“You Got Manga In My Math Book!” “You Got Math Book In My Manga!”

Word from ComiPress is that there’s a new math textbook in Japan that makes use of a whole lotta manga:

The story of manga begins with 5 students picking up a textbook. After the students tear out a page of the book by mistake, the Greece mathematician Archimedes appears and proceeds to take them to various times and places, such as the Great Pyramids and palaces in Europe, where the students are met with math challenges from different types of people, including a man from the European palace a Native American and a samurai. The students are not allowed to return to their own time until they understand the solution of the math problems contained in the book.

This sorta reminds me of that Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land cartoon that I used to watch when I was a kid. I dunno, though, the plot for this math book sounds kind of lame. I can’t believe I just evaluated the “plot” of a math book…

I remember my college Japanese language textbook, Nakama, having a whole lotta manga sections. That made more sense, though, since the actual reading was part of the process of learning.