Home > Flipped - David Welsh on Manga Instruction Manuals -- The Manga Bible and Manga Sutra: Futari H Reviewed posted February 14, 2008
Instruction Manuals By David P. Welsh
The lure of finding potentially amusing juxtapositions is strong, but sometimes the books just don't deliver, you know? So when a copy of The Manga Bible arrived courtesy of Random House shortly before Tokyopop shipped Manga Sutra: Futari H to finer booksellers everywhere, the sex-and-religion counterpoint seemed like a gimme.
It's not that they don't share qualities that bear scrutiny. Both are compelling conceptually, with one providing a point of entry (see what I did there?) to the mysteries of Christian doctrine and the other promising what manga-ka Katsu Aki calls "a bible for those who dream of having the best sex ever!" Unfortunately, the biggest quality they have in common is an excessive focus on event over nuance.
The adaptation of the Bible, conceived and illustrated by Siku and scripted by Akin, might be subtitled "The Exciting Bits." War! Political intrigue! Fratricide! Shipwrecks! More divine wrath than you can shake a donkey's jawbone at! It moves at a clip, looks an awful lot like a shônen action saga, and tends to leave meditation at the door.
I suspect that the creators' efforts to jazz up the Good Book by emphasizing its drama and intrigue have resulted in an adaptation that's all window dressing. The book never seems to sit still and think, and that strikes me as a rather drastic failing when you consider its aims.
Oddly enough, Futari H is almost as pure in its intentions as The Manga Bible. It follows a pair of virginal newlyweds as they try and have sex in ways that they'll both enjoy. Virtuous inexperience is the enemy here, though the couple's reticence doesn't help. Makoto and Yura meet through a marriage broker, conduct a chaste courtship, wed, and view the consummation of their marriage with trepidation.
Makoto has no idea how to give Yura pleasure, or how to postpone his own. Advice from Makoto's excessively frank (and frankly creepy) older brother and Yura's thoroughly experienced younger sister is more unsettling than helpful, and the couple is left to fumble. Makoto's shônen-hero determination to drive Yura wild are at odds with her more delicate sensibilities, and it seems like poor Yura's first orgasm is still a long ways off.
The book's cumulative effect is odd. While the couple's awkwardness is genuine, it's strange to see it rendered with such care. There are lots of energetic illustrations of bad sex in the book's 300-plus pages. With Japanese restrictions on actually drawing genitalia, Aki resorts to a lot of weird cuts from realistic rendering to the kind of diagrams you might see in a gynecologist's office.
Part of the problem has to be the blandness of the protagonists. They aren't sufficiently vivid to create any real investment in their sexual success. They're very much characters in a sex education video that features more nudity and frankness than is usual.
this article originally appeared at Comic World News
Oddly enough, Futari H is almost as pure in its intentions as The Manga Bible. It follows a pair of virginal newlyweds as they try and have sex in ways that they'll both enjoy. Virtuous inexperience is the enemy here, though the couple's reticence doesn't help. Makoto and Yura meet through a marriage broker, conduct a chaste courtship, wed, and view the consummation of their marriage with trepidation.
