Apr 1, 2022
As of writing this, I've read two other works by Shuzo Oshimi - "Flowers of Evil" & "A Trail of Blood".
I appreciated both for their emotive, suspenseful character art, and the palpable, ever-escalating anxiety it created. Between the two, I felt the author established a very distinct style, with an obvious knack for psychosexual drama - honest, detailed portrayals of tortured sexuality at young age, and a touch of absurdity that didn't bother me personally.
"Welcome back, Alice" is an ongoing story with many of the same features - an obsessive, loveshy protagonist, torn up by the eccentric and assertive personalities of the women that orbit
...
them. But this project has not yet managed to cultivate quite the same atmosphere, and perhaps by design - since Oshimi's own comments seem to point towards it being more of an exercise of self-examination than a mood piece.
"I used to fantasise about being a girl, but that's only an escape that ignores what it's like to be a woman.
Facing, confronting and deconstructing the concepts of "lust" and the "man within oneself", I hope I manage to do some of that with this series."
So, the central dynamic within this story - that between the protagonist and his sexually-forward, crossdressing friend - seems to be the author's dramatisation of his own feelings about gender identity.
Indeed, when pressed to describe this relationship, the protagonist explains that he "want[s] to go back to when we were neither boys nor girls, before those kinds of things were instilled into our minds", and during a sexual encounter, the friend assures him that "you don't have to play the man or the woman, just be yourself".
Quotes such as these would suggest a positive regard for or openness to gender-non conformity on the author's part, but the friend is largely depicted as a source of trouble, frequently undermining the protagonist's wishes such as to appear invasive, even predatory at times, and intervening in the romance between the protagonist and a girl who attends the same school. When considered at the surface level, this depiction seems to fit comfortably into a long lineage of uncharitable characterisations of feminine men and transgender women. As the "forbidden fruit" whose hypersexuality or atypical presentation is threatening to prevelant identity. When treated as metaphor instead, it seems as if Oshimi is working through unresolved issues regarding gender in real-time, without conveying a particularly coherent message in the process.
Wanting to be a girl is no closer to escapism than being comfortable as a boy, and while our bodies and presentation may alter the way we relate to others sexually, "lust" alone does not motivate alternative expression.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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