Manga shocks mom

A news story from Canada warns parents of the Danger that Lurks Between the Covers (of manga, that is):

The graphic novels, or Japanese mangas, illustrated in wide-eyed, comic-book style, were not as innocent as the bright cartoon covers made them appear — some containing pictorial stories rife with sexual content.

What happened is that a 13-year-old took out some manga from his local library, and his mom looked at them and flipped.

“There’s pictures of young men and women together, there’s a picture of a man sticking his hands up her skirt, there’s pictures of them having sex … But the dialogue that goes with it is just as bad,” Dergo said of the books her son brought home.

The series in question is something called Happy Mania, which is rated 18+, although the mother also has some harsh words for Love Hina.

The library director points out that while provincial law forbids the library to lend R-rated movies to kids, there is no such provision for M-rated comics. I think he’s a bit disingenuous when he says “There is actually no accepted rating system for books whatsoever,” because the publishers do rate manga, and their ratings are fairly accurate. But what about other books? The adult fiction section is full of novels with much more sex and much less literary merit that this kid could have taken out without triggering an article in the local paper.

I do think this is an excellent argument for libraries not to put all their graphic novels in the YA section, however. I absolutely think the library should carry this book and lend it to anyone with a card, but they should not shelve it next to Fruits Basket and Astro Boy, which I suspect may have happened in this case (the article doesn’t say). The bigger danger is that libraries will not carry books that can’t be put in YA, and will miss out on some of the better graphic novels because of that.