Hirou Terada

Hirou Terada, at age 23, was essentially "the old man" of the group, having more experience drawing than the newcomers to the manor did. He helped support most of them between paychecks, offering loans to the point where he was called "Tera-bank" behind his back. I reviewed the first half of his "Kurayami Godan" judo manga before, and he also had a kiddies baseball series called "Sportsman Kintarou". His style has a tendency to look kind of childish and dated, and has a strong flavor of "the 50's", compared to the other Tokiwa artists.

His 8-page "Tokiwa-Sou Monogatari" chapter introduces him as he first arrives at the manor at the end of 1953. He had a gig with Manga Shonen magazine, but at the beginning he was living between paychecks on cabbage soup and daikon raddish salad, causing him to lose serious weight. Next door there was a hive of activity as Tezuka and an assistant worked on various titles simultaneously for several magazines. Because the editors would usually sit in the room to ensure that Tezuka would finish by the deadline, Tezuka would often slip out to escape them, and then Terada would be constantly interrupted by editors asking him where Osamu was. This was followed by artists dropping by asking Terada to introduce them to Tezuka. While he enjoyed working with the Tokiwa manor artists, the interruptions got to be too much and in June, 1957, he moved out to escape them.

Tokiwa Story