Mr. Tonegawa

Mr. Tonegawa: Middle Management Blues[a] is a Japanese manga series written by Tensei Hagiwara and illustrated by Tomohiro Hashimoto and Tomoki Miyoshi.

The series comically depicts the struggles and conflicts of Tonegawa, a middle manager who is an executive of the Teiai Group and leads a large number of blacksuits, but is most concerned about the mood of the tyrannical Chairman Hyōdō.

The story follows Yukio Tonegawa, the right-hand man of the company's chairman, Kazutaka Hyōdō, and the top executive of the Teiai Group, one of Japan's largest consumer finance conglomerates.

Troubled by the chairman's interference, the threat of loss of trust from Tonegawa's subordinates, illness, the members' blunders, and unplanned accidents, the team struggles in various ways to execute the project.

Written by Tensei Hagiwara and illustrated by Tomohiro Hashimoto and Tomoki Miyoshi, with cooperation from Nobuyuki Fukumoto, Mr. Tonegawa was serialized in Kodansha's Monthly Young Magazine [ja] from June 20, 2015,[6][7] to January 23, 2018.

[24][3][25][26] Jay Kabira served as the series' narrator,[3] and each episode includes different voice actresses and actors for the trademark sound effect "Zawa Zawa", among which are: Masako Nozawa, Miyuki Sawashiro, Yū Serizawa, Ari Ozawa, Kana Hanazawa, Tomoyo Kurosawa, Shiori Izawa, Megumi Han, Chō and Chiharu Sawashiro.

[38] In 2018, the manga was among the top 20 best-selling Amazon Kindle books in Japan, ranked at #16, based on sales data between November 13, 2017, and October 31, 2018.

Paul Jensen wrote that the series would mainly appeal to Kaiji fans, but that "it could be amusing enough to lure in other viewers as long as it gives its humor some much-needed breathing room".

James Beckett said that the series is aimed "exclusively at middle-aged Japanese viewers who can empathize with the highs and lows of being the middle manager of a large corporation (criminal or otherwise)".