Claudine...!
Claudine

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Claudine – Spoiler Free – Recommended

TLDR
Story – 7/10 – 7 x 0.275 = 1,925
Art – 5/10 – 5 x 0.2 = 1
Characters – 4/10 – 4 x 0.225 = 0,9
Enjoyment – 6,5/10 – 6,5 x 0.3 = 1,95
Total: 5,775 -> 6

Story – 7/10
... Claudine is a trans manga classic published in 1978 by Riyoko Ikeda, the mangaka who made The Rose of Versailles. This manga has the privilege of being one of the first representations of an openly trans character in a manga.
Claudine was assigned female at birth but felt like a boy from a very early age, although most characters, and even herself, use female pronouns with her.
Most of the story is narrated through her therapist.
This very short story quickly descends into a string of romances in which the main character – Claudine – happens to live. There isn’t much else to this story other than this: there is no plot other than the romances that she lives through.
The relationship with her father could also have been explored more, and the pacing in the beginning has some problems with it.
However, Claudine has to live constantly with an unknown pain: it is even stated that it was a mistake that God gave her the body of a woman but the heart of a man. She has to live with the pain of falling in love with other women while being a female assigned at birth, and she has to live with a female identity while feeling like a boy. It is known in the trans literature this effect: suffering from something that the person quite doesn’t know yet, but still suffers greatly because of it – i.e., gender dysphoria. This is definitely the story's saving grace, as the rest is uninteresting.
In short, Claudine is a trans manga version of The Sorrows of Young Werther in some aspects, where there was clearly some inspiration taken from it.

Art – 5/10
The art style in Claudine is a bit outdated, making for a rather unconventional visual setting. However, page composition is interesting and definitely out of the box – especially taking into account that it is a manga from the 70s. There are some problems with character design, but it is nevertheless functional in the end, and that is what's important in the end.

Characters – 4/10
There aren’t many characters in Claudine. Other than the main protagonist – Claudine –, the rest of the cast isn’t developed. Moreover, the first romances of Claudine are definitely not explained in terms of character depth. But again, not much is possible in a 100-page long manga.

Enjoyment – 6,5/10
One reads Claudine for being a trans manga classic but not much else. Its story is uninteresting, and there are problems with the pace in the beginning. Nevertheless, it is a quick read with the trans element as its saving grace. For this reason, and because it is a classic that one reads very quickly, contributing to our otaku culture, it deserves a recommendation, although not enthusiastically.

Claudine is the kind of manga
that has come to be called "ahead of its time", because it brings up debates that we're not used to seeing dealt with so well, even nowadays, where sensitive topics such as transsexuality and homoaffectivity are so fetishized.

He is a man who often claims to be a man (a trans man) and that doesn't stop him from suffering like any human being, suffering from love. As is typical of romanticism, the reader can see the tragic issue here being either unrequited love or love forbidden by families, like Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, among many others...

Claudine ... can never be happy, there's always something preventing him from reaching his full potential in relationships, but that doesn't make him desperate to accept anyone, and that's a very important detail in the story.

I hope to read more of the author's work.

A respectful and fairly early portrayal of a trans man in manga, but one that needs a little more depth. Rather than elaborating on one idea or storyline, Ikeda ping-pongs between a few romances with the fairly loose connecting thread of Claude struggling to make people understand him.

The art is solid, but that's unsurprising from a real star of shojo. The backgrounds and the fashion are the real highlight here. While the characters aren't especially interesting to look at (partially because of Ikeda's role in defining the shojo style), her backgrounds are rich in detail and depict a more modern France than VERSAILLES.

The ... romances aren't especially interesting in themselves, as mentioned previously. They suffer from "serialized syndrome" where they have some out-of-nowhere endings that don't really clearly advance the story just to wrap things up within the page count for the month.

Claudine is an interesting subject for a manga, but it would really work better if it stuck with one idea for more than a chapter.