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This stack of pancakes is bursting into action, thanks to a plate designed by Eisuke Tachikawa. His series turns eating lunch into a manga action/adventure sequence.
Also neat: at the link, scroll down to the end to see an oven-safe ceramic bone that you can cook into bread to make it look like a slab of meat.
Quick! You must take out more student loans in order finance this opportunity! You can consider the career applications later.
Japan’s Kyoto Seika University said Tuesday it will launch the country’s first doctoral program in manga studies next year.
The private university in western Japan is well known for its manga and anime programs and established a master’s degree course in manga last year.[...]
The university says it has received overseas requests for an advanced center for manga research, and that the industry is in transition amid globalization and the growth of digital media.
Link via The Mary Sue | Image: Ben Dunn
American comic books mostly concentrate on adventure, especially the adventures of super heroes. Japanese manga magazines, on the other hand, tackle a wide variety of subjects that you’d never expect to be shown in graphic form. The magazine called Young Jump published a manga version of the history of the Ig Nobel Prizes (covered previously at Neatorama). Only excerpts are online, and the text is in Japanese, but you can get a idea of how wacky the story is. The above panel shows one of the developers of the Bow-Lingual, a device that translates a dog’s barks, accepting an Ig Nobel prize along with his son dressed as a dog. Link to part one; link to part two.
Manga-inspired cosplay is nothing unusual for Japanese otakus or even here in the United States (see, for instance, our post about the Comic Con 2010 costumes)
But in China, cosplay has taken a weird twist:
Japan’s TBS news visits a gathering of otaku in China to report on how there is now a “boom” in the number of male fans who dress up like female anime and manga characters.
The cross-dressers were apparently influenced by television shows about otaku who do the same kind of thing in Japan. The publication of a Chinese cross-dressing cosplay manual is cited as evidence of this being a trend. It is also mentioned that a lot of Chinese netizens have criticized the weird activities of these otaku.
From joethepeacock [Flickr]
We’ve posted about Joe Peacock‘s Art of Akira exhibition a while ago on Neatorama. It has since opened to the public. For those of us who can’t make it to Toonseum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Joe has kindly provided a nifty Flickr set if you can refrain from yelling "Tetsuoooo / Kanedaaaa."
Link: Art of Akira | Flickr set: Akira Cels & BGs
Want an earth friendly way to upcycle old manga or maybe even telephone books! How about using them to grow radish or other sprouts, like this project by Japanese artist Koshi Kawachi. It would make in interesting conversation piece. My only concern would be that the book might get moldy after a few days, but perhaps you could transplant them into a pot or garden.
Link – via mademoisellechaos
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
There’s a lot of fascinating things about molecular biology (I should know, I have a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology) – but a lot of students get discouraged from learning it because it is taught poorly in school. To be fair, the topic is rather complex – if you don’t get the basics right, it’s easy to get confused and lost later on – and many of the textbooks of biochemistry, cell biology and molecular bio are b-o-r-i-n-g. Heck, I’ve read phone books more interesting than some of ‘em.
Enter The Manga Guide to Molecular Biology
The book is ostensibly about the adventures of Rin and Ami, two students that have been skipping their molecular biology class. They were summoned by Professor Moro for a special summer school on his private island (complete with a virtual reality machine, a hunky TA … and a terrible secret. What is it? Oh, I’m not going to tell you). But amidst all that fun, there’s actual learning.
Take, for instance, the explanation about how the liver enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase works in breaking down alcohol:
Read more after the jump: more …
