In the late 50s and 60s Japan, gekiga, or drama comics, were becoming increasingly more popular with adults and older teens. Bonten Taro, who once worked with Kamikaze pilots during World War II (although, he was merely 17 years old when the war ended), finished his tattoo training in 1965, returned to comics and worked for magazines that published these kinds of drama stories. This particular comic, unlike many of his other stories that featured crime, drama and some level of eroticism, centers wholly around war. Despite his aforementioned experience in the military, Bonten Taro only had a handful of manga that touched on a military subject.
