Just a little something I put together for mangakabob this month.
Manga artist Ken Akamatsu is probably best known for the Love Hina manga series in which a loser guy is surrounded by a harem of beautiful young women who have a habit of somehow ending up naked. His current series, Negima, is similar, being a something of a mashup of Love Hina and Harry Potter wherein a 10 year old wizard is the precocious teacher of a harem of young female students who also have a habit of ending up naked.
Clearly, if you like seeing naked girls, you’ll probably enjoy Akamatsu-san’s work a great deal. But the thing that makes him one of my favorite manga-ka is the unexpected depth of the numerous characters he creates. They’re a lot more than just pretty faces, and instances of nudity are used for comedic effect, never anything truly dirty, in my opinion. From his first manga, A.I. Love You, through the current Negima, Akamatsu’s story telling gets better and better. Ken Akamatsu is a manga-ka you don’t want to pass up.