Feature based on real events. Director Ichikawa has tried to evoke the mood of the fifties, when a number of young poor but enthusiastic cartoon artists innovated in the famous Japanese manga cartoon stories. The title is taken from the name of an apartment block in the centre of Tokyo, Tokiwa-so, where the artists rented rooms and met. Protagonist in the film is the cartoonist Terada Hiro. Terada dreams of one day making just as masterful comic strips as the famous Tezuda Osamu that gave Tokiwa-so its fame and attracted many young ambitious artists. Tezuda is the master of famous comic strips such as Astro Boy. The artists live in great poverty. They spend all day and all night drawing and share their ups and downs with each other. They can only get their work published with great difficulty and once it is published they receive very little money. However they support each other in their poverty and keep hoping that one day they’ll be famous. Film-maker Ichikawa did not only want to make the film for nostalgic reasons. He admires the idealism of the artists in Tokiwa-so and misses that in the present generation. He evokes a loving picture of the artists who create their own world with pen and paper, were poor but lived for their dreams and loved comic strips more than anything.
