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Sherlock Actor Mentions Manga Cartoons About Holmes/Watson.

Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays the title role in the BBC detective series Sherlock, cited online 'manga cartoons' in an interview with the Daily Telegraph newspaper. From the interview:

As the latest series got under way last night, Cumberbatch said they have been forced to deal with constant speculation on whether the [Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson] characters are lovers.

“Much as Sherlock adores John, and he's fond of him, there's no love, there's nothing sexual – all the jokes aside,” he said.

“The problem is, [the jokes] fuel the fantasy of the few into flames for the many. People presume that's what it is, but it's not.” The actor, 35, said there was a huge amount of “weird fan fiction” on the internet, where people “write stories and do manga cartoons of what they think you get up to behind closed doors. Some of it's funny. Some of it's full-on sex.”

The Sherlock series, which returned for a second batch of stories on New Years Day, updates the detective Sherlock Holmes (who was created in the nineteenth century) to present-day London.

Holmes has been the basis or inspiration for numerous commercial manga and anime, ranging from the anime Sherlock Hound to the Detective Conan (Case Closed) franchise. (Detective Conan is named in honour of Holmes' creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.)

Another example is Young Miss Holmes (Christie: High Tension), Kaoru Shintani's manga about Holmes's niece, which is due to be translated by the publisher Seven Seas Entertainment from March. Yet another is Yuma Ando's manga Detective Dog Sherdock which began in October 2011 in Weekly Shōnen Magazine. Not to be confused with the Sherlock Hound anime, it imagines that the detective is reincarnated as a crimesolving dog.

Via AICN Anime's twitter feed.