Toshiko Tomura (born Kageri Usuba) is a former star of the theatrical company Theatre Claw and the winner of the New York Design Academy Award.
Tabloid journalist Kametaro Aokusa follows her back to her hometown and observes her acting like a child, suckling a wax figure of her dead mother.
When he was endorsed to enter the New York Design Academy Award's contest, he discovered that she had already sent a replica of his entry, ruining his career prospects.
Tomura seduces Kamaishi's secretary Jun to get the combination to his safe, finding papers connecting him to a fraudulent 3 billion yen loan, and sells them to Kabuto.
[17] It was directed by Kazuya Shiraishi and Izumi Takahashi[18] and starred Minami as Tomura Toshiki with Yukiya Kitamura, Shingo Tsurumi, and Kyōko Matsunaga.
[17] I wrote this story in a time when all the news blaring on the television and in the newspapers was gloomy—the antagonism towards those groups calling themselves the New Left, indiscriminate acts of terrorism, the quagmire of Vietnam, and the Cultural Revolution in China.
On the other hand, it was also a time of Japan's high economic growth running at full speed for the world's top GNP spot.
[22][b] Knighton compares Tomura to a butterfly or larval insect because of how she "sheds one female skin in order to assume the next and is periodically born anew in a process of metamorphosis".
[24] Additionally, she views Tomura as representing postwar Japan at the end of the manga—standing alone in the ruins of the Acropolis of Athens—as a criticism of "a race to prosperity" modeled on the West.
[19] Tomura's adaptation to human society reflects its "repellant qualities",[26] and her character fits into Tezuka's earlier adult[27] and more progressive works.
[33] In "Tezuka's Gekiga: Behind the Mask of Manga", Philip Brophy notes that while Tomura's depiction as a "guileful manipulator" is reminiscent of modern misogynistic stories, it ties back to Japanese cultural history and mythology, which is "portrayed by abused women who ply their sexuality with survivalist verve".
[34] He also calls the manga "Tezuka's harshest assessment of the human condition" because of his "razing of any maternal, sisterly, or romantic attributes from Tomura".
[34] Lastly he calls Tezuka's art a tool used to deconstruct the "human interiority and confront the nothingness attained through remorseless acts", with Tomura's character "less fleshed out and more poured out and conjured as an empty vessel.
[37] Santos also felt that the manga represented Tezuka at his most serious with the focus on action and the ambitious art, with its "wild metaphors and images jump[ing] off the page.
[38] Chris Kirby of the Fandom Post found Tomura to be an unsympathetic character, but called her compelling to observe in the manga's "dog-eat-dog world of the 60s and 70s".
He also felt that Tezuka's art kept the reader's interest with its variety, saying: "It's another sign of a great artist that they can seemingly do whatever they want and yet what they choose to do remains worthwhile.
"[41] Steve Bennett of ICv2 described the manga as an "unbelievably bleak, unsentimental indictment of human life that makes no attempt to impart anything like a moral", concluding that it is a "compelling work, meant for a genuinely mature audience, skillfully told by [Tezuka].
"[43] Lori Henderson of Manga Village compared Tomura's sociopathic nature to Yuki's from MW, but said that the former is an example of "survival of the fittest", while the latter is a product of his environment.