I am now a full-fledged teen librarian. I have just completed reading my first manga: Library Wars. One. Love and War by Kiira Yumi.
I confess it was more difficult to read than I anticipated. This is a Japanese-style manga read from back to front and right to left. I kept getting goofed up and had to reread passaged several times to understand what was happening.
This series is wildly popular in my library right now so I thought I should take a look.. The series is about a group of individuals who are opposed to censorship and book banning. They form the Library Defense Force against the actions of the Media Betterment Committee. There is actually more about tension between men and women and martial arts/physical challenges than about censorship, at least in this first book of the series.
Kiira Yumi's art is very good as I compare it to other manga I have looked at. I found the story a bit confusing as it seemed to jump around and not fix on one idea for too long but as this is my first manga I will not be too harsh in my judgment. Perhaps this is typical of the story lines/plots of these types of stories. I doubt that I will read the rest of the series but now that I've whet my whistle I think I might give another series a try, perhaps Deathnote or Naruto. We'll see. In the meantime here is a great quote from the book:
The Media Betterment Act was passed in the last year of the Showa era. It was the beginning of the book hunts. The Media Betterment Committee was established in accordance with the Act. It seeks to exercise censorship over all media, including restricting offensive books. They're on a mission to deny citizens their right to free access media. Libraries are the only institution that can oppose their censorship.
