Boku Girl

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On the surface Boku Girl seems like your ordinary, generic, everyday genderbender manga and, well... That's kind of what it is. However, this is an extremely well written, fun to read and entertaining one at that. Apparently this is Sugito Akira's first manga, in which case I have to congratulate him on making something so fun on his first effort. Remember that word, "Fun", because that's what Boku Girl is about. It's not about a deep, intigruing story. It's not about heart-wrenching drama. It's not about shakespearean dialogue. It's about fun. In all it's simplicity, the manga delivers that fun incredibly well.

Story - 6
As I ... mentioned earlier, the story isn't anything out of the ordinary. Guy turns into girl and hijinx ensue. The story is very obviously not the focus and thus is incredibly simple, but it carries the manga fairly decently and gives way to what really matters -- the characters and the comedy.

Art - 9
The art in Boku Girl is consistent, detailed and well drawn. Just go to any thread on your local anime forum about Boku Girl (if there are any) and look around. You'll most likely find a few people talking about how cute and beautiful our protagonist, Mizuki, is. In almost every panel he is drawn in, he is drawn incredibly well and beautifully with juicy lips and a warm blush.

Character - 10
This is where Boku Girl truly shines -- the characters. Although all characters fall into some sort of manga archetype, be it friendly, innocent protagonist, reliable childhood friend or ditzy, cute airhead, all of the characters are written with care and it really shows. All characters are very likable and their interactions with eachother are an absolute blast, especially Takeru and Mizuki's and their relationship as best friends that has become awkward and unpredictable with Mizuki's transformation. There is not a single bad character in this manga or one that i dislike or hate, whereas there's always at least one character i dislike in most mangas.

Enjoyment - 10
If this scale could go any higher, I would without a doubt give enjoyment an 11. The comedy is wonderful, the characters lovable and the romance captivatingly interesting. It's an absolute blast to read and I can, without a shred of doubt, say that this is the most fun I've had reading a manga. Everything is just so fun.

Overall, I'm giving this manga a 10. It's far from perfect and mostly people would disagree with me on this rating, but it's just too damn entertaining that I can't give it anything less than a full 10. The story is generic, but it was never the focus in the first place, so it doesn't change the overall rating at all for me.

This manga is definitely worth a look at for everyone even slightly interested.

Methodology:
I'm am going to write a mostly spoiler free review of this series as most of its faults can be detailed without given away any plot specifics (nothing you can't guess without having ever cracked the cover) aside from character names. Warning, this series is ecchi and carries all such related warnings. All of pronouns referring to Mizuki will be male because I'm lazy and don't feel like writing his/her and he/she etc. and I have no clue how the author intended for us to see the character.

Summary 3/10 :
In certain sporting communities the word potential is used as an insult. With that ... in mind, I can only say that Boku Girl had potential. It had the foundations of a generally good gender bent series; but due to a phenomenal lack of a structured story, character development, sense of urgency, and consequences for actions taken, it failed to leave any positive lasting impression and left me asking what the purpose of the manga was by the end.

Story 2/10:
This is the most baffling part of the series. Boku Girl by all measures appears to be a tale of ecchi romance, and perhaps part harem; but, it fails to develop believable organic romantic relationships between Mizuki and any of his love interests.

The story begins with the expected gender transformation in our protagonist and the author writes a good twenty or so genuinely enjoyable chapters that deal with how Mizuki must proceed if he wishes to hide it from the girl he's interested in and the school at large. Unfortunately, once his secret is revealed the plot becomes muddled and rapidly devolves into a standard American romantic comedy filled with misunderstandings and a general lack of honesty between the characters. This causes the story to stall out and prevents the characters from developing proper relationship with each other.

This is because there is almost no causality in the story. Various characters will make attempts to court Mizuki but their actions don't result in any consequences. For example, a great number of characters try to rape him but it never changes the way Mizuki feels about them. If they were creepy before hand, they still are, but if they were a close friend Mizuki doesn't show any signs of emotional turmoil that his trust has been betrayed. This may be written off as generally ecchi behavior because the story never recognizes it as anything other than normal, but this would have been a strong opportunity to force much needed character development and offered a chance to escape the character and plot stagnation that was occurring.

Art 6/10:
Credit is due for the art. I'll quickly let it be known that the scenery and the general quality of the art work was slightly above average and never left me wanting or confused. Furthermore, some of the characters like Mei and Mizuki has designs which fit the characters well.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Yumeko, the female love interest. Her design was bland. It had no distinctive characteristics and made it very hard to see her as anything other than another pointless harem shipping.

While I can't complain about this specifically from a critical perspective, I thought the author should not have allowed the characters' designs to to so obviously explain their role in the story. E.g. random high school male is drawn like a creep so naturally he's going to hit on Mizuki and be a pest. Variety is the spice of life and although the author has plenty here, he isn't willing to break out of the mold and try anything daring and new. (Also, is it too much to ask that Thor be drawn with a bit more maturity?)

Characters 2/10:
Show don't tell: that's the best bit of advice for any character development that I can give. Boku Girl puts forth a rather impressive amount of effort to explain how the characters feel about each other. Unfortunately it never goes anywhere thanks to this series utter lack of causality. The author mainly develops the characters through introspection and acts of physical contact that will not be expounded upon properly.

I touched on this a bit in the story section, but the development of Mizuki and Takeru does progress nicely for the first twenty or so chapters. Unfortunately, across the board the author leaves the character arcs unfinished for essentially all of the characters. Minor characters get undue time in the spotlight for character development but then they turn out to be tertiary to the main plot and only distract from cementing the primary characters as their own discrete entities. In general, all of the characters are too passive and unwilling to express themselves constructively to the ones they love.

