in two bunkobon volumes in 1979. Kodansha published two volumes also on February 10, 1983 and March 11, 1983 as part of the Osamu Tezuka Complete Works series. In 1987, Daitosha reprinted the original omnibus edition. Akita Shoten published an omnibus edition in 1993. They reprinted the omnibus edition again in March 1995. The Complete Works edition was reprinted by Kodansha on April 12, 2012. Vertical announced at the 2010 New York Anime Festival that it had licensed the manga, releasing an omnibus hardcover edition on September 20, 2011 and a softcover edition on December 4, 2012. The manga has also been published in France by Sakka, and in Taiwan by the China Times Publishing Company and Taiwan Tohan. Live-action drama The manga was adapted into a seven-episode live-action drama in 2011 by WOWOW. It was directed by Kazuya Shiraishi and Izumi Takahashi and starred Minami as Tomura Toshiki with Yukiya Kitamura, Shingo Tsurumi, and Kyōko Matsunaga. Themes In Mechademia, scholar Mary A. Knighton observes Tezuka's love for insects which formed a collecting hobby for him, part of his pen name, and the name of his company Mushi Production. He incorporated them into many of his works, including one adapted from Jean-Henri Fabre's , and the manga itself was named after these popular essays. Knighton compares Tomura to a butterfly or larval insect because of how she "sheds one female skin in order to assume the next and is periodically born anew in a process of metamorphosis". Additionally, she views Tomura as representing postwar Japan at the end of the manga—standing alone in the ruins of the Acropolis of Athens—as a criticism of "a race to prosperity" modeled on the West. Influenced by the changing roles of women in his times, Tezuka's protagonist becomes a "feminist species" for which he uses "stereotypes to exploit both sympathy and antagonism toward feminists". This species functions as an allegory for Japanese domestic and international power relations, as well as Tezuka's own experiments with the new trend of . Tomura's adaptation to human society reflects its "repellant qualities", and her character fits into Tezuka's earlier adult and more progressive works. Tomura and Shijimi are alter egos, with the latter being victimized by a patriarchal society, but Tomura refusing to be traditional like her. With "her biology no longer her destiny[,] the insect woman is thus made, not born". Knighton argues that the act of