Hmm, so some folks are restricting young adults from accessing manga and others are using them to promote unity and all that? We do live in a strange little world. As for the 'manga for world peace' reference, it was about the recent manga promotion effort in Taiwan.

Apparently, the country's justice ministry has asked its prosecutors to read a popular Japanese manga called Love. The basic plot of this manga revolves around a sad story of a mother whose son was killed by another schoolboy. The grieving mom later meets up and gets to know the culprit's family and it ends up being a strange and touching story.

So why did the justice ministry zoom in on this particular manga? Seems like they were hoping prosecutors would start encouraging folks to understand each other in various cases. I guess the underlying feeling is development of human bond between each other. Remember the broken window theory? I'm thinking someone in that ministry has been reading up on such theories. I wonder if anyone would recommend police folks read Death Note as a means of analyzing a criminal's psyche. Just a thought.

It's fantastic that authorities acknowledge the positive influence of manga. In the past few days we have been getting a number of folks complaining about the harmful elements in manga and anime. Remember the Dragonball controversy? And a few others that cropped up in that same period? Thus, it is great that some folks analyze manga based on their content value as opposed to digging up preconceived stereotypes they might have about these cultural goods.