Mizuki: While initially his struggles to pass himself off as a boy define him as a character; once his secret is revealed, his defining characteristics become so difficult to see that you could say that the character by the end is a totally different character. This is very problematic because there is no natural progression from point A to B that you might expect from a gender bender. The character is so passive in accepting roles from others, that I'm not quite sure how the character will behave on his own. I would preferred to see Mizuki take a dominant role in relationships so that we could better have seen how his behavior changed due to his transformation and societal influences. Also, Mizuki's passivity is one of the main causes of roughly fourty chapters of filler material that leads nowhere. I suppose as a study for how social pressures affects humans it's not the worst effort I've seen, but I'm here to watch a story about how a kid deals with a gender transformation and how that affects his love life and not about how wearing a dress prevents a person from behaving assertively.

Yumeko: Honestly, I can't say very much about this character beyond that she's a generic female love interest. She's in enough of the story to develop her own character but the author didn't seem to want her to be anything else. (He even has another character make fun of how stereotypical she is)

Takeru: In general I'd say he was the most believable character. His initial relationship with Mizuki makes sense, but as the story progresses he begins to behave erratically. I can only presume that he was the intended romantic partner for Mizuki, but his relationship with him bizarrely flip flops between best friends and love interests in a manner that I can only describe as manic.

Loki: A generally fun character that sets the plot into action. Unfortunately, her antics, past the initial transformation, don't really contribute to the story and it feels weaker as a result of all of the page time she receives in the final 60 chapters.

Depiction of Men 3/10 | Women 3/10 :
Unpopular opinion, but I feel that it is necessary to look at how a gender bender portrays the difference between the sexes.

Men: Simply put, just because a man likes a women doesn't mean that he's going to violate her personal space and take any opportunity presented to molest her. Numerous times throughout this manga we see various men plan to and actively molest Mizuki for no other reason than he's cute and available. I understand that this is an ecchi piece but rape/incest leaves a bad taste in my mouth and it wasn't called for in this series. How is it that the specifically creepy character Yamada is more respectful of Mizuki than his childhood friend?

Women: Honestly speaking, it's a mixed bag. Some individuals like Loki and Mei stand on their own and I have no complaints about them. But for crying out loud, Yumeko is nothing more than a cardboard cutout that I've seen many times before whenever someone needs a generic female love interest for the man to fall for. Mizuki's female form is even worse. From the start of the manga Mizuki is objectified by BOTH genders as an object of attraction. Only Yumeko and Loki have an explicit interest in Mizuki for a reason other than his appearance.

Overall 3/10:
I can't say I would ever recommend this series to anyone as anything other than a textbook on how not to write a romance. I can't say that I wasn't enjoying the series while I was reading it. It presented enough comedy to keep me going, but that's probably the only major draw the manga has. To say I was disappointed by the ending is needless, because no ending presented would have satisfied me. The characters were simply too flat and dull to become invested in. That is quite the marvel in fact when you consider the length of the series. Manga such as Pluto have made me care for characters more in the course of two chapters than this manga did in the course of its entire length.

[TW: Transphobia, gender dysphoria, sexual situations, and pedophilia/child sexual abuse (possibly) in this series]
I can't believe I read this manga but I did and I might as well write a review about it so here we go.

Boku Girl's protagonist is an effeminate first year high school student by the name of Suzushiro Mizuki, who is constantly at odds with his feminine appearance. His life has always been overshadowed by men confessing to him, others not taking him seriously as a boy, and even his crush confessing that she only sees him as a she. Matters are worsened when the trickster god Loki decides Mizuki to ... turn Mizuki's body into that of a girl's. Thus our protagonist sets off in an attempt to revert their body back to what it once was, while simultaneously traversing his personal relationships as a girl in hiding.

Story [6/10] I really can't decide if I liked the basic plot of this story or not. I am leaning toward the not end, mostly because I side-eye the author's constant writing in of needless sexual situations and boring filler that detracts from the main focus of the story, which is Mizuki's relationship with his crush and childhood friend. I think the manga would be a lot more tasteful as well if they removed even a smidgen of the needless fanservice. Which, is literally every chapter.


Art [4/10] This may not bothers as much as I but holy shit the anatomy in this series is somewhat frightening. This is most obvious with the female characters, as they are constantly depicted in spine breaking poses in order to show off their boobs and butt. It's one thing if it was the odd, silly cover art but it is so constant that it is honestly distracting from the plot of the story. These girls either need to join a professional aerobics team or go to the hospital immediately, I am very concerned for their health.
That aside the artist excels in expressions and faces, and the art style reminds me of the art in the World God Only Knows personally, though it's mostly in the eyes.

Character [3/10] I like Mizuki and his crush, they're pretty unique as characters and don't abide to boring anime archetypes that plague so many other series. Aside from them and Mizuki's childhood friend though, I find all of the other characters annoying and boring. I honestly have no idea why some of them are written in other than for poor comedic relief.

Enjoyment [4/10] As mentioned previously I found the characters that are intentionally written in for comedic relief to be bland and annoying, and as a result a lot of the humor isn't funny. That said there are a couple of interactions that did insight a chuckle from me, so it wasn't a completely laughless experience. The sexual situations that plague this series are gross male pandering and I really wish they would tone it down. I know it's an ecchi, I don't care. The point is the fanservice degrades the overall series in terms of quality and tastefulness. Are anime tiddies really that important.

That said I do like the main plot, it reads kinda like a shoujo except less idealized and with less cliches. Which is the main reason I am sticking around to read it.

Overall [3/10] I really can't give this series anything higher than a 3 while still in good faith. I can't. There were too many distracting qualities that detracted from the overall work and it resulted in me enjoying one VERY SPECIFIC thing about the manga but not the manga itself. Would I recommend this series to a friend? Not unless I want to still look them in the eye. Will I read it again? Probably not. Overall kind of a let down, but I can't really expect something too great from an ecchi manga I guess.

I wanted to right this review before I was able to finish the series. The reason for this is so that I don't have a biased opinion due to having an ending I liked or due to it having an ending I did not like so let me begin.

First I would like to state I absolutely LOVE this series. Although there are quite a few issues I see being the cynic I am. So when it comes to the story of Boku Girl there is a pureness to it with a VERY lovable cast that makes this manga exceeds others like it and with a ... the introduction of the Norse Gods into the story as the reason for Mizuki's change in gender adds a certain flare to the story for me.

