With Tezuka’s establishment of manga as a viable, commercial form, other artists were freed to develop manga in new directions. Tezuka’s cohort Tatsumi Yoshihiro (1935-2015) expressed discomfort with manga being primarily aimed at children and including too many idealistic or innocuous themes. Tatsumi coined the term gekiga (“dramatic pictures”) to define a more politically engaged type of manga, replacing light, playful fantasy with stark realism and concerns for the lives of everyday people. Taking on complex themes of society and morality, including sexuality and violence, gekiga aimed to create a mature aesthetic for manga - parallel in many ways to the development of the “graphic novel” from the “comic book” in the West. The tones and perspectives of gekiga had an immediate influence on the stories and visual qualities of mainstream manga illustration, which became heavier and more detailed. Tezuka himself adopted gekiga techniques for a series of important, adult-oriented works, and ultimately gekiga’s countercultural status diminished as some of its ideals were absorbed into the mainstream of manga production. We can see the influence of gekiga in such popular works as Tomorrow’s Joe (1968), the tale of a struggling boxer that found a receptive audience with working class people and Japan’s New Left activists.