Unico Shobō Shinsha was an imprint of the unofficial Osamu Tezuka F.C. simply known as Unico. While their activities are not fully understood or documented on the web, these books were seemingly produced as bootlegs of Osamu Tezuka's works. The circle itself seems to have been established for the very reason of publishing these bootleg copies of selected works of Unico that ran in Sanrio's Lyrica magazine. While some of these prints have 1:1 copies of pages from Unico as seen in the magazine, others have several publishing errors and content, such as random unrelated bootlegged shoujo works from the late 1960s to mid 1970s. These books are printed on very thin paper but feature relatively high quality 4 color separation printing. This method of bootlegging is a higher grade than what was typically produced as Akahon (赤本).

Akahon (赤本) were prevalent during the 1940s to 1950s and were cheaply printed bootlegs and pulp works circulated on grey and black markets and children's candy stores, later of which would become 'rental comics' (貸本漫画). Tezuka's work was particularly predated by publishers of Akahon, however, these books in question are loosely related to this phenomenon. Tezuka's 'Shin Takarajima' was first published as an Akahon before reaching critical fame, however, many of his subsequent works would later be traced, bootlegged and re-packaged. Many F.C.s reprinted Tezuka's works, though with express permission, and were usually done by official fanclubs such as those behind The Nagoya Latter.

Boasting red covers made from low grade pulp paper, these works were more than likely sold to fans by fans for those who did not subscribe to or read Lyrica or had low access to these works in rural areas. Access to manga and anime in rural areas at this time was a ready problem, and many F.C.s oftentimes bridged the gaps in creating blueprint copies of manga to be resold and resent to areas that couldn't reach mainland Japan.

I acquired these works from an estate sale company that has been working with M lately to clean out the estate of his friend's family member - we have uncovered several books related to Tezuka in these boxes, however, I did not find or see these on my main trip. Based on accounts given to me by M and our mutual friend, the circle was simply called 'Unico'. Its uncertain as to how this circle operated or if these books were given out / sold via mail order, at events or meet ups. The works were produced anywhere between 1976 to 1979 respectively, possibly even 1980.

As these are not official releases, these are not prohibited works / forbidden content and were made as doujinshi over 50+ years ago.

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Questions? Comments? Inquiries?

You can reach me @retroanimechris on X/Twitter/Bluesky and adoggoart@gmail.com or chrisdelabigne@gmail.com

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Scanning services are available! Simply send your inquiry to any of the contacts above and I will get back to you in 24 hours at best. Discord is @Adoggoart

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