When it comes to the characters of this series I must say that I love all of them like I stated before it's just a very lovable cast. There is still issues to be found though, when it comes to the development of any characters outside of the main cast which is maintained by a mere 3 characters really leaves a lot to be wanted for me. I would have loved to have seen more development in other characters and with this being said let me conclude this review.

I got a lot of enjoyment out of this series and hope it has a great ending (at least to me) and the art is phenomenal, well when I say phenomenal I just mean that it's a truly beautiful style. So overall I thought the story was very good. The characters that are developed being a good quality but leaving quite a bit to be wanted from other characters outside the main cast. An overall Enjoyable story and a truly magnificent art style, or at least one that caters to my taste. So if you like a good gender swap ecchi manga... well this is a great one.

This is written after reading (more or less) all 107 chapters, either through full scanlations, live TL threads, or reading raws with my extremely rudimentary Japanese skills.

Recognize that this entire manga is very cisnormative and heteronormative (aka there would be no conflict whatsoever if characters weren't straight and also weren't polarized as strictly masculine and feminine). I'm not a huge fan of the gender binary, personally, but I can put that aside to read some silly manga with nicely drawn boobs.

When I first started this manga it was silly, fun, had really nice art, didn't drag things out for too long, and I gave it ... a 9 rating. Sugito Akira's storytelling style always includes some kind of misunderstanding, distraction, or interruption right before or in the middle of a major event (like a confession, realization of feelings, etc). At first it's funny, but after 107 chapters it gets tiring.

Story: [6/10]
The main plot is far-fetched to begin with. Loki (in the form of a /very/ young-looking girl) decides to mess with a feminine-looking guy and give him a vagina, hijinks ensue. There are small story arcs that are basically either character introductions or the introduction of some problem that someone has to deal with. It seems like some things are brushed off or handled weirdly for the sake of moving the story along, but the kicker is that there isn't much plot progression at all when you step back and look at it. Let's all be honest with each other though, we aren't reading ecchi for the plot anyway.

Art: [8/10]
Soft! Boku Girl is so soft and nice looking. Personally, I'm more of a fan of the art towards the beginning. Boobs sag more realistically than most manga boobs, and I appreciate that a lot. Sugito is a pro at drawing expressions. At the beginning, each important character design is very different from the others. If you only saw the silhouettes of most of them, you would be able to tell them apart. If you're looking for cute things that look really soft, nice looking lips, or a ruggedly handsome male lead (luv u takeru), this is a good manga for it.

Character: [6/10]
This score mostly reflects my feelings on each of the characters by the end of the story. Everyone got a little more bland by the end. At the beginning, everyone had their own distinct personalities that made them unique. At one point or another, they all started feeling more generic. Certain characters had little quirks or secrets that gave them flavor, but basically all of those things ended up being irrelevant. Kind of disappointing, really.

Enjoyment: [6/10]
The first 55 chapters were an absolute delight, and I would have given them a 9. After that point, all the little storytelling quirks that used to be sort of funny started getting really annoying. Things like the sudden interruption during an event that would have otherwise moved the plot along, comic relief characters overstaying their welcome, pointless "antagonist" and "rival" characters being introduced. If you're patiently waiting for new scanlations to be released, don't think about them too much. They've already hit the best part.

Overall: [6/10]
I won't spoil the ending, but I will say that I was genuinely disappointed by how vanilla and boring the last like 20 or so chapters were. Hate to sound hipster again or whatever, but early Boku Girl was the best. Chapter 55 was the peak. I'm not into super moe stuff, and BG wasn't /super/ moe, but Mizuki came pretty close. This series would have been better if it was half the amount of chapters that it was, I think.

The reason I was all about this manga at first was because it felt a lot like a BL but with boobs. What could be better than that? Over time, it lost the BL feeling, but I still hung on. When it started to get basic was when I started getting sad.

I know some people definitely like this manga, and I won't say that I dislike it, but I would have preferred for it to go in a different direction than it did. It's still a fun read, but if you aren't rearing to read it, just wait for the scanlations to finish and blow through it all at once.

THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SOME SPOILERS.
As of this review, I've only made it up to Chapter 38, so keep that in mind if you're reading in the far future.

Gender benders are a sub genre that I don't really care for. They all suffer predictable cliches such as the gender bent protagonist adjusts to their new gender, with unfunny comedy, ecchiness, lack of a proper ending etc.

That's where Boku Girl comes in. Never before since Ranma ½ had there been a gender bender as funny as this. I was pleasantly surprised how well written and funny the story and characters are.

Story-7: Boku Girl is a ... gender bender, guy turns into a girl story. It's simple, but its done so well because it's funny and interesting. Mizuki is a first year high school student. He trains in akido and wants to prove to his father that he is a strong man. Why does this matter? Mizuki may be a man, but looks very feminine. He wants to prove to others that he is a manly guy, but with such a feminine face and body... it's hard to pull off. In fact, he has been asked out by other men! One day, after failing to propose to his would be girlfriend, he ends up getting stung by a weird looking wasp! It turns out this wasp was sent out by the goddess Loki, who wants to pull a prank on Mizuki for fun. The next morning, after a weird nightmare, mizuki wakes up....as a girl.

The story may sound like another gender bender, but it's told in such a fun way its hard to put down! It maybe simple, but I've founded it harder to predict as the story goes on. It dodges the standard cliches of most gender benders or puts a better twist on them. The characters are relatable to anyone who has been in high school in one way or the other even Mizuki!


Characters-8: What Boku Girl excels in is how naturally characters react to the situation. When Mizuki turns into a girl, he doesn't like it and still pretends to be a boy at school, to the best of his ability. Takeru, obliviously doubts at first the girl Mizuki was originally boy mizuki.. I thought this was a very strong point because its how a real person would react.

There are four main characters for this series:

The main protagonist, Mizuki, is probably the most relatable main lead in a gender bender. He suffers from looking too feminine at the beginning of the story, and often gets asked out by other guys! Whats worse, the love of his life Fujiwara thinks of him as a girl as well! Mizuki wants to get closer to her, but is too shy to admit it. This is hard on him because he wants to prove to be manly for Fujiwara and be her boyfriend. If that’s not enough,when Mizuki turns into a girl, that’s when things get even more complicated!

