The popular comedy showSex EducationfromNetflixhas become a manga. The announcement was made via Kadokawa’s Global Comic Label Twitter. The manga is being drawn by John Tarachine, and has been released online on Comic Bridge’s online comic magazine.Sex Educationfirst debuted on Netflix in January 2019. It has since released three seasons, the most recent being in September 2021, and another season is officially in the works. The show is set at a British high school where Otis, an insecure boy whose mother is a sex therapist, begins an unofficial sex therapy clinic with another student named Maeve. The show follows the ups and downs of teenagers discovering love, romance, and sex, and all the obstacles along the way.RELATED:Series That Promote LGBTQ+ AwarenessWhile it is rare for a Western story to become a manga, it is not unheard of. Another popular show that was turned into manga in the past isSherlock, which turned the BBC program into a 6-part manga that is still on the shelves in Japan several years later. Some Western shows, like Netflix’sAltered CarbonandThe Witcher, haveinspired anime moviesas well.
Sex Educationhas been well received, and praised for being relatable and funny, along with having a diverse cast andnormalized LGBTQ+ representation. It has a wide cast of characters and many small stories running alongside the main one, and is just edgy and rebellious enough to be fun without being crude. All of these elements set it up well for the serial format of a manga that can be read by many people.
Romance and slice of life are two of the most popular genres for manga, andSex Educationfits squarely into both with the added bonus of being funny, too. Manga, and especially doujinshi (fan comics), have also beena safe placefor LGBTQ+ characters for years. This makes manga a great format forSex Education’s story to be told and expanded upon. Plus, since it is set to release in an online magazine, it can explore a lot of the different character’s side stories.
IfSex Education’s manga can be successful, hopefully, it will pave the way for more popular shows to become manga. Usually, Western shows become either regular novels orgraphic novels, so it’s interesting to see them going in a new and different direction that may reach audiences that they otherwise never would have reached.
