Manga - Naisho no Tsubomi

Omni mentioned a manga in an entry yesterday, Naisho no Tsubomi by Yu Yabuuchi (Mizuiro Jidai, among others). As the article Omni linked to mentioned, there was quite the surge of interest in it online when it was released at the end of April (many people wrote about it on Hatena Diary and other blogging sites), so I had to check it out for y'all, of course. I had been intending to write something about it earlier, but just never got around to it.

At its core, it is a 性教育漫画 sex education manga -- yes, you read that correctly -- for girls which is serialized in Kodansha's "Elementary 5th Grade". In it, our protagonist, an 11 year old girl by the name of Tsubomi, who is completely clueless about those kinds of things learns about them as she goes about her daily activities at home and school. Things such as how her mother got pregnant ("Your mom and dad did something ecchi", a friend of Tsubomi's explains) and the other uses of a guy's ちんちん ("So it's not just for peeing!?"), among many other topics that are very embarrassing for me to write about here (^^;;;) However, it's not just straightly told -- there's an air of mystery about things with the appearance of a very mature girl who seems to know everything, named Saya, who helps Tsubomi through the changes she's going through. Tsubomi's friends also play a part in the story as they go through their own circumstances with various things.. and also boys. The boys in the manga are mostly idiots (though they do change a bit), except for Nemoto-kun, who has an eye on Tsubomi... I'll leave the summary at that :)

Naisho no Tsubomi basically accomplishes what it set out to do, in an way that'd probably be interesting to its target audience(certainly more interesting than the way I learned things in school). It was rather embarassing to read for a guy (^^;;) If you're interested in reading, Akatsuki Manga is translating and releasing it.