics." The name gekiga was coined in 1957 by Tatsumi and adopted by other more serious Japanese cartoonists, who did not want their trade to be known by the more common term "manga", meaning "whimsical pictures".