![]() ![]() ![]() With Sampei Shirato’s politically conscious ninja-drama Kamui-den especially hitting a young left-wing audience, the serialised distribution of manga meanwhile established Garo as a revolution. When first founded by Katsuichi Nagai in 1964, Garo featured the work of Sampei Shirato, an artist and essayist known for introducing gekiga-a gritty style of comics aimed towards adults that dominated manga in the 1960s and 1970s. Garo‘s beginnings took place within a bygone era of Japanese culture, when manga only circulated through a kashi-hon book rental system, and all amidst a politically turbulent climate with frequent student protests. ![]() ![]() Though never deemed a successful ‘major’ magazine, Garo’s unboundedness sowed the seeds of contemporary manga-and for that, of all Japanese pop culture. Each cover hosts artwork by manga history’s most distinguished names, in shockingly diverse art styles that impacted students, activists, and artists from the 1960s to the early 2000s.Īs Japan’s most notorious alternative manga anthology, Garo’s pioneering artists ventured unhesitatingly into difficult subject matter-complicated historical dramas, existentialist takes on modern life, abstract illustrations, cruel depictions of poverty, and often, artistic inquiries into the erotique and grotesque. Having now been out of print for a couple of decades, one would be immediately confronted with a distinct presence coming across a rare edition of Garo. ![]()
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