This series managed to make me tear up -- many hours after finishing the episode, eyes not on a screen.
(UPDATE AFTER FINISHING IT: My rating is now less glowing than this review suggests. The show should ideally have maintained the trajectory it had around episode 4-5, i.e. John Wick with cute girls, some slice of life, and ethical ponderings about the nature of violence/justice/law enforcement).
At the time of this review, 5 episodes of Lycoris Recoil have been out.
Now, you might be wondering "What grand plot turning have I missed that warrants this reaction? Have you hallucinated entire acts of drama? Please only become emotional at
...
the designated climaxes, like finales, character deaths, ..."
There has been no such "momentous scene" yet. It is kind of a "Great Scene" thinking (as in, "Great Man" version of history) that you need such to stir a watcher deeply. Sometimes, the greatest burden for such shoulders setup, worldbuilding, and how the people in this world inhabit it, react to it.
The premise of Lycoris Recoil is: we are in a future later this century, in a deeply altered Japan. After decades of unrest where terrorists, insurgents, hacker saboteurs, organized crime, and petty criminals blanketed Japan with violence, culminating in a attack centered on Tokyo Sky Tree, in the very same shadow of this now-memorial, a new social order arose.
The memorial symbolizes now a gravestone to both, the time of anarchy -- and to the social peace of the Later Showa, Heisei, and Reiwa eras of Japan. It is not just that these were times of plenty, of stability, the "old normal"; even things as mundane as consumer technological factors, like the internet, had been progressively fraying society at the seams.
The second millennium had not yet have to deal with everything it begot, as these cancers require a certain incubation time, a ramp-up period, to bloom deadly like a belladonna flower. A time the end of which was thought to have delivered a peace dividend, in actuality extracted a chaos interest.
The second millennium and its tools of law, of justice, of ideas proved no match for the profane turnings of the third.
As Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki lay in ruin after the bombs and fires fell, in Japan a certain sentiment was widely felt: "never again". A farewell to arms.
And here again, as central Tokyo lay in ruins, Japan again said "never again".
...
The symbol of the organization is the spider lily. In Japan, this flower is associated with death. The name of the organization is the Linnean name of the flower, Lycoris.
Reasonable suspects can be terminated on the spot. Criminals are executed without trial.
And for the first time in many decades, violence ebbed.
And, it seemed, the third millennium finally formulated an answer to the unique challenges of its time.
The question remains: how can everything that be tenable? In so, so many ways?
The answer is, again -- Lycoris. This organization only trains and accepts the very best recruits, only sends out elite operatives. Failure to execute a mission properly is not a viable career option. In fact, misjudgment during an action, and the following dismissal of the agent responsible -- Takina --, is the central instigating event of the story of this series.
The Lycoris system is government sanctioned, society assented. It is effective. It is pragmatical. It is rational.
But there is just one element of discordance. One that is of the system, but not with the system: a blonde girl with a bob cut, Chisato. By day, she goes to school and works in a tea house, by night, she becomes an agent of an independent group to ... deliver coffee beans. Rescue cats from trees.
And sometimes, Chisato must fight.
Conspiracy, sabotage, crime, violence, terrorism.
For Chisato, the answer is not Lycoris. Chisato does not believe in the bearings of the spider lily.
Now I can finally say what made me tear up. It was the small acts, even the smallest acts: her unfazedly returning live fire with non-lethal bullets. Her first concern being the bleeding of a hostile. Her improvising first aid for a defeated opponent while enemies are closing in. Her striking up a conversation about family, refusing to dehumanize the enemy, but do the opposite, humanize them. Her serenity in the middle of battle. Her conviction.
Her conviction.
Nothing about this is protocol, not even for Chisato herself. These truly are acts that are of the moment, that truly come from her heart.
If I did not know these, too, are qualities human, all too human, I would call these displays spiritual. I would ascribe these acts to Kannon, the Buddhist goddess of compassion and mercy, whose symbol is the lotus.
As someone whose entire life (I became vegetarian at age 9) I have considered compassion the greatest virtue, this leaves an impression.
Chisato is a smart person. She understands that the people she fights are foes, if not outright villains, many of which can and will hurt other people.
But mercy is not a thing one earns. Mercy is never earned.