Mizuki's best friend Takeru have been friends with each other since childhood. Takeru unlike mizuki, is strong, athletic, and actually looks like a guy. He cares for mizuki as a friend, and after the transformation, he helps anyway he can to help him/her out, even though he's starting to fall for mizukis feminine side....

Mizukis love interest Fujiwara is abit of an air head,who is class rep, and is assumed that she has a crush on takeru. She is somewhat of a secret tomboy despite her looks. When she was younger, she acted like a boy. Will Mizuki have courage to tell her his big secret?

The one who cursed mizuki into a girl is Loki. She is a mysterious goddess of tricks who used to play pranks on other gods, until she found Mizuki in the human world. Later, she disguises herself as a human and is now mizuki's classmate! Mizuki does not realize that loki turned him into a girl...yet.

Art/Design-9: Boku Girl is a very beautiful,soft drawn manga. The designs perfectly match the characters personalities. Mizuki as a boy looks feminine, but “boy” enough to look like a guy. His soft skin and face understandably is mistakable for a girls'. It fits that he likes soft things like stuff animals. Takeru may look a little mean at first, but he really is a nice guy and good friend to mizuki. Loki looks exactly like a prankster, with slanted yellow eyes and bizarre black clothing. Fujiwara looks like a curious airhead with her big wide open eyes, and innocent expressions. (Well, most of the time)

Enjoyment-8: Boku Girl when beyond my expectations as not only a gender bender but as a manga. If you don't like gender benders then this may change you're mind. Its so fun to read and well written that its hard not to enjoy it. If you do like gender benders then you'll go crazy over this one. This isn't some quick gags manga. It takes a tired concept and makes it seem new. Despite not having an official English release, I wouldn't mind owning a copy of each volume to support the author. I believe this series is great enough to deserve an anime adaption. There may be some censorship in an adaption, but I think many comedy anime fans will really enjoy this series if it had a wider release regardless.

In the end, I highly recommend Boku Girl! It's funny, has great characters, good plot twists, and most of all fun and entertaining. I hope you found this review helpful!

CONTENT WARNING: This manga, first off, portrays the LGBTQ community in a controversial light, and thus I do not recommend reading this title if you are prone to these kinds of opinions. There are already so many posts calling Boku Girl "transphobic", "homophobic" and "bigoted" and this needs to stop being the basis of the series. While people are allowed to have their own tastes the toxicity I've seen in these reviews is in a league of its own. I'm not going to talk about any of that stuff in my review, because honestly I don't really care and like to enjoy things without involving ... about my political agenda, and I ask you to do the same if you can.

Story: 9/10
Boku Girl starts out as a seemingly cliché genderbender, but soon proves to be anything but. The story emphasizes the psychological aftereffects of having your Y chromosome replaced with an X very convincingly from the perspectives of Mizuki, the supposed "victim" whose fundamental values make the gender change ever more uncomfortable, and Takeru, the childhood friend who undergoes a constant struggle, attempting to decide whether to respect his friend's wish to be viewed as masculine or trust in his newfound feelings for Mizuki. In my opinion, the story of Boku Girl is incredibly well-thought-out, with its only weakness being its emphasis on the main four characters, with little development for the side characters who often serve as no more than "observers" to the events in the main plot, becoming plot devices when needed. I'll continue on this point in the Character section.

Art: 10/10
Akira Sugito's artwork is incredibly refined and clean. Again, the emphasis here is on the characters, so it's made pretty clear that a lot more effort was put into them compared to the backdrops, although Sugito manages to create vivid environments when they're needed. Good examples of this are seen mostly when plot is taking center stage, almost to tell you that what happens next is important. The thing that I admire most about Sugito's art, though, is the choice he made with Mizuki's character design. In most genderbend fantasies, the main character is obviously male, and when he becomes a woman you can easily tell, as the character spontaneously grows giant breasts, shrinks at least half a foot and sometimes even grows long hair. With Mizuki, though, his design at the start was androgynous, leaning towards female, and there is no actually visible change when he becomes female, besides the fact that his "willy" disappears. This is an extremely daring move, as later in the series when he begins to switch back and forth more erratically the only way you can tell what gender Mizuki is at the moment is through implication and/or internal monologue. This attribute, though, works in the series' favor, as it shows that the mere implication of Mizuki being male or female can change the reader's perception; when Mizuki is male, your brain somehow perceives him as more male, and the same tends to happen the other way around, even though there are no changes to the actual base design. This decision on the author's part really brings Mizuki as a character to another level, as implication and speech patterns are the only way to discern one gender from another.

Character: 10/10
As I was saying earlier, the characters are really the selling point of the series, and this is made clear time and time again across all 107 chapters. But this isn't necessarily a bad thing. While the side characters do only serve as observers to the main story, this can actually serve to the benefit of the series, adding more viewpoints to the events transpiring in Mizuki's life. The best-written character in the series, though, actually isn't Mizuki; it's Takeru by a long shot. The struggle he undergoes over the course of Boku Girl takes center stage at some points, and this struggle is about as realistic as you can get in a gender-bender fantasy like this one.

Enjoyment: 10/10
When it comes to enjoyability, it should have been made clear by now that I very much enjoy this series. Out of the almost 100 anime or manga I've watched or read, Boku Girl would be somewhere in my top 20. One of the biggest factors of enjoyability that has given the series many controversial opinions is the ending of the series. This ending has been shown to be extremely hit or miss, with some saying it was excellent and others saying it was abysmal. While I won't delve into the specifics about the ending for spoiler reasons I will say I loved the ending. It was exactly what I was looking for and hoping for, and it did what similar series like Idol Pretender could not. While I know I don't speak for everyone in the community, this is simply my take so you may read the series and hate the ending yourself. It is completely based on your personal interests and as much as I'd like to try to sway everyone into loving every part of this series I am incapable of doing that. I can encourage you, though, to try the series out for everything it's worth and form your own opinions of the show, and I also ask you to please put your political opinions aside while reading for the reasons I discussed in the disclaimer.

