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.