Hagio originally developed the series as a personal project that she did not expect would ever be published. This change came to be embodied by a new generation of shōjo manga artists collectively referred to as the Year 24 Group, of which Hagio was a member. The Heart of Thomas was developed and published during a period of immense change and upheaval for shōjo manga as a medium, characterized by the emergence of new aesthetic styles and more narratively complex stories. It is one of the earliest manga in the shōnen-ai (male-male romance) genre. Hagio drew inspiration for the series from the novels of Hermann Hesse, especially Demian (1919) the Bildungsroman genre and the 1964 film Les amitiés particulières.

Originally serialized in Shūkan Shōjo Comic, a weekly manga magazine publishing shōjo manga (manga aimed at young and adolescent women), the series follows the events at a German all-boys gymnasium following the suicide of student Thomas Werner. The Heart of Thomas ( Japanese: トーマの心臓, Hepburn: Tōma no Shinzō) is a 1974 Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Moto Hagio.

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