is a seinen

Seinen

is a subset of manga that is generally targeted at a 20–30 year old male audience, but the audience can be older with some manga aimed at businessmen well into their 40s. In Japanese, the word Seinen means "young man" or "young men" and is not suggestive of sexual matters...

 manga

Manga

Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...

 written by Yoshiyuki Okamura

Yoshiyuki Okamura

, also known as , is a Japanese manga writer most known by his famous work Hokuto no Ken, known in English as Fist of the North Star. In 2002, he shared the Shogakukan Manga Award for general manga for Heat with Ryoichi Ikegami.-Early life and career:...

 and illustrated by Ryoichi Ikegami

Ryoichi Ikegami

is a manga artist. He was assistant to manga artist Shigeru Mizuki in 1966. In 2001, he won the Shogakukan Manga Award for general manga as the artist of Heat. He became a professor at Osaka University of Arts in 2005...

. It was serialized in Big Comic Superior

Big Comic Superior

is a semimonthly seinen manga magazine published since 1987-07-01 by Shogakukan in Japan. Its target audience is somewhere between the audience for Big Comic Original and Big Comic Spirits....

from 1999 to 2004. In 2002, it received the Shogakukan Manga Award

Shogakukan Manga Award

The is one of Japan's major manga awards, sponsored by Shogakukan Publishing. It has been awarded annually for serialized manga since 1955 and features candidates from a number of publishers.The current award categories are:...

 for general manga. It was adapted into a live-action movie in 2004 featuring Yoshihiko Hakamada, Takeshi Yoshioka, and Hakuryu as main actors.

Heat is a crime story featuring a young man named Tatsumi Karasawa who suddenly rises in the criminal world of Shinjuku, Tokyo

Shinjuku, Tokyo

is one of the 23 special wards of Tokyo, Japan. It is a major commercial and administrative center, housing the busiest train station in the world and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, the administration center for the government of Tokyo.As of 2008, the ward has an estimated population...

, and becomes the leader of a group of amateurs who show no reluctance to face police and gangs alike. His successes in the Tokyo underground make a chief and a yakuza boss plot a conspiracy to eliminate him.