Overall Score: 10/10

If you have any questions or concerns about this review, want to recommend a fringe manga to me, or even simply want to chat about this title, please contact me at thefringereviewer@gmail.com for any and all inquiries. My door is always open.

It's my first time writing a review. It's also my first time writing a review. That said, I'm too lazy to explain my feelings in full. So I'll summarize.

When the fuck did he fall out of love with the girl?
Why is he so passive?
Why does he let himself get pushed around all the time?
WHY IS IT NO BIG DEAL THAT HIS CHILDHOOD FRIEND TRIED TO RAPE HIM FIVE FUCKING TIMES?

I hate this manga. I want my hours back.

*space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space ... filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler**space filler*

This is really one of a kind. Even if at the same time it is an
amalgam of almost everything thats wrong in manga and anime today, it still managed to give me a fun time, so I will give it that. There's no significant character development whatsoever through all the course of the story (even the guy to girl development seemed a bit off and in times, artificial (very, very artificial)), but this time it didn't really matter much. I will talk about the wrong things I mentioned before, and focus my review on that.

First and foremost, this is an ecchi manga, so I ... believe fanservice doesn't apply here - however, it has just the same problem as bad fanservice goes: IT MAKES NO GODDAMN SENSE! Most of the time it was obscenity for the sake of it, and it just popped out of nowhere and went for about many pages just because, even sacrificing any kind of character traces it had built until now. Yeah, its clearly an ecchi manga, but I think even ecchi mangas should, I dunno, respect whatever kind of inteligence readers of the genre still have.

And this brings out the next problem: the nonsensical, sometimes utterly stupid humour and character actions. Yeah, a guy riding a trident into the sunset and exploding into a massive mushroom might sound credible in a Uncle Grandpa episode, but all this kind of crude humour through all the manga felt really tiring and boresome. The ecchi stuff enters greatly at this category as well.

The bizarre sense of pace: it may be just me, but almost all shoujo manga feels the same thing with a different story. This is not so bad, because the diversity fills this void, however it always goes like this:
*close at the handsome fella*
~shocking, foreseen catchphrase with sometimes a little bit of nihilism~
*sparkles flies, now both are blushed and the camera focus on both guy and girl, this second with a troubled face*
~actually unimportant character that just comes out of nowhere to create a false sense of choice for the protagonist and a drilling feeling of rage for all readers who were actually cheering for this second because the main's interest was actually boring, annoying, offensively retarded or even a serial rapist~
And yeah, Boku Girl follows this path, however, the problem with following a formula is that, if you screw up, it's more of a crime if you did create your own way of telling a story. The pace here felt off, but I can't really explain why (not a pro in this), however, reading Masamune-kun no Revenge, I can tell that at least Boku Girl didn't screw up THAT badly.

So yeah. As for the general rates MAL provides, the story, apart from being a transgender story, doesn't really have anything to offer so meh. I really, really liked the art though (apart from those bizarre eyelashes the girls all have - and for some reason even Mizuki before turning into a girl), even though the first chapters had one of the most bizarre senses of anatomy I've ever seen. The characters, too, hadn't much to offer, although I liked them, all of them are really bidimensionals and not that worth mentioning. But, welp, I really liked it overall.

My personally, I loved this. The only thing that left me annoyed was the ending. At the end it felt a bit rushed, like they could have made a couple more chapters but forced it to end here. Sure they tied up some looses ends for the characters and helped them understand the situation but it feels like it could have been better. Would definitely recommend giving this a read, if you don't like it within the first 1-3 chapters then its probably not for you. Either way 9/10 from me, would love to have an anime adaptation one day.

Two things first.
1: English is my second language
2: I see a lot more in things then most people(some would say I look into it to much haha) so you might just not see what made this great for me. (I think would still be just really fun for everyone though

Story:
This is the only meh part of all of it but it is not the point in anyway so I did not mind.

Art:
The art is beautiful and the mangaka love to play with our perspective.
Also there is a beautiful contrast between the three main character that I really like.
...
Character:
This is really THE important thing in this manga. The psychological aspect, the character development, and the relation evolving. I will talk more about this aspect later.

Enjoyment:
10/10 I had a blast

What does it bring:
Usually, I'm mostly challenge mentally by mystery or psychological (That is their point after all) but this manga is a romance/slice of life yet, I could not tell what was going to happen, and when face with a problem I did not have the solution after 1 second of thinking. It also tackle interesting gender and psychological subject. The thing though is that all of that is masterfully hidden behind comedy and even some echi trope (but people react more naturally though).

I was thinking of giving it a 10/10 but the story per time being hmm slow/repetitive kind of ish keep it from being a master piece in my book.

TLDR; Do you enjoy gender bender manga? yes? This is one of the best!

I started to read this manga out of curiosity without much further knowledge and finished it, because I learned that it is a significant piece for certain groups. I can see why some people see this as a significant part of representation for the minority groups of the LGBTQ community, but for me it is still not a good manga.

The concept is simple and nothing new, a God is bored and decides to prank a young Japanese androgynous boy by making him female. While the concept is nothing new in general, the focus on gender questions is more so.

Unfortunately the manga overplays the comedy to ... a hilarious degree, that makes it at times very hard to read. It is not just the comedy that is over the top, but at times it feels like the whole theme of gender swapping is just used as a vehicle for steamy ecchi scenes.
Somewhere around the half-way point the God is getting bored and mixes the mess up even more by introducing fluid gender swapping into the mix.
I'm not against the subject material, but let me show with this example why I think it is problematic how the manga handles the premise.
At some point Mizuki goes into a woman bath, because at this point she is a woman, but because of the fluidity Mizuki suddenly returns to being male and is now stuck in a woman bath as a man with women running all around him.
For me there is no deeper meaning in this, it is just a thing that is played for laughs to put the main character into compromising situations and put edge to some ecchi/erotic content. This clashes with the secondary and more serious aim, of touching on real world gender issues, and for the most part it fails completely handling those.
This especially hurts the moments, closer to the end, when it really tries to touch on those issues, but as a reader it gets very hard to take something so clownish serious at that point.

