Fukakai na Boku no Subete wo (Love Me for Who I Am)

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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: FukaBoku, Love me for What I am.

Japanese: 不可解なぼくのすべてを

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Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 5

Chapters: 28

Status: Finished

Published: Jun 1, 2018 to Mar 5, 2021

Genres: Drama, Romance

Serialization: Comic MeDu

Authors: Konayama, Kata (Story & Art)

Statistics

Score: 7.91¹ (scored by 7,076 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #972²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #1024

Members: 19,543

Favorites: 763

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7.91

Ranked #972Popularity #1024Members 19,543

MangaComic MeDuKonayama, Kata (Story & Art)

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Volumes: /5

Chapters: /28

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Synopsis

Mogumo is known throughout their entire school as an easy target. They are non-binary—neither male nor female—which ostracizes them from the rest of the school community. However, in a chance encounter, they meet a boy named Tetsu Iwaoka, who decides to bring Mogumo to a maid cafe.

Tetsu claims that the people there will understand them, and Mogumo jumps at the chance to meet people similar to them. However, Mogumo soon becomes upset after learning that the place is seen as a "girlyboy" cafe, and they are mistaken as a cross-dressing boy. Tetsu manages to convince Mogumo that it doesn't matter what their sex is, and they gladly join the team of cafe workers. Thus begins a story of self-discovery and acceptance as each character explores the concept of gender and its meaning.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Fukakai na Boku no Subete wo has been published digitally in English as Love Me for Who I Am by Seven Seas Entertainment since June 2, 2020, and in print since June 30, 2020.

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Characters

Mogumo, Ryuunosuke

Main

Iwaoka, Tetsu

Main

Suzumi, Sou

Supporting

Tatebayashi, Mei

Supporting

Ten-chan

Supporting

Iwaoka, Satori

Supporting

Mizunoe, Kotone

Supporting

Aikawa, Haruto

Supporting

Ayumu

Supporting

Mogumo, Mother

Supporting

Reviews

Jan 9, 2025

renardTrickster

Recommended

Love Me For Who I Am is, first and foremost, the cutest shit I've ever seen. The art is soft and expressive, equally good at bringing out the emotion in a character's face as it is deforming them into a cartoony blob. The writing is much the same, with likeable characters and endearing, slice of life/maid cafe shenanigans. The marriage between art and writing is best exemplified in the frequent Outfit Porn the manga indulges in. To the audience, it's a chance to showcase cute clothes worn by equally cute boys, girls, and not-boys-or-girls. To the characters, they're an avenue of expression, freedom, and an ... opportunity to live authentically in public with people who understand them, and their passion is palpable. In short, it is *fun to read* and infectiously so, a borderline healing experience and thus easy to recommend in that regard alone.

Love Me For Who I Am is also appropriately serious when the need arises. Not only does this blend well with the above, ensuring that the cutesy feelgood times have some bite, pathos, and stakes to it, the reverse perspective serves to reinforce the central theme of the story. That even if the world might be close-minded or leave you feeling sick and hurt, there's always someone there who understands you, and a happy life is possible despite it all. The central conflict lies with Mogumo's nonbinary identity, through other topics surrounding gender and sexual orientation feature as well, varying in frequency but equal in being well-handled. Coming into your new identity, or having lived for years in public with that identity. Societal homophobia making you feel isolated by convincing you that you're broken and are obligated to be "normal", or knowing you're not broken, but having to keep it secret from others lest you face judgement. Not being queer at all, just a good friend and an ally, or maybe realizing you might actually be more than that. There's a diversity at play not only in identity, but in experience as well. Relatable, aspirational, joyful, painful.

I must emphasize that the story contains proper teeth and drama, and it isn't *just* a futzaround gay funtime. Even if things are generally lighthearted and characters spend more time happy than they do unhappy, things can be quite messy. The largely sympathetic protagonist misgenders his sister for a third of manga's runtime, the second major "arc" delves into a crushing examination of internalized homophobia and how badly it can twist someone up, and the final arc is gut-wrenching from start to tearful finish. Whether you're queer and looking for a manga that explores those themes with empathy and understanding, somewhere on the periphery and interested in something as informative as it is entertaining, or just interested in a cute drama with some romance and gender stuff, Love Me For Who I Am will suit your needs perfectly.

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Apr 19, 2022

ExtremelyHyper

Mixed Feelings

Love Me For Who I Am, a manga that tackles a tough group of sensitive topics. It shows the lives of several high schoolers undergoing issues in their romantic situations, their sexualities and gender, and the overall umbrella of LGBT+ (LGBTQ+/ LGBTQI+, etc) in school. One of few these days that are of any quality as well, and what I can commend to this is at least the arts’ really pretty. If what you’re looking for is a good review, this isn’t going to be a good one, nor a proper one. And look, I’ll cut to the chase and say that despite my rating, ...

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Mar 5, 2021

sushiisawesome

Not Recommended

Preliminary (28/28 eps)

Love Me for Who I am is a series that treats its characters as devices to the identities that they identify as rather than letting them breathe as characters with any level of independence from whatever point the story wants to make. All discussion surrounding gender and the various identities the character have are cloaked in a level of discourse more befitting the angst you'd find off people whining about non-issues on Twitter instead of given any level of nuance - any character that in any way likes another character for a reason the narrative sees as negative is portrayed in a shallow, stereotypical light ... with zero genuine depth. The series has the intelligence and maturity of your average old tumblr poster in how to approach these themes, and instead immediately assumes a sympathetic perspective from the reader instead of attempting to portray its characters as being just that; people who want to live by and just want their identities accepted by people around them, and working hard to change the perspective of the reader.

