Review: The Manga Guide to Electricity

Electopia sounds like the name of a land where elections are always fair, every citizen casts a ballot, and legislators live up to their campaign promises.

But no; it's a world "in which electronic devices are a little more advanced than they are on Earth." When Rereko, an Electopia teen, fails her electricity final, it's off to Earth she goes for the summer (transported to Tokyo on a lightening bolt), to get some remedial instruction on the basics about electricity and electronics.

We less advanced Earthlings get to accompany Rereko on her educational adventure in The Manga Guide to Electricity, a cheerful graphical introduction to the properties and uses of electricity.

Given how relevant energy issues are to both causing and solving global warming, the book is a helpful little primer (or refresher) for understanding electricity supply, energy storage, and power generation.

Engineering grad student and lab rat Hikaru has been selected by Rereko's school principal to be her mentor. Once he gets over his doubts about having an unexpected apprentice for the summer, Hikaru becomes our unpretentious guide and teacher. He begins Rereko's lessons pragmatically, with household appliances and static electricity. But the complexity increases as the lessons progress into Ohm's Law, chemical circuits, how power plants work, and what's involved with semi-conductors, transistors, and sensors.

For readers who want more, the manga chapters are intercut with chapters exploring the properties and physics of electricity, power generation, and basic electronics in a more textbook-like fashion, accessibly written and complete with clearly-drawn diagrams.

This being manga, Rereko has enormous round eyes, like the famous gazes of the creatures in the paintings of Margaret Keane. Early in the story, she provides housekeeper services to slobby Hikaru to convince him to keep her around. Her Electopian school principal appears in a sexy-teacher pinup pose midway through the book (lending some ambiguity of meaning to the title of the chapter, "How Does Electricity Work?"). And there's the obligatory hint of romance between Rereko and her tutor.

Non-aficionados of the form should just overlook these elements as artifacts of the book's origins in another culture.

Electricity is complicated. The Manga Guide to Electricity makes understanding it a little easier, or at least a little easier to swallow.

The Manga Guide to Electricity
By Kazuhiro Fujitaki, Matsuda
No Starch Press
Retail: $19.95
Available at O'Reilly.com, Amazon, B&N, Powell's, and an Independent Bookstore near you.