This film is NSFW and contains manga and anime images which in the US would be sold to only those over 18.
Manga Mad explores the Japanese fascination–obsession really–with manga and all things anime. There is a manga for everyone, form history buff to baseball fans to romance readers. The Japanese comic culture is the country’s big export and their own biggest pop culture phenomenon. Manga are read by everyone from geeky fan boys (otaku) and girls (who delight in boy on boy love stories), to doctors, lawyers, office ladies and salarymen.
Comics provide stress relief; readers can lose themselves in fantasy worlds where big eyed characters lead amazing surreal, often highly sexualized, lives. There are no taboos in manga, while Japanese society itself is rigid and conformist.
The escapism of manga and anime (animation) has created whole live worlds where fans dress as fantasies of their own creation, visit Akibara Electric Town, a manga mecca, and fixate on certain Lolita-like characters in a state of “moe” or budding love.
Manga has a huge psycho-sexual side to it, explored in Manga Mad. Uniforms are the norm for always young and perky female characters, and during times of economic recession, the women–girls really– are drawn with bigger breasts. Naked breasts. In fact there’s a whole of sex that goes on in mangas, some of it “moe” and some of involving bondage and rather rough stuff. and tentacles. And slugs. This has raised concerns that sexually explicit manga should not be sold in convenience stores, yet artist are concerned that if sexy mangas were banned, men would the watch pornographic films which is believed to be less healthy.
Director Ray Castle traces the development of manga as an art form and a cultural expression from ideographs to woodblock images of the Edo period to present time, showing the development of manga and anime as a pop culture expression.
Manga fuses utter cuteness with themes of lust, passion and violence, exposing the dichotomy of Japanese society. Manga Mad explores that split and the underlying reasons behind it, while giving us a look and some of the more extreme manga art and interviews with creators, publishers and sellers.
Watch – Manga Mad
