There’s an amusing news item making the manga/anime site rounds about how manga is being used to “educate” Japanese men about Viagra:
http://comipress.com/news/2007/08/14/2488
I don’t know, but somehow this seems like shipping coals to Newcastle. I can’t imagine there’s a single Japanese male on the archipelago who hasn’t heard of Viagra yet or know what it does. The main, er, thrust of the website (and this gets lost in the English reportage) seems to be on helping men avoid counterfeit Viagra (hence the title, “Fake?”).
I read the first few pages of the manga itself. It’s hilarious. A hard-charging salaryman decides to pop some Viagra during work (To… hump his computer? It’s not made clear), and soon has an attack of explosive diarrhea, because it’s not really Viagra. I’m not making this up, folks. To add insult to injury, he then goes to the doctor–a FEMALE doctor–and has to suffer the embarrassment of telling her just what kind of medicine he thought he was taking.
All in all though, there’s not that much of a story here. A corporation in Japan using manga to help market a product is about as newsworthy as a corporation in the United States making a TV infomercial. But bring penises into the equation and, well, I guess people get interested.