"Enemies today, allies tomorrow" she says. Chisato fights not just for the present, but also the future in which former foes choose to not hurt people.
But Chisato is just one person. What difference can she truly make? Is the red spider lily not the national symbol of Japan of the third millennium, not the white lotus?
In Takina, a small blossom -- of the lotus, and of many good things -- has already taken hold.
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Aug 1, 2022
Lycoris Recoil
(Anime)
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Recommended Preliminary
(5/13 eps)
This series managed to make me tear up -- many hours after finishing the episode, eyes not on a screen.
(UPDATE AFTER FINISHING IT: My rating is now less glowing than this review suggests. The show should ideally have maintained the trajectory it had around episode 4-5, i.e. John Wick with cute girls, some slice of life, and ethical ponderings about the nature of violence/justice/law enforcement). At the time of this review, 5 episodes of Lycoris Recoil have been out. Now, you might be wondering "What grand plot turning have I missed that warrants this reaction? Have you hallucinated entire acts of drama? Please only become emotional at ...
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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0 Show all Jul 20, 2022
Unbalance School Life
(Manga)
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Mixed Feelings Spoiler
An all-boys school goes co-ed and literally a week later, an alien crash lands and spills all her genderbender juices over the student body, oh no! Now, next to the few natal girls that are yet unicorns, the school instantly became an all-girls school! Well, until the only guy who escaped this mishap (?) arrives ...
The ultra-fun premise is better than the execution. Unbalanced School Life is decent, but this manga doesn't know what it wants to be. It's a 2 volume 15 chapter series, but the pacing is weird as hell and the manga pretends it has the luxury of pacing like a 8 ... volume or more school life romcom. There is an entire chapter of going to the mall, and another about some POTENTIAL (not even definitive, just potential) love interest giving the MC (the remaining male) private tutoring. These two chapters alone account for one seventh of the total runtime. Besides, these two chapters also didn't make use of the premise: they are between a guy only into "real girls", and a naturally-born girl. These mentioned episodes could have been in any school SoL manga. These two characters aren't even that interesting) when you have a literal entire school that could explore the genderswap aspect (which has also shown to have a few more interesting characters, like Midori). Allow me to channel my inner logistics nerd, but this setup is so fruitful, they could even make a couple side stories about how the school adapts to the change (e.g. looking what sports gear still works, and what has to be newly ordered). The plot thread of finding out who is a "real girl" and who is an ex-boy could also have stretched throughout the entire manga, instead of being resolved immediately. This natal girl that serves as potential love interest isn't alone: the MC's current crush is on his older childhood friend, who is the school nurse (being like 8-10 years older), and it's hinted that also his same-age boy childhood friend (now neo-girl) might either be interested in him or he in her. So it's a veritable love polyhedron. But manga, you can't really afford this. You are just 15 chapters long. The most interesting few pages is when the MC asks his natal female potential love interest if she considers the neo-girls to truly also be girls. She is painted as a bit a stuck up person, but also "proper", so normally you would expect her to say something like "Of course! Their minds may have been originally male, but now we face the same struggles in the world." or something to that effect; or on the other hand "I can't. Not yet. I can't ignore that they were teenage boys with certain urges and mindsets until recently. I need to have more time, and see more willingness from their side to adapt." But instead she snaps at him and goes on this yikes speech of "Haah??? Why should I do that? They are clearly still boys, even if they look like girls. Just look at how they act!" and we see a scene how the ex-boys still horse around exactly like boys. Not merely tomboyish girls, but truly like boys would. And the speech itself not, but what it points to, made me so pensive and melancholic. I can hardly explain why. This feeling is partially one of beauty: no matter what happens to you physically, you are still you. The mind is not so fragile that it can easily be overwritten. Then there's the element that the ex-boys do not let their new state take away the joy in life. They refuse to let that happen. We just have to keep living, no matter what lies in our past. Partially, the feeling was also one of sadness that despite or precisely *because* what I just mentioned, it is simply the case that these boys now have a new corporeal and social reality to deal with, and this scene here of them rough-housing around in a field, is a peak of their remaining boyhood. It can only go downhill from here. Every day, they will be a little less the boys and men they were. There are even more such emotions to that scene, but anyway, enough with the melancholy. Another story beat is that the neo-girls become aware that integrating a proper male into their dorms (including bath access) is perhaps not as mentally easy for them as they thought it would be. They feel apprehension that he is truly a guy, and they are girls, and he could do many, many things with them if he wanted. Of course this is all framed as purely a coolheaded, logistical debate, not one where psychology already plays a major role (as they still, naturally, all feel like guys) -- but that may lay in their future. But who really cares? That plot point is dropped as fast as it's brought up. As said, because this manga has bizarre pacing. The ending points to this series being told to prematurely wrap up, or the author just losing interest. But even the last volume still has that weird pacing issue so I'm not sure if it's the former. Honestly this manga should not exist. Not because its idea and concept is unappealing. On the contrary. But because it's a fantastic skeleton for a much bigger story, in the vein of Love Hina or Boku Girl and other such genre heavyweights. Recommendation: read if you are into gender bender. A vaguely, very distantly related manga would be Ame Nochi Hare, about students that switch gender whenever it rains.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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0 Show all Jul 18, 2022 Recommended Preliminary
(16/? chp)
This manga is deeply problematic and difficult to enjoy.
