Chukei, a Kadokawa Group publishing company, has released a book that teaches chemistry with the characters of Kagami Yoshimizu's Lucky Star high school comedy manga on Thursday. Takashi Matsubara, a lecturer at the Kawaijuku extracurricular school, wrote Lucky Star to Manabu Kagaku (Riron-Hen) ga Omoshiroi Hodo Wakaru Hon to prepare high school students for college entrance exams and other tests. The 368-page book features over 100 illustrations and manga excerpts of Konata Izumi, the Hiiragi sisters Kagami and Tsukasa, and other characters drawn by Yoshimizu.

For example, the book compares chemical equilibrium with a tug-of-war match between the Lucky Star characters. Tsukasa illustrates the solubility of gases by spilling water. The book's appendix features a periodic table festooned with many pictures of Lucky Star characters.

The eighth Lucky Star manga volume is also shipping in Japan this week. Bandai Entertainment has been releasing both the Lucky Star anime and the original manga in North America. Since 2008, No Starch Press has been translating and publishing non-fiction manga guides that teach statistics, calculus, and other subjects. In Japan, East Press has been releasing a series of manga that explain books such as Dante's Divine Comedy and Karl Marx's Das Kapital .

Sources: Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web, Comic Natalie