Cigarette Girl and Gekiga

Reading through some of Masahiko Matsumoto’s stories in Cigarette Girl, I get the impression that Matsumoto has a very solid grip on life, relationships and interactions. Or at least a grip that I’ve come to a very similar head with. Things are never set in stone; you can work as hard as you want to make something happen and it does not. Or you can barely lift a finger and it does. Or vise versa on both of those; you work very hard and it happens, or you barely life a finger and it does not. What I am trying to say it that things snowball. Sometimes they will work out the way you want them to and sometimes they will not. That could be attributed to the work you put in or that could be attributed to fate. 
Matsumoto successfully uses manga to address life as it really is through a collection of stories that cover slice – of – life situations in a line – cartoon style. He avoids heavy dialogue and instead focused on the raw emotions that pass over the characters’ faces. The characters are normal, awkward, relatable but also headstrong, smart. A fiancé, her beau and a puppy. A waitress and her customers. A woman who goes door to door selling condoms. 
Many of the dramas focus on problems between relationships whether that be unrequited love or family issues. Most of them don’t end well or unwell; they just end much like in life itself. Like the boy crushing on the cigarette girl, consistently buying cartons of cigarettes from her but never actually talking to her. It’s nice to read something that isn’t exactly a predetermined story with a beginning, middle and end every once in awhile, it allows me to feel like the happenings in my life, resolved and unresolved, are normal.