Its offense is that there is not enough of it out yet. Besides the amount of chapters, this manga (abbreviated as "OreTomo") is blessed. Like by the pope. Francis II took a spray bottle of holy water and sprayed it all over the drawing tablet while the mangaka was working on it. The main character is one Koichi, affectionately called Kou-kun, or "Kou-kun, Kou-kun!" by his childhood friend Yukio (this reduplicaton is a VITAL detail -- it's cute). He is a standard-issue harem straight man foil to his orbit of funny men (all cute girls). These girls, however, have a ... fatal flaw and dark past: they were once boys. But before you click away in shock and indignation, let's remember why we are here. Ah yes, precisely because they were once boys. Well, "were once" isn't quite right, since the TS ("転性", "tensei" = genderswap usually magical) variant this manga uses is one where the characters regularly swap between the two modes. Here, natal males become female randomly throughout the day or sometimes when excited, and revert to being males when sleeping. This is a very clever TS system and, dare I say it, even believable/plausible with regards to the triggers. This systems allows to put the focus fully on romance and gender situations (both exclusively of the lighthearted comedy kind) without worrying about the actual magical switching event becoming a major consideration, a distraction. This is my main criticism of most oldschool (pre-2010s) TS anime/manga: there's misguided focus on the swapping aspect. This is why I frankly hate the grandparent of all TS, Ranma ½, a bit. So much time and so many story beats are wasted on the issue of not coming into contact with water, and if it happens then it's "oh no, a hijink has commenced! Anyway, this opposite gender episode in Ranma's life will last exactly as long as the episode of this anime (20 minutes) till he finds some hot water and reverts back." There's just never any takeaway for Ranma from such episodes of his life, so we just almost never have room to explore gender and romance aspects, because reversion acts as a reset button. One might interject that Ranma ½ is mostly episodic, whereas OreTomo is only semi-episodic (which is not surprising, since we have left chiefly episodic manga/anime on the trash heap of the 20th century next to various war crimes). But OreTomo has no plot, either. The issue of gender identity is resolved within the first chapters: "It's fine I guess" is the childhood friend's and his mom's reaction to the prospect of staying a girl forever due to the progress of the TS-causing medical condition. OreTomo is purely a sequence of cute and funny slice of life scenes, sometimes lewd, with the promise of a future romantic denouement to Kou's and Yuki's relationship. But regarding the ecchi, this manga is very tame as of now (e.g. no making out), and actually seems like a prime manga to be adopted into an anime. But who are the genderswappers? The boy childhood friend of the MC is Yukio, or blessedly Yuki-chan in female form. S/He is the main love interest of the MC. Yukio's female form is "boosted" into sporting long hair, as medical conditions understand human ideals of beauty. More alarming for a healthy teenaged guy is the boosting of Yuki in the "frontend" so to say. Yukio him-/herself seems to be much more into guys than girls, so there's that. But mostly, the sexual dimension of being a mammal has not yet managed to penetrate into Yuki's Terminal Dogma and s/he is still mostly shielded from overly lewd thoughts, instead being carefree about this living business. With the TS condition, the male side is the more unstable one, as the reversion to a male is the only direction that is predictable, while the female direction is erratic, but as per Yuki's doctor, increasing in frequency. This is why Yukio now spends most of his time as a girl, and it's easy to forget "he's actually a guy" (not my personal philosophy). I believe Yukio him-/herself often forgets. Fret not, chuds and conservatives, for this piece of literature follows the classic TS genre "It's not gay if it's cute" model regarding the romance between the two main natal guys, who everyone would love to see start dating (and honestly "see" more than just that). Right now, it's just flirting, teasing and surprise booba. The creator made the to some risqué choice to extend the