Manga guide to calculus

by Kojima and Togami (Illustrator). This is a follow up to the well received Manga guide to Statistics, which aims to use japanese manga to teach academic subjects. Having read the book I must say, I enjoyed the back story of how Noriko – an amateur news reporter – learns calculus from her supervisor. The illustrations are superb and comes with (I guess typical) comical histrionics and exaggerations. The calculus lessons are all motivated by applications of some sort which might persuade the casual reader about the usefulness of the subject. I believe it is also in part due to the author Kojima being an economics rather than a mathematics professor. So the question remains: can one learn calculus from manga? I’m not sure. Personally, I skipped through the maths (I’m supposed to know all these stuff) and simply enjoyed the story. I can hardly recall what I had learnt from the Manga guide to statistics about a year ago, but I have this vague sense that it did a better job. Perhaps it’s the subject matter – statistics does tend to be more applicable to real life than calculus. Is anyone going to write a Manga guide to algebra?