AYAKO... family troubles in post WWII Japan

Before WWII, the Tenge family ruled over their massive land holdings. But with the American occupation, their land is divvied up and the family, already in a state of deep moral decay, resorts to even more desperate measures to hold on to what they have.

Osamu Tezuka's epic casts a critical eye on how Japan was forever transformed by its post-war fate -- all through the eyes of a family on the verge of an apocalypse. Deeply ambitious, Ayako is at times a mashup of genres, from political thrillers, police procedurals, and crime sagas.

Yet it all winds back to the fallout from a single crime that happened in the isolated Japanese countryside, and the fate of a little girl who was an unfortunate witness.