A set of two Showa Note sketchbooks featuring "Unare Nekkyu," a popular baseball manga by Toshio Shoji, serialized in Kodansha's "Bokura" from 1967 to 1968. Sketchbooks from Showa Note during this period often had picture postcards or paper games printed on the back cover. However, these are specially printed for promotional purposes, featuring a color advertisement for Meiji Seika's athlete's foot medicine "Highpolic" and traffic safety illustrations. The front and back covers' insides are coloring pages. These are new, unused, and have been carefully preserved, with no yellowing of the paper, and are in excellent condition. "Unare Nekkyu" (original work by Shunsuke Sagara), serialized in Kodansha's monthly boys' magazine "Bokura," is a representative work of Toshio Shoji, alongside "Cycle Yaro" serialized in Shonen Gahosha's "Weekly Shonen King" and "Yuyake Bancho" (original work by Ikki Kajiwara) serialized in Akita Shoten's monthly boys' magazine "Boken-Oh," and "Ore wa Kamikaze" serialized in Shueisha's "Weekly Shonen Jump." Similar to Noboru Kawasaki's "Kyojin no Hoshi" (original work by Ikki Kajiwara), which was serialized in Kodansha's "Weekly Shonen Magazine" during the same period, it is a passionate drama about a protagonist who has a father who was a tragic baseball player. The protagonist is Hachiro Daijoji, a boy from Okinawa, whose father was a phantom ace pitcher for the Yomiuri Giants, whose baseball career was cut short by a beanball to the head. His mother died young from overworking to make a living, and his father also died without recovering from his illness. Hating baseball and the Giants, which took his parents, Hachiro vows revenge through baseball, and his baseball life, stained with blood and sweat, begins. Perhaps influenced by Hiroshi Kaizuka, Toshio Shoji's mentor, who once serialized the popular baseball manga "Miracle A" in Shogakukan's "Weekly Shonen Sunday," it has a similar feel of baseball showdowns. However, unlike "Miracle A" and "Kyojin no Hoshi," the battles are fought with a fastball instead of a magic pitch. It was published in a total of four volumes from Akita Shoten's Sunday Comics. For fans of Showa era boys' and girls' manga, and those who love Showa retro stationery, how about it?