Holiday Review: SEX ED 120%

 I don't want y'all to think I'm a prude, though.  There was a perfectly good (and educational!) manga from this year that's literally all about sex.

SEX ED 120% (Seikyoiku 120%), written by Kikiki Tataki with art by Hotomura.  First published in 2020 and first published in North America in 2021.

PLOT:

Naota Tsuji is a physical education teacher who is also tasked with teaching her students about health and sex-ed.  She finds the textbooks deeply lacking, particularly where topics relevant to women are concerned, so she takes upon herself to get in-depth on topics ranging from contraception to masturbation.  Her students are eager to learn, much to the eternal mortification of the school nurse Nakazawa.

STORY:

By title alone, you might presume this is another ecchi series but in fact it's something quite rare: an educational gag manga.  That might not sound very fun to read, but much like Tsuji-sensei herself it will likely win you over with its enthusiasm and thorough knowledge of the topic.

It turns out that compared to many of its international peers, Japan's approach to sex education is decidedly lacking.  While they cover the basics of puberty and pregnancy, they ignore the rest.  Even real-world students themselves found their sex-ed lessons lacking in useful information about safe sex and other such topics.  It's no wonder that someone (technically two people) took it upon themselves to try and bridge this gap.  This might be the first and only gag manga I've read that has an honest-to-god bibliography.

Something I greatly appreciate is that Sex Ed 120% tries to incorporate not just character into the proceedings, but queer perspectives as well.  One of the students, Moriya, is a lesbian in a sexually active relationship.  Another girl, Kashiwa, makes some comments that suggest she may be asexual.  She doesn't take much interest in discussion of human sexuality, but ends up becoming fascinated with all the weirdness of animal anatomy.  Even Tsuji-sensei herself may be gay, considering how much the story seems to be ship-teasing her interactions with Nakazawa.  If there's any character who feels a little too one-note for their own good, it's Matsuda.  She's the resident fujoshi, and she's mostly there to serve as the single-minded butt of the joke.  I hope that later volumes make as much as an effort with her as it does with the science and the rest of the cast.

ART:

Being a gag series, the art doesn't need to do a lot of heavy lifting here.  A few goofy visualized thoughts here, a silly expression there, but not enough to detract from the message of any given chapter.  That being said, Hotomura's character designs are cute and distinct enough to keep all the characters straight.  I also appreciate (per her author's note) how she strove to keep the character designs modest because she didn't want them to become a distraction.

RATING:

I hope that teens won't be dissuaded by the parental advisory sticker on the front cover of Sex Ed 120%.  It's got its uses as an educational tool, but I could also easily see this series as a fun companion to other stories about teen girls trying to sort out the vagaries of puberty and relationships, be it more serious pieces like O Maidens In Your Savage Season or other gag series like Please Tell Me! Galko-Chan.

This series is published by Yen Press.  This series is complete in Japan with 3 volumes available.  2 volumes have been published and are currently in print.

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