For me it fails the balancing act of comedy and seriousness. 95% of the time the situation is played for laughs and erotics and it comes of like a nervous person that makes excessive jokes to cover for this nervousness and forgets about the serious issue they really wanted to talk about.

The manga could be seen as positive, by shining a light on gender issues for a younger audience, but in the end it fails by overcompensating for the serious ideas with sad overdone comedy.

With that part out of the way let's briefly talk about the rest. Briefly, because there isn't much to talk about.
The characters are flat and cliché for the most part and most are just exaggerated comedy reliefs. From the eccentric male lingerie designer that runs around in his designed undergarments, to the senpai stalker with picture shrines in the bedroom, the manga has a good host of boring tropes.
The art is not much to write home about as well. The backgrounds are often simplistic and don't add much and the only good art are the characters themselves. With characters in focus they can look very good (often for the ecchi scenes), but the moment they are not the focus of a shot they are just mediocre.

Without the knowledge, that some people see some cultural significance in this work, I would have probably never fought through sludge and while the ending is decent, it is nothing to write home about. Even a manga like Kashimashi handled the subject better and was more enjoyable to read, because it put less obnoxious comedy/ecchi roadblocks in the way it handled the topic with more grace.

For me it was a shame to see something interesting handled so poorly and while I understand that some people are happy seeing this kind of conflict represented at all, I would hope that we get a better works about those themes.

I originally read this manga back in 2017 because I had a trap/femboy fetish (I still do) and I thought reading this would be funny.

Instead of a few quick reads and a laugh, I instead read the entire chapters they had in ONE day.

Fun to read, But I can’t remember much about the plot nowadays and the only uniquity this hasnover other slice of lice anime is that the protaganist was a boy, but now she’s a girl, and she has to adjust (wait a second, is this a trans story?)

On a serious note, I doubt any trans person would relate to it’s “transitonak themes” ... despite what it might seem at first glance on the synopsis. The main character does come to accept her new identity as a woman over the course of the series, but it’s not really a coming out story for transitioners if YOU ARE looking for that, but sex change stuff aside, good read and comfy, I reccomend.

What a weird manga.

Here's the thing, if you wanna enjoy this manga to the fullest you have to be open-minded particularly about gender-benders. I couldnt see myself in million years that i ever enjoy this manga, but I did. Not because I hate/love trap, transsexual agenda etc. But rather just IDGAF, period, if it's good/ clicking with me then Im buying.

And this manga is REALLY GOOD IMO. It puts you in the weird position, as any of gender bender manga supposedly does, but in subtle and comedic way, with very,very beautiful artwork (Sugito Akira, dude..you can do manga, respect), and well made characters (each ... fairly contribute to the story), and elephant in the room, ecchi. Honestly, I'm not a fan of ecchi, but here it just work. I practically whispered out "WTF?! WTF is this shit??"-in a good way, because it just.. weirdly enjoyable. This is probably the only gender bender manga I'll enjoy, I try others but it just come out plain weird in a bad way to me. 9/10 on rating for me. 10/10 will recommend ;) Keep up the good work.

It was a fun read
I'd recommend it to other people but then they'd think I'm gay. MAL wants me to write longer reviews so I'm just gonna do the usual don't bother reading any further kk

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updated and tl;dr'd

A sound premise and well done for the early chapters. But becomes swamped with needless angst and melodrama once you start to reach a certain point. Most of which is based around the two main characters who quite obviously like eachother romantically, have made it basically 100% undeniable to eachother through body language and their actions, but refuse to say anything about it.

It becomes so riddled with fallacies and senseless drama that the latter chapters become a swamp to wade through instead of a story.

Enjoyment 5.5/10: It would be rated lower if it were not for the early-mid chapters being actually enjoyable ... and well paced. Easily an 8/10 early on. A 5/10 is being generous as it continues.

Boku girl is a manga series that reminds me of Ranma 1/2. If you know ranma 1/2 then you know that this story fits in the "gender bender" category. The similarities between Ranma 1/2 and Boku girl are uncanny but there are certain things that really make Boku Girl its own thing.

Mizuki and Ranma were raised to be fighters. (this is downplayed in Boku Girl). They both can disguise as a boy or girl when necessary. (ranma can do this cause he can physically switch back and forth while Mizuki can do this cause he was androgynous to begin with.) Both of them ... identify as male even in female forms and both of them are trying to get this whole thing that happend to them "undone" (They more or less forget about it for dumb reasons. Eh, we'll figure that out later... its not important ).

And to top all of this the formula for Ranma 1/2 is seemingly cloned here as well. Mizuki is turned into a girl. There is a very select crowd that knows about his secret. Mizuki is placed in some position (often very hilarious) where his issue might be revealed and finds some way to get out of trouble. The fighting aspect from Ranma was removed but the rest of the elements are still there.

But what sets Boku Girl apart from a direct rip-off (like the likes of Kampfer) to Ranma 1/2 is how deep they go into the characters of our protagonist and his friends also how Boku Girl can seemingly turn the formula on its head.

[this next parts may contain light character spoilers if you want to call them that tons of them can be pulled from the first two volumes its mostly just expounded on through out the story]

Mizuki has always been androgynous and has always been into "girly" things even from a young age. He was raised under strict guidance to always be manly. All of this stems from his father who is trying to raise him to be a true man. (i won't spoil too much about the father.) But he's always had an affinity towards feminine things despite how he was raised. He denies this. He fights against this. but in the end when he's now a girl he more or less finds himself more comfortable expressing a more feminine attitude and starts dressing up like a girl more often. The best equivalent i could think of he's tsundere to the idea of being a girl. Which is an accurate depiction to those who have not come to terms with their gender identity. (i should know wink wink)

On the other hand Mizuki has not come to terms with his sexuality as well. This may have been there as part of the magic aspect of the story because Mizuki has shown no signs of liking the male gender before his switch to female. The only reason Mizuki likes boys now is the fact that he's a girl now. "so its okay. Right?" This may have been expounded on in some part of his past when expounding on his friendship with his best friend Takeru. My guess its mostly just fan service but i'm glad they didn't rule it out like it was in Ranma 1/2. Well even though it may never be expounded on, its a nice aspect to the character and to his friend (Takeru) as well who also has conflicting feelings about the whole thing. this creates a little love triangle or love octagon or what ever. because there are a tone of characters thrown into the mix but don't worry the three main get most of the attention.

final note while Boku Girl pulls a lot of Ranma's formula it also plays on the formula and kind of turns it on its head at some points i don't want to go into too much detail on what i mean by that because you know actual spoilers. but the plot seems centered mostly around its 3 main characters and other characters don't get caught up into the mix that often but often will have their own subplots. so we have a story about 3 characters. Mizuki Takeru and Fujiwara. Fujiwara is best girl and that's all you need to know going into this one.

