Goukon ni Ittara Onna ga Inakatta Hanashi
How I Attended an All-Guy's Mixer

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This manga is really cute and funny, and that's something, coming from me who doesn't read hetero romance, as I'm a yuri head.

I'm reading the Raw so I'm up to chapter 20, and I have enjoyed the story so far.

from this point on there are going to be spoilers

as the summary states, a collage guy is invited to a mixer by a classmate. he and his 2 friends go to the meeting place and instead of the cute girls they saw in the pictures sent to them, they meet 3 handsome boys.

it doesn't take long for them to realize that the girls they ... met are simply, crossdressing for their part time job they had to go to, in a crossdressing bar.

now if you know anything about Japanese culture, and anime/manga crossdressing is a big thing. crossdressing bars/cafes are for women, what maid cafes are for men. Therefore there is a lot of high level handsome flirting going on, done by the girls. The funny part is that they proceed to lead the flirting with these boys, who are caught off guard because they actually fall for the act and charm like the women at the bar.

what is cute about the story is how these boys gradually accept the confusing feelings they feel about dating women who are dressed and act like guys. each couple gets their own little stories, and there are always funny moments because the girls don't change the way they act at all, and the boys discover more feelings that they didn't know they were capable of feeling.

crossdressing is so serious in Japan that it's not easy to tell if someone is the gender they ID as or if they perform the gender they appear as. That of course is shown in the story as those girls pass for boys very easily, and because of that the boys appear to date other boys.

the art is very aesthetically pleasing, and when funny faces come to play they are hilarious. I laughed a lot reading this manga, so the comedy is *chef kiss*

the story might feel repetitive at times. because it revolves around the same 6 people, but the exploration of those boys' feelings is very interesting and quite refreshing.

highly recommended as it is exactly what it says it is, a romantic comedy.

I learned about the existence of this manga, because of the announcement of a TV Drama that starts later in October based on it

"How I Atteneded an All-Guy's Mixer" is the equivalent of eating cereal for breakfast. It's not the kind of cereal that tastes like dessert, nor is it the kind that tastes like nothing. In our cereal bowl, we have six characters. Our boys are as simple as they can get. We have the normal guy, we have the slightly less normal guy, and we have the slightly bizarre guy. They walk around and fawn over the main cast. Our girls are a bit more complex. We have the dashing and suave prince, the deadpan otaku, and the blonde pseudo-tsundere. We have some intrigue on that ... front. Our prince is seemingly perfect, but she always feels like she's hiding some part of herself from the boys of the group. Our otaku feels a sense of embarrassment over her work as a BL mangaka. Our blonde...doesn't see herself as cute?

This is what the vast majority of chapters feels like. The little toy inside of this cereal box is the fact that the girls look like guys 80% of the time, whether at work at the bar or spending time in public. This manga just...exists? It feels like a couple of strangers went to a meeting and said, "We have an interesting premise, but we don't have a story" and the company said "we'll throw in whatever plot points are popular these days".

At the end of the day, I'm still here to read the latest chapter. I guess the manga isn't so bad after all. :)

The girls dress up as guys, so it's gay for a guy to be attracted to them apparently. Also very unimaginative to just draw them the exact same way you'd draw a bishounen. Truly demonstrates the limits of conventional ways of drawing aesthetically appealing characters to actually show the nuances of real life that allows us to easily determine gender. If that were not the case, then these guys would be able to think "wow these girls do behave in ways not associated with girls but they are still clearly female, that clash is so attractive" or something that's actually somewhat impactful (because manga like ... these often end up upholding western gender stereotypes anyway). It's also annoying for non-BL enjoyers like me when these guys are constantly saying "she looks like a guy so I shouldn't be attracted to her!" but they're attracted anyway for reasons that are not "she's obviously a woman," almost like they're attracted to them because they rizz up people like traditional bishounen archetypes and also "short hair and pants = man," if I'm explaining it correctly. It's just... awful.