Short answers, pulled from the story.
Yumiko Oshima is a Japanese manga artist associated with the Year 24 group, which heavily influenced the development of shojo manga in the 1970s. She is considered the most influential artist of the Year 24 group, recognized for her visual innovations in panel design and her long-running series The Star of Cottonland.
Yumiko Oshima made her professional debut in 1968 with the short story "Paula no Namida" in the magazine Weekly Margaret.
The Star of Cottonland is a manga series published in LaLa from 1978 until 1987. It centers on Chibi-neko, a kitten who believes she is a little girl. The series won the 1978 Kodansha Manga Award for shojo.
Yumiko Oshima received the 1973 Japan Cartoonists Association Award for excellence for Mimoza Yakata de Tsukamaete, the 1978 Kodansha Manga Award for shojo for The Star of Cottonland, and the 2008 Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize Short Story Award. In 2021, she was honored with the title Person of Cultural Merit.
Oshima placed inner monologue text outside speech bubbles so it flows freely across the page, and she used thin, delicate panel frames that sometimes break entirely. According to critic Mizuki Takahashi, her panels are non-sequential, requiring readers to absorb a whole page as atmosphere rather than follow a linear story.
Yumiko Oshima is credited with popularizing the kemonomimi character type through her creation of Chibi-neko in The Star of Cottonland. Kemonomimi refers to characters with animal ears and features who are otherwise human in appearance.