Gekiga

It is aesthetically defined by sharp angles, hatching, and gritty lines, and thematically by realism, social engagement, maturity, and masculinity.

[2] Before Tezuka moved to Tokyo, he lived in Osaka and mentored artists such as Yoshihiro Tatsumi and Masahiko Matsumoto who admired him.

"[5] 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".

[citation needed] Irma Nunez of The Japan Times wrote that "rather than simply use 'gekiga' as a banner to legitimize adult content and realism in manga, ... they developed a whole new aesthetic.

"[5] Matsumoto's son said that these artists felt that the shorter stories Tezuka started writing after moving to Tokyo, narrowed his expression as action needed to be explained in speech bubbles.

They experimented with how best to blend images with the text; how a closeup might express the interiority of a character; how to synchronize a story's action with the pace of the reader's gaze as it covered the page".

[9] Other names he considered include katsudōga and katsuga, both derived from katsudō eiga or "moving pictures", an early term for films, showing the movement's cinematic influence.

[8][7] The avant-garde magazine Garo, founded in 1964, was an outlet for experimental and unconventional works that were "visually or thematically too challenging for the mainstream market".

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the children who had grown up reading manga wanted something aimed at older audiences and gekiga catered to that niche.