"becoming" both an insect and a woman provides a new context in which to view Tomura without the preconceived constraints of either role. The choice of a female insect allows Tezuka's male readers to comfortably interpret her character without risk of becoming "feminized" themselves. Finally, Knighton notes Tezuka's preference for hermaphroditic insects, which inspired the man-woman hybrid protagonists in many of his stories. In "Tezuka's Gekiga: Behind the Mask of Manga", Philip Brophy notes that while Tomura's depiction as a "guileful manipulator" is reminiscent of modern misogynistic stories, it ties back to Japanese cultural history and mythology, which is "portrayed by abused women who ply their sexuality with survivalist verve". He also calls the manga "Tezuka's harshest assessment of the human condition" because of his "razing of any maternal, sisterly, or romantic attributes from Tomura". Lastly he calls Tezuka's art a tool used to deconstruct the "human interiority and confront the nothingness attained through remorseless acts", with Tomura's character "less fleshed out and more poured out and conjured as an empty vessel." Comparing the manga to Tezuka's Princess Knight, The Comics Journal writer Kristy Valenti finds both concerned with "gender as performance", where Kabuto finds that a woman, like liquor, can take on different appearances and tastes. Valenti also views Shimiji as a parallel to Tomura, with both looking alike and denied agency of their own bodies. Valenti sees Tomura as a symbol for postwar Japan—noting the repeated emphasis on her birth year of 1947—with Tezuka appealing to an audience near twenty years old and confronting anxiety stemming from women's changing roles, as well as mass-media "copies". Reception Joseph Luster of Otaku USA noted Tezuka's "ability to simultaneously play with narrative devices and the emotions of his readers"; the former with how he uses different viewpoints, and the latter with Luster first hating Tomura but later pitying her. Luster concluded that the manga is: "sexy, dark, and ultimately kind of tragic". Carlo Santos of Anime News Network called the story gripping, with Tezuka "creating a massive but memorable network of characters", as well as with its twists and "twisted psychology". Santos also felt that the manga represented Tezuka at his most serious with the focus on action and the ambitious art, with its "wild metaphors and images jump[ing] off the page." However, Santos criticized the exaggerated character designs which clashed with the manga's realistic themes, the misogynistic actions of the