It's no secret that many manga use sex and/or the threat of it to not only endear the characters to their prospective audience but, in many cases, as a central theme of the story itself. Manga, like their not-so-bright cousin, anime, have a long-standing relationship with sex and/or sexiness that might appear, to the Western eye, to be suggestive of a Japanese obsession with nature's kindest act of cruelty in all its multifarious forms.

Without a doubt, manga have their fair share of hard-core pornographers. The word hentai, a blanket term for pornographic manga, has clung to and clouded the Western perception of manga like Tijuana bibles had to the potential contribution of our Hispanic community of artists until a relegitimisation took place under the pens of Los Bros Hernandez.

There is a continuum, however, that begins at hentai but, before long, begins morphing into pseudo-hentai-hentai, if you will, which aspires to being something more. One such classic, long since translated into English for reasons that should be obvious is THE LEGEND OF THE OVERFIEND (or UROTSUKIDOJI if you prefer it in its native form).

Apparently, the anime adaptation of this is the stuff of spank monkey legend, because I get people from the trailer parks looking for it at the store that seem to know nothing else about anime. Any jokes that you've heard in reference to "tentacle sex" probably stem from some unfortunate viewing of this series of films. Though I've heard some people try and defend the author, Toshio Maeda, as hinting at some deeper profundity in the manga, I found it a lot like reading one of the awful GOR books from the Seventies.

'The word hentai has clouded the Western perception of manga.' Past that, we stumble on to the unsteady ground of soft-core hentai. While most of this category - that has been translated into English, mind you - is largely of the Showtime late-night quality (i.e. not terribly erotic, but with a copious amount of selective frontal nudity), a couple of series have actually surprised me not only with the sophistication of their construction, but, in the case of VOYEURS, INC, managed to creep the hell out of me in the process, not unlike a good issue of HELLBLAZER.

VOYEURS, INC has a premise that is nearly laughable. Hi-tech perverts hire themselves out to spy on others in exchange for money and, generally quite against their wishes, end up saving people from some hideous depravity.

The first time I read an instalment in PULP magazine, I remember being actively repulsed, as the story involved a teenage girl - who also, coincidentally, ran a prostitution racket - who was being progressively molested by her father, while our heroes largely sat in a van and watched it happen. In the penultimate instalment, one of the Voyeurs, smitten by the girl's physical beauty, goes to stop the father from taking advantage of his daughter, whom he has drugged. The resulting conflict is surreal and thick in sexual imagery, both explicit and implied.

What made the story so difficult to dismiss was the idealised standard of beauty that artist, Hideo Yamamoto uses in juxtaposition to this altogether depraved story. In works like Dave Cooper's RIPPLE, the aesthetic of visual repulsion keeps us at arm's length from the characters and their disturbingly real appetites; a barrier against allowing their needs to usurp our own as the reader identifying with them.

But, VOYEURS INC. makes the audience squirm as it finds itself unwittingly made an accomplice, like the voyeurs in the story, by its own arousal at experiencing these things, even vicariously. My moral outrage turned into something more like a morbid fascination, and the material delivered the requisite quality to hold my fascination long after the shock factor of the hard sex angle was gone.

'VOYEURS INC is thick in sexual imagery, both explicit and implied.' Equally compelling for very different reasons is Naoki Yamamoto's DANCE UNTIL TOMORROW. Yamamoto's approach to the presentation of sex is the opposite of that used in VOYEURS INC, making his regular actors physically mundane in juxtaposition to the omnipresent sexual tension within the story itself.

Also unlike VOYEURS INC, which often threatens horrifying sex acts several times before getting down to it, DANCE delivers the goods often and honestly, as the two main characters - and, I would think, the audience - must ultimately admit that all the sex they are having (with each other and others) is not making anyone any happier. Only true love, Yamamoto would have us believe, will ever satisfy that hunger - which, in the end, is not a bad moral after all.

What is even more notable about DANCE is Yamamoto's subversion of expected patriarchal values, offering a wilful (if not strong) female protagonist, Aya, who more often than not drives the plot with her manic female energy and leaves all the male characters wringing their hands and wondering when we she'll come back to them.

It might be interpreted as stereotypical insofar as she is often portrayed as being flighty, but in comparison to the rest of the cast, all equally languid about their own personal development, she really stands out. She is neither shy nor ashamed of intrinsically enjoying the act of sex and, in an industry like manga, with patriarchal values tacitly established as the status quo, DANCE UNTIL TOMORROW seems as much like a burning bra as we are likely to find in the mainstream.

Unfortunately, not all manga of this type manage to find that balance between sex and other story considerations that will make them palatable. Noted manga writer Kazuo Koike (LONE WOLF AND CUB) collaborated extensively with artist Ryoichi Ikegami during the Eighties on a number of series for a men's magazine (what I assume is the equivalent of a Japanese Playboy), two of which have recently been translated into multiple volumes in English; THE OFFERED and WOUNDED MAN.

'DANCE UNTIL TOMORROW is as much of a burning bra as we're likely to find.' While many hail these two manga as examples of unfiltered Koike that are to be enjoyed like any good psychedelic trip, the utter lack of gender balance in these storylines robbed me of any potential joy that I might have received from these undeniably imaginative manga.

Female characters notch up rapes and faux rapes by the dozens, undoubtedly to endear them to their male-only audience, and exist only to provide an excuse for revenge. The unbounded masculine bliss as it alternates, sometimes without pause, between fucking and killing - and occasionally both together - was cumulatively nauseating to me, and I gratefully gave up after a mere 300 pages of each.

Despite the ambitious title, this column doesn't really even scratch the surface of sex and its role in manga. For all the diversity on display here today, these works actually represent a fairly narrow band of interest, namely comics created by men intended for men, although I wouldn't be surprised to find that DANCE UNTIL TOMORROW enjoys a healthy female readership.

Beyond this, all of the manga considered here utilise sex in a very active role, which doesn't take into account its near omnipresence in some supporting form in most manga. Rather than glossing over this crucial data, I think I'll leave it to a future instalment, and hopefully allow this conversation about gender and how it applies to manga to gestate into something more substantive.

Thanks for tuning into this edition of The Occidental Tourist. The aforementioned PULP MAGAZINE, which has, over the years, turned me on to some of the finest manga available in my native tongue, has but three issues left in its legendary run. Fortunately, the Viz-ionary imprint has left behind a legacy of trade paperbacks that should be readily available from your local comic store, if not some soulless chain bookstore nearby. Today's manga recommendations reflect my sincere gratitude to PULP and its top-notch staff of writers.

Manga Monthly: PULP MAGAZINE, from Viz.

Manga Collections: UZUMAKI by Junji Ito, and NO. 5 by Taiyo Mastumoto, both from Viz.

Anime on DVD: GTO Vol. 1, from TokyoPop.

Rob Vollmar is the Eisner-nominated writer of THE CASTAWAYS and the recently released BLUESMAN: BOOK ONE.

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