Note: you can read our review of the first volume of the series here.

If you're not cisgender, allosexual, or heterosexual, there's a pretty good chance that some things were left out of your middle and high school sex ed experience. Sometimes just being in possession of a vagina is enough to make typical school sex ed classes feel lacking; the dominant model doesn't tend to go much beyond reproduction on that front. That's where Sex Ed 120% comes in – an edutainment manga devoted to covering all of those pesky details that often get left out of sex ed curriculums, and if it isn't perfect, it certainly continues to do an excellent job in its second volume.

Of course, that's something you may have been able to guess at from the cover of the book – why, yes, that is a woman proudly holding out a menstrual cup with tampons and pads in her coat pockets. Part of what's covered in this volume is menstruation, and it's definitely a more comprehensive look than even Little Miss P manages. Mostly that's because it not only covers why periods happen, it also explores the different options that exist for dealing with them, including various types of birth control that can help to manage a heavy or irregular period and how to access them. I'm not sure that I've ever read any other similar book that even mentioned period clots, much less what might be more comfortable for those prone to them. What's also interesting is that the discussion of tampons and menstrual cups leads to a frank commentary on the hymen and the myths surrounding it, such as that an “intact” hymen can be used as a marker of someone's virginity. While this isn't explored in too much detail, its mere inclusion is significant, given the myths that persist to this day.

It also is a nice add-on to the chapter about femininity that precedes it. The vice-principal, who has been a counterpoint to Tsuji in terms of attitude, confronts Hikari about her short skirt, telling her that she's clearly just trying to get male attention and looking like a tart will only get her assaulted. Then he grabs Kashiwa and hauls her over to use as a “good” example of how girls should wear their school uniforms. To say that this doesn't go over well with the ladies is perhaps an understatement – Hikari, an out lesbian, is furious that he'd assume she was looking for male attention and that he'd make a comment about her appearance in the first place, while Kashiwa is vastly uncomfortable that he just grabbed her shoulders out of nowhere, and as the series' openly asexual character, she's not thrilled about his heteronormative assumptions. When Tsuji finds the girls in the nurse's office, she begins a discussion of how the word “femininity” gives rise to all sorts of assumptions, resulting in an excellent (albeit brief) look at feminism and the unfair ways that “traditional” society represses women. Although it isn't a long chapter, it brings up a lot of very good food for thought, referencing the #KuToo movement in Japan, which is a protest against dress codes that require women to wear high heels, even if their jobs keep them on their feet all day, as well as versions of the feminist movement that will be more familiar to Western readers, such as #MeToo and Black Feminism. (If you never thought you'd see a manga with bell hooks in the bibliography, this book is here to prove you wrong.) This is perhaps a bit more authorial editorializing than in other sections of the volume, but it's still very good food for thought, as Tsuji encourages each girl (and the school nurse) to come up with a definition of what it means to be “feminine” and then points out how all of their answers are both technically correct by society's standards and a ludicrous burden, particularly when it comes to how women are expected to dress and primp.

That is the other point in which Sex Ed 120% truly succeeds – it really forces readers to think critically about society and how we handle topics like sex and gendered expectations. The first chapter, which covers the fact that phimosis surgery is a common advertisement in publications aimed at men even though in most cases it isn't medically necessary, acknowledges that things aren't always rosy for other genders, either, but the focus really is on what women go through and are expected to do, as well as what they aren't taught about their own bodies. The bonus chapter discusses the horrors of being hit on when you're just out trying to have a good time, and the chapter on consent has one character asking why boys aren't taught these things in the same way that Tsuji is instructing them. In some ways the fact that Tsuji even discusses adult male circumcision with a group of girls (and passing high school boys) is a statement on this – we should all learn everything. But the discomfort and attitudes of people like the vice-principal and occasionally the school nurse answer the question without Tsuji having to say a word.

Once again, my major complaint is less with the content than the marketing of this series. Although it doesn't have any explicit sex (there's not even a mild sex scene, like in volume one), the book is branded with an “explicit content” sticker, wrapped in plastic, and rated M. This is not only unwarranted, but also continues to risk completely undoing the message of the book: that it's not wrong to talk frankly about bodies and sex. The rating, plastic, and sticker all stand to keep the book out of the hands of its intended audience and off the shelves of libraries, and that's really shooting the series in the foot. If it's simply because this is manga rather than a text-based work, well, maybe we should look at that as a marker of how much we need to destigmatize female sexuality and sex ed, because there's nothing more explicit than some anatomical diagrams that aren't even as graphic as what you'd see in an OB-GYN's office.

Sex Ed 120% is looking to change the discussion. The marketing of the English editions shows us why that's necessary.