An absurd amount of the manga is split between characters bickering about clothing and melodramatically snapping at each other for not understanding each other. There's no attempt whatsoever from characters who identify as something that doesn't fall within the binary to settle down and explain who and what they are in a calm, rational manner; the series dives into angst-ridden garbage about characters not understanding each other instead of them sitting down and coming together to understand each other. Character conflict being at the heart of a work of fiction in and of itself is not only fine, but something I normally welcome - the problem is that there's no breathing space in-between arcs to let characters just breathe as people with lives of their own. Characters legitimately scream that people don't understand them, refuse to clarify then run off - one noteworthy and unintentionally funny example of this was a character breaking down crying in the middle of the street for inserting their expectations on someone being a woman when they weren't.

The characters are unlikable, insufferable asswipes with no genuine personality beyond screaming at one another for the most part. Mugomo is an absolute idiot who repeats the EXACT same mistakes all manga long over refusing to explain or clarify their emotions to other people, somehow gets surprised when there's a backlash, runs into a corner and only is dragged out - kicking and screaming - by Tetsu, who is more patient with them than any normal person ever can or should be. While it takes time for a person to break out of a certain pattern of behavior, and especially if all they've encountered is rejection, there's very little that I can actually mention about Mugomo that doesn't fall into them being non-binary or isn't defined by that in some way. What little there is for a character arc is defined by Mugomo somewhat becoming more confident in expressing themselves and confronting people who are portrayed as idiots for inserting expectations onto them, but...why should I care? Why should any reader not already invested in the wider meta-narrative over gender issues care? I have no answer to this question and neither does the series, which continues with this rushed pacing unabated from beginning to end. Mugomo is never genuinely called out for running away from people, and constantly assumes the worst in other people from beginning to end, making an infuriating as shit read from a lead who is little more than a poorly explored self-insert that some people may be able to identify with. There's very little to their character and whatever is there is neither compelling nor interesting.

Tetsu is a generic, stereotypical male lead whose acceptance of others and unique perspective on gender is the only worthwhile personality trait he has. There's no depth to him falling for Mugomo, and he exists as the angst control machine to Mugomo (and other characters in the cafe). His attraction towards Mugomo for being in his eyes an effeminate man is called out but while fades away as the center of attention that the narrative places under, never stops being the center of attraction he has; this means that in a weird way, the series turns in circles over this subject and basically arrives nowhere. This is only exacerbated by the absurd amount of attention that the series places on clothing as a marker for characterization; while this is true even for many LGBTQ+ people in real life - who use clothing to identify themselves in different ways - when that is the most memorable thing about the characters instead of some other defining traits, that becomes a problem due to the lack of effort put into, you know, humanizing them in ways that aren't tied to their identities.

All the other characters are barely characters so much as they exist as angst-ridden devices to force outrage out of the audience. Mugomo's backstory made me despise them even more than I already did, the excessive and often senseless use of violence to emphasize a point and use more angst is tasteless at best and is just an attempt to garner sympathy from the audience - with absolutely no effort as to why I should care about any of the victims. All sorts of series have used abuse and violence in more interesting and genuinely terrifying ways - Chi no Wadachi, The Gods Lie or Boy's Abyss coming to mind. So then, at the end of the road, when a cast of characters have little to no characterization that humanizes them or informs the reader of anything genuinely thematically meaningful, what's left?

There's some merit to Love Me for Who I am. Mugomo does undergo minimal character growth near the end of the manga. The artwork is fairly nice to look at, and the paneling is nicely done. Suzumi is a likable - if still shallow - character, and what little enjoyment I found in this travesty was when he was in a scene in question. It's kind of a shame that he and another character star in an abysmal hentai doujin...wait, maybe that really does explain it all. A lot of the writing being overly obsessed with clothing, the hypocrisy in the two leads falling for each other which is never genuinely addressed and the writing being centered on the characters physical traits instead of their personalities come off as fetishistic - which isn't unusual for works in Japan depicting LGBTQ+ people. Normally I'm fine with this to an extent, I can laugh at politically incorrect jokes - but this is something aiming at being higher than a mid-2000s romcom, and as such fails miserably at anything it does. Maybe that's the reason the writing is so poor, the theming is so hamfisted and the characters have zero chemistry...because they're written as though they're hentai characters when in reality they're in, well, a serialized manga.

I recommend this to absolutely no one, stay as far away as humanly possible from this.

Thank you for reading my review. Any and all feedback would be appreciated.

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Poll: Fukakai na Boku no Subete wo Chapter 22 Discussion Syureria - Aug 8, 2020	5 replies	by phossil »» Yesterday, 12:27 PM
Poll: Fukakai na Boku no Subete wo Chapter 18 Discussion 024 - Apr 13, 2020	2 replies	by phossil »» Mar 10, 11:57 AM
Poll: Fukakai na Boku no Subete wo Chapter 16 Discussion 024 - Feb 1, 2020	3 replies	by phossil »» Mar 9, 3:02 PM
Poll: Fukakai na Boku no Subete wo Chapter 9 Discussion 024 - Jan 26, 2020	2 replies	by phossil »» Mar 6, 11:42 AM
Poll: Fukakai na Boku no Subete wo Chapter 1 Discussion 024 - Jan 22, 2020	5 replies	by phossil »» Mar 2, 1:32 PM

Fukakai na Boku no Subete wo
Love Me for Who I Am
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Fukakai na Boku no Subete wo
Love Me for Who I Am
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