Holy FUCK did I hate this manga...
And the worst part is that it was genuinely enjoyable up to a certain point (And even past that point, there were a few decent scenes mixed in every now and then)... But after a while, I just reached the point where I could no longer stomach it.

It starts off pretty good. The premise is fairly lazy (The main character gets randomly turned into a girl by a god for no real reason), but the interactions between the main characters tend to be amusing and cute.
At first, Mizuki (The main character) retains his boyish personality, while also having a ... bit of a hidden feminine side... But as he gets progressively more feminine (Which I wasn't too fond of, personally, since it felt a little bit forced/unnatural at times), the way he's treated as a character gets progressively worse.
And it's not just that he's much more frequently (To the point where it actually gets a bit annoying) used for cheap fan service... People who are supposedly his friends don't even treat him like a person anymore in several scenes. Even his best friend, Takeru, repeatedly tries to rape him (Both when he's clearly drunk and otherwise)... And this is a friend that supposedly cares about him a lot, to the point where he essentially ends up becoming the main love interest. It was cute when Takeru was a bit overprotective of Mizuki, but it eventually ended up devolving into a creepy possessiveness somewhere along the line (To the point where he's often aggressively pushy, and treats his friend like an object, despite the fact that he's supposedly fallen in love with him).
And Takeru isn't even the worst part of the series (Far from it, since he's at least incredibly inconsistent, and can sometimes be a really nice, likable guy... When the author's in the mood for it).

This brings me to my main problem with Boku Girl: For whatever reason, it insists on constantly pushing new disgusting characters on the reader... And I refuse to believe that anyone actually wanted this.
First, there's an extremely muscular gay man who keeps trying to force himself on Mizuki in a variety of ways (A lot of manga are fond of including some relatively homophobic depictions of gay men for comic relief... And it's rarely funny... It's usually just really gross and uncomfortable, as it is here).
Then, there's a perverted cross-dresser (He goes around wearing nothing but women's underwear much of the time... Often in public) that becomes creepily obsessed with Mizuki (He immediately knows Mizuki is a woman, and frequently harasses him/her in various ways). For some completely unknown reason, he actually ends up becoming a friend of the main characters (More or less), and is even allowed to permanently stay in Mizuki's dorm room (He's not reported or anything, and they pretty much just allow him to do whatever he wants, to an extent... I guess since he's just more unnecessary comic relief, we're expected to brush it off, and act like there's nothing wrong with them hanging out with this creep).
And lastly... There's Mizuki's father. Who wants to fuck his own son. And has wanted to fuck his own son since he was a toddler.

This is about when I gave up on continuing the series.
I really did try to continue, hoping that his father would at least just be used for a one-time gag... But this wasn't what happened, and if anything, his father just continued to become more and more prevalent in the story (Not even as one of the disgusting comic relief characters... He was quickly becoming a genuinely important part of the plot... And not for the fact that he's an actual fucking pedophile, since that's predictably brushed off, as if it doesn't matter).
It's unfortunate, since I really did enjoy this manga in the beginning, despite its flaws (The writing/story could be pretty weak, and all the main characters, aside from Mizuki and Takeru, were pretty generic and boring... But despite that, Mizuki and Takeru's relationship was interesting/enjoyable enough that I was willing to deal with the rest of it). However, there came a point when the manga just turned out to be flat out repulsive for me.

And just to clarify, I wasn't actually offended by the manga (Despite how it may sound... I thought a lot of it was kind of in bad taste, but I'm not really bothered by it, and don't judge anyone for being a fan of it)... I was just disappointed.
I saw a lot of potential in the series earlier on, even though it had many weak points (And those weak points just got worse as the series went on as well... It felt like the characters were actually starting to make some progress for a little while, but then a lot of the chapters ended up just being repetitive filler with the sole purpose of reversing any progress made... This is a really common problem with romantic anime/manga, so it's not as if it was unexpected, but still...). It's a shame that it turned out this way, since I was thoroughly enjoying the dynamic between Mizuki and Takeru, and I'd hoped to see it through to the end... But unfortunately, there's no real point in reading further for me.

Boku Girl is fine.

If you’ve seen any of my reviews before, you know that I am decidedly outside of the intended audience for a work like this; I am not crazy about male-gazey ecchi (especially involving non-adults) and a lot of the common shounen/seinen character archetypes present here tend to frustrate me. Nothing about this manga seems like the kind of thing I’d be compelled to read, much less finish.

Still, Boku Girl is simultaneously better than it should be and not as good as it had the potential to be.

It’s just, you know, fine.

(To avoid spoilers, I will be referring to the protagonist Mizuki ... with gender neutral pronouns throughout)

“Magical Sex Shift” exists both as a common anime/manga plot device – usually in the form of body swapping – and also as a rather niche stand-alone genre in its own right. Boku Girl commits fully to its premise on this front; this manga is about the sex shift and the antics that come from it, through and through. Mizuki and the turmoil they experience due to their sudden goddess-induced sex change is “the point” of the entire manga.

And it actually tells a decent story, though not without its fair share of drawbacks.

