By Katsu Aki (TokyoPop)
ISBN: 978-1-4278-0536-2
If you are offended or embarrassed by graphic cartoon nudity and sexual situations, or if you have any problems at all with the oddly coy forthrightness of manga, skip this review and move on. Otherwise this peculiar blend of soap opera and sexual self-help manual might pique your interest…
Billed as “the best-selling sex guide from Japan†this is more accurately a sweet but explicit soap-opera love-story – albeit related in a staggeringly clinical-yet-chatty manner.
Makota and Yura are just married and unbeknownst to each other, both virgins. In short narrative episodes we see their stumbling first steps to a healthy sex-life, peppered with diagrams, statistics and a disturbingly jolly commentary. The act and techniques themselves are almost of secondary importance to the telling of a RomCom story, with vamping co-workers, interfering, know-it-all siblings and inquisitive parents always making an embarrassing situation worse…
There’s lots of nudity and oddly graphic-yet-(self)-censored copulation on show (neither male nor female primary sexual organs are ever depicted – it’s assumed you already know what they look like; moreover, the Japanese consider them to be in poor taste) but in no way does this resemble the Western style of manual where the emphasis is on dispassionate, clinical education and task-oriented elucidation (of course I’m just guessing here – I’ve never needed a manual or even a map in my life, no, not me, nope, Nuh-Uh…)
Seriously though, this isn’t so much a “how-to†as much as a fascinating and beautifully drawn insight into the acceptable face of Japanese sexuality, and as such has lots to recommend it. Which I do, as long as you’re old enough and promise to stop sniggering…
© 1996 KATSUAKI. All Rights Reserved. English text © 2008 TOKYOPOP Inc.