Nov 19, 2021
The story primarily follows two students as they develop their gender identity from the last year of elementary school to the end of high school: one a boy wanting to be a girl; the other a girl wanting to be a boy. They are faced with the reality of puberty redefining their bodies in an unwanted way, losing the ability to outwardly be who they are. Whilst fundamentally their path is the same they are treated differently by society, the boy ridiculed as a pervert and the girl seen as a fashionable rebel. This feels like an earnest look at these struggles for people with
...
uncertain gender identity, with some specifics for those in Japanese society.
At times the story feels a bit lost with reused story events and getting grudged down with "who likes who" during middle school. However, after the midpoint the story picks up and becomes quite engaging as one character stops hiding who they really are to their family and school. The ending is sweet and melancholy, I found strong catharsis seeing the characters now older and more sure of themselves.
The characters can be brattish, hurtful, and insecure, with a tendency to isolate themselves rather than communicate with others, which I found effective given the age of the characters. Characters who antagonise the main two develop and change alongside them. There is one character who I find overly destructive to herself and friends after being rejected. This story is not seeped in typical manga/anime tropes, but it came across an inhuman shade of yandere in comparison to the grounded cast. Perspective is given to the protagonists and the reader with older characters who have and still are undergoing the same struggles. Perhaps there could have been some more development for the associated families, but the cast was already quite large.
I personally felt it strange that an older character had no social repercussions for being lightly touchy with an elementary school student. It appeared traumatic for the student at the time, but forgotten soon after with no effect on their relationship.
The large cast became a problem for me as the designs are hard to distinguish. Consistently I found myself confused as earlier characters were reintroduced. Earlier panels lacked backgrounds and obvious panel breaks, so I found it hard to tell where a scene took place or when a change happened. This could be my own deficiency, but the manga feels lacking in craft sometimes.
Overall I thought this was very good and would recommend to those interested in a realistic (to my judgement) look at the subject matter in Japanese society.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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