It'd be pretty easy for me to just say "X by Tezuka Osamu is the best, most OG thing ever written and anyone who disagrees is a poser who doesn't like REAL manga". I bet if I went the extra mile and expounded all of Tezukas life story andhis influence on the creation of the art style, then I'd be untouchable. Tezuka Osamu's name is dropped just as much for the elitism it breeds as it is for the industry he fathered. It's a sad fact, but true, and something I make an effort to avoid when lauding his already deified works.

So when I say Ayako is one of his best works, know that I'm not just picking an obscure name out of his Wikipedia page and calling it the end-all-be-all of manga. I've read Princess Knight, Astro Boy, Buddha and some of his graphic novels. I believe Tezuka, perhaps without knowing it, accomplished the most with Ayako.

The story follows the Tenge family, consisting of three sons, a daughter, a mother and the tyrannical father who rules over them as a despotic patriarch. The Tenge clan are old-style landlords in reconstruction-era Japan. They, mostly the father, struggle to stay relevant as their country shifts from feudalism to the 20th century. America's occupation led to new laws that depower the ruling class by making their farmers independent citizens with their own land.

With the farmers granted property rights over the land they work, rights protected by the American occupation, they no longer have any need of the feudal lords' abusive, moody and massively depraved presences. This leads us back to the Tenge family, who are the most depraved of them all. Their middle son has just returned from an American POW camp and as early as the second page is disowned by his father for being taken prisoner rather than take his own life. The oldest son is constantly under the thumb of their father, who the middle son quickly discovers is extorting the oldest son's wife for sex. The father's threat is that if his son doesn't give his wife up to him, he'll be left out of the will, and inherit nothing of the land his family holds. The land that will, of course, not be theirs anymore within a generation.

This whole dynamic between abusive father and abused sons is complicated by the oldest sons daughter: the titular Ayako. She's as pure and sweet as can be, but her very existence threatens the fabric of the Tenge family's existence, as she is discovered to not be the oldest son's daughter at all.

I usually present stories by their more base components, breaking down what they do in broad, thematic terms so I communicate what I enjoyed about a work without spending paragraph upon paragraph reiterating events. In the case of Ayako though, I feel just telling people it's premise is enough to stimulate their own interpretations. It's a shocking, strange and dramatic story, made all the more unsettling by its closeness to reality. It serves as Japan deconstructing itself, and to that end it holds nothing back. For that, I respect it immensely, and hold it up as one of mangas best artist's best work.