See, for everything Boku Girl does well, it also feels the inexplicable need to force a hamfisted, unfunny scene usually involving something tantamount to sexual assault against Mizuki as some kind of twisted balancing act. These scenes weren’t funny the first time they happened, they weren’t funny the 10th time they happened, and they certainly weren't funny when they were still happening toward the end of the 100+ chapter run. It’s as if the mangaka was terrified that the readers would be able to enjoy the story too much if they didn’t shoot the pacing and the characterization in the foot every few chapters or so. This nonsense was old the first time it happened and it only got worse.

Yet, somehow, the story and characters still manage to keep enough positive forward momentum to not be completely crippled by the mangaka desperately trying and failing to be funny. In spite of its faults, Boku Girl is surprisingly committed to exploring its themes of identity, sexuality, gender, and the need to insist upon your own truth. It was both refreshing and frankly surprising to see how tactfully an ecchi tackled a lot of these themes and all while mostly respecting its cast.

Mostly. It isn’t amazing, but it did a better job than I think anyone could have expected it to.

Where it fumbles the bag again is how it rarely goes all the way on these themes and the way that the final arc sort of undermines everything established so far. Boku Girl seems mostly oblivious to the notion that sex does not inherently equal gender or gender expression, all while trying to tackle the confusion arising from that very real topic. It’s baffling how a work can take feelings and emotions expressed by real people, make it fantastical, and then almost never connect the dots between them. It’s such a missed opportunity to really unpack the heart of the feelings that would even prompt someone to write this kind of story in the first place.

This is exacerbated dozens of times over with the terribly handled final arc of the manga. I won’t get into spoilers, but the way it ties Mizuki’s sexuality rigidly to their sex, ignoring ways it’s more complicated than that and also refusing to even entertain the possibility of Mizuki being bisexual is kind of mind boggling. I think they mostly managed to bring it back together at the very end with a passable explanation of things, but it should have handled the road to that point far better than it did.

The whole thing is just kind of fine. Boku Girl does a surprising number of things well and royally screws up a near equal amount. To be honest, this is one of those works that makes me wish MAL had a .5 element to their scores, as 5.5 just feels right. As it stands though, Boku Girl mostly just kind of nets even.

Which, to be honest, is an impressive feat for something so far outside of my usual spheres of interest and with so much baggage weighing it down; it just makes me wish even more that Boku Girl was better than it is. It had so much potential in spite of the things working against it, but it just couldn’t quite bring it home.

I know what you're thinking, "a romcom with 107 chapters? how are they going to keep this interesting for that long? and why should i read this, i don't have that kinda time to waste on manga" and to that i say, they don't. and don't lie to yourself, you're reading a review on a gender bender ecchi romcom, don't act like you got stuff to do.


story: 7

i trust that you are observant enough to have read the tag "gender bender" or read the synopsis and gleaned that the main character is going through a gender transformation, which is the main crux of the story. ... dragging with it all the good and the bad that such a story construct brings with it. though i would say that the focus lies elsewhere, namely in the romance between our love triangle and the gender bender is merely a device to make our protagonist Mizuki reconsider their way of thinking.
or you could just not overthink it and just take it as it is, that works too.
the only problem i have with this story is its length, not that i didn't enjoy it, even the length that is, but it just sometimes feels like we go off on some unrelated tangent just to have more romcom hijinks, which is much to my dismay also layered with a decently sized heap of ecchi, but if you like that kinda stuff i guess that's a plus. for me it wasn't.
we have some, in my opinion quite random, inclusion of supernatural elements, which i cant really make sense of other than "lol, more random hijinks" but i guess thats just me being cynical again though the supernatural itself is merely a way to move the plot forward it actually brings one of my more liked things into play, but ill talk about that in the character section, other than that its more of the same but this time we get to ignore natural laws.
and in the end all of this culminates to a pretty satisfying conclusion which ties up pretty much everything i had questions about and left little to desire for me, a lesson has been had and characters have their arc end up in a satisfying place. but that is to be expected since they had more than 100 chapters to do so


Art: 7

i'm just going to contradict myself here really quick and say that i don't like the art, its definitely not bad, actually its pretty well made, i just don't like it
it has this glossy look to it which mainly comes from the artist doing those really over exaggerated highlights on the characters which makes their hair look like jellyfish, not for every character but it still put me off. also the eyelashes are really something else.
but im getting really nitpicky so ill just say this
the environmental art is fine
the characters are good if you're not bothered by the jellyfish hair
and the high impact frames are not the best i've seen but they get the job done and the artstyle is overall funny enough to carry the jokes


Characters: 8

"wow, an 8 for characters from you?"
literally no one because no one actually knows me
but seriously if you knew me you'd know how much praise that actually is
ill just spare myself the chore of listing every character here because id be sitting here all day and you wouldn't read that even if i did
you can just assume that for every character motivations and personality are very solid and explored in satisfying detail, character arcs as mentioned earlier have a satisfying conclusion
and as i also mentioned before
the best thing to come from the supernatural element: Loki
Loki isn't as good of a character as i make her out to be but i just needed a setup to talk about this
the interaction between support and side characters is stellar, even they don't get a small cut of the development cake, and Loki is merely the character i remember best for having a pretty heartfelt interaction with our MC.
now but an 8 is not a 10 so whats bugging me
well, first of all its a romcom, which makes characters routinely do stupid stuff just to have stuff be more funny
which works for being a comedy but you can make comedy work without making your characters look stupid or mentally challenged
also there are some character specific things that i just don't like
like Mizuki's stereotypically incessant desire to point out how unhappy they are that they turned into a girl
i don't find it funny in oniichan wa oshimai and neither do i here, but at least here its more vague as to how Mizuki actually feels about the situation which is actually rather subtly explored through small tidbits


Conclusion

if you don't mind Romance being dragged though the mud that is half-assed comedy and ecchi, and also don't mind the gender bender tag, i see little that will make you regret the time you spend with this manga
and even if you do there is still enough solid character exploration here that even i felt satisfied
and the comedy while uncalled for in my opinion is solid enough to not be too off putting, tho the ecchi always bothered me
so sure, go for it
if you can tank through 107 chapters of teenage angst
i'd say there is a good chance you'll enjoy this.