In the latest manga review for the Daily Yomiuri by Christoph Mark, Mark reviews “Moyasimon”. Here is an excerpt of his review:
Imagine, if you will, being able to see even the tiniest of bacteria with your naked eye. Imagine if you could even hear those microscopic organisms talk, speaking of the horrors they have planned. Could you even function as a living being? And if people discovered your ability, would they try to use it to their advantage?
This is the life of Tadayasu Sawaki, the protagonist in the Tezuka Osamu Award-winning Moyasimon and a new freshman at Bo Nogyo Daigaku. (The name literally means A Certain Agriculture University.) The son of a bean-sprout farmer, he has the unique ability to see and distinguish between bacteria, a fact he hopes to hide from all but his closest friends. On his first day of school, Sawaki and childhood friend Kei Yuki, the extremely feminine-looking son of a sake brewer, pay a visit to Prof. Keizo Itsuki, an old friend of Sawaki’s father. The kind-hearted yet strange professor knows of Sawaki’s ability and plans to use it to further his research into fermented foods for use in terraforming.
From the get-go, Sawaki and company find themselves under the tutelage of Itsuki, who regularly subjects his students to taste tests of the world’s stinkiest foods, including a stingray fermented with its own urine, a stuffed seal that has been fermented underground and any number of other rancid rations. The students also fall in with two troublemaking sophomores who are experts in sake brewing, including by methods that require the rice to be chewed before production.
Be sure, author Masayuki Ishikawa is not merely out to disgust his readership; the often funny storyline–which is just as focused on the young Sawaki trying to adjust to a rather strange campus life–is aimed at enlightening the reader about agriculture in general and how microorganisms in particular affect our day-to-day lives, for good or bad.