Professor Munakata's British Museum Adventure - Hoshino Yukinobu

Professor Munakata's British Museum Adventure by Hoshino Yukinobu. Published by the British Museum Press, 2011.

Professor Munakata's British Museum Adventure is a manga by Hoshino Yukinobu created in collaboration with the British Museum. The British Museum hosted an exhibition of Yukinobu's work in 2009 and invited the author to come and visit. This visit inspired several drawings of Professor Munakata (one of Yukinobu's reoccurring characters), which led to another visit to the British Museum and eventually this book. Although I've hardly ever read manga (I read the first two volumes of Full Metal Alchemist in high school a long time ago, and that's it), the idea of a manga set in the British Museum really appealed to me and I decided to give it a go. I was not disappointed.



The title of the book already gives away a big part of the plot. Professor Munakata comes to the British Museum to give a lecture, but ends up involved in quite an adventure. Whilst he is in London, Stonehenge is stolen. Lucky for us, the professor uses his expertise and rationale to help the authorities solve this mystery. Yes, that does sound a bit far-fetched. In fact, the entire story is a bit far-fetched. Does this matter? Not really, because it is still (or because of) incredibly entertaining. The story keeps taking weird turns which make no sense at all, but their unbelievability made me laugh a lot. What I find very clever about it is that even though the plot twist are far-fetched, the story itself is based on a lot of history and discusses some current issues concerning the returning of artifacts to the land they originally came from. By incorporating this in the book, Yukinobu managed to add some gravitas to the otherwise somewhat ridiculous plot.

With a manga, the drawing style is an important issue to discuss. I love the incredibly detailed drawings of Yukinobu. Not only the drawings of the inside of the British Museum and of its artifacts are drawn to perfection, all the exterior scenes also include an incredible amount of detail. The majority of the book is drawn in black and white, but there are also some pages which are beautifully colored. There are many drawings from this manga which wouldn't look out of place in a frame on the wall.

The book is published by the British Museum Press and not only includes the manga, but also an introduction with an interview with Yukinobu on his work process and some background information on the development of manga in Japanese printing culture, which are both interesting to read. I really enjoyed reading Professor Munakata's British Museum Adventure, and I think it would make for a great introduction to manga for those not used to it. I'd never heard of Professor Munakata or Hoshino Yukinobu, but this book has made me very curious about Professor Munakata's other adventures!

Ratings: 4 out of 5