Manga Sutra -- Futari H Volume 1 (v. 1)
Yura and Makoto are 25-year-old newlyweds and terrified virgins. They're deeply in love (although Aki never bothers to explain how they met or fell in love), and in the first volume of this long-running series, they take a few soap-operatic chapters to get over their nervousness before they plunge into hentai-style sex, drawn with soft-core–cheesecake aplomb. (At crucial moments, Aki resorts to anatomical cross-sections.) But poor Makoto is a premature ejaculator, and they've both got a few things to learn—some of them from his know-it-all older brother and her promiscuous younger sister. Aki draws beautiful women with enormous shojo eyes, usually in states of embarrassment, but it's the book's goofy-looking, sexually inept men who are really the objects of mockery. American readers may be amused by the book's unnerving insights into Japanese sexual culture—Aki's narration declares that if going to the professionals at the soaplands is like eating out gourmet, then doing it with a significant other is like a warm home-cooked meal! And after a few hundred pages of thrusts and moans, there's a page that solemnly documents a series of techniques for French kissing. Still, despite the factual nuggets dropped in for what used to be called redeeming social value, this volume is much more about titillation than education.(Jan.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.