genderswap shenanigans to an early middle schooler, called Tsubasa. S/he is a competitive school swimmer and visually distinct from the others by having a bronze tan like a Greek god. His/her bits never get sexual, just cute and funny (unless you think hugs are inherently lewd, in which case it's more of a you-problem, speaking as an European from a culture where between guy/girls we cheek-kiss as a greeting). Anyway, Kou has added this imouto to his harem. The (to date) last genderswapping student is a blonde-haired exchange student from Iowa. His/her gimmick is that the genders correspond to different personalities, where he treats his female side as a twin sister and his situation as one where the two inhabit one body, but share a common memory. Frankly, this is the only part I don't really like about this mango. This side character is just somewhat boring and the gimmick is not that interesting. Finally, the standout character (next to Yuki) is actually Natsuki, the only natal girl in the harem. She is a beret-wearing mischievous tease who wants to see Kou and Yuki become an official item because it makes her heart go doki doki and hnnnnng, to the degree that she's a regular at the local heart clinic with her doctor often remarking that on the inside she has the body of a 85 year old retiree. The endgame and raison d'être of Natsuki is witnessing cute things and making cute things happen. This is also the mission of OreTomo as a whole. Concluding: 9/10. I love manga where everyone is completely straight (by some reckonings) and no one is confused about their gender (because everyone is perfectly ambivalent about it). [Originally written 2022; Addendum 2024 after reading past chapter 16]: Well, things escalated quickly ... I will just low-spoilery say the manga has opted to treat the issue of romance in a mature way (regarding plot pacing), rather than like shonen fare, which is great. I was also wrong about the Iowa character. S/he is fine and used interestingly.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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0 Show all Jul 8, 2022 Recommended Spoiler Why does TS ("転性" = "tensei" = sudden gender swap) stories fascinate us on the GD/TG spectrum -- or rather, that spectrum including that blessed end in the light of the fabled "nope, perfectly non-melancholy gender curiosity" mentality -- why do these fascinate us oh so much? If these stories are mainly about the TSed person coming to terms with their (new) biological sex, the only difficulty being the mental adjustment aspect? I think it is because such TS stories recapture fantasies we had all of our life. Specifically, when these fantasies were still new and you don't know where inside your (very young) being to ... place them -- you just knew they were regarded as "less than right" for your to entertain them, deeply. These fantasies acted adversarial, like the challenges these characters face inside their stories. As for the physical aspect, there are two main variants of TS: either a significant appearance change, or alternatively, just a change to the sexual characteristics only and letting time and hormones do the rest. With the latter usually comes nice gender transition progress imagery, but even the former can lend itself to progress timelines if it's understood to represent a progress towards recreating oneself as a new person in general (usually, more in line with the gender ideal of femininity/masculinity. The alternative to that is not necessarily the opposite direction, but rather that the character remain aesthetically anemic, flavorless, unisex). Boku Girl is a brilliant exploration of one such TS story. ## Art style: 8/10. Mizuki-kun is extremely pretty and cute. He has the petite frame to end all petite frames. His very short hair isn't everyone's cup of tea, so after the midpoint of the story, Mizuki's hairstyle changes to a neck-length short-bob cut. This looks borderline girlish but still "undecided", in keeping with the wider plot. A shoulder-touching medium bob at this point would have looked even cuter, but I guess such would have seemed like a "terminally feminine" Rubicon to cross for Mizuki. Despite the A-tier design, I gotta say at the start of the story Mizuki as a boy looks pretty implausible. He looks EXACTLY like a crossdressing girl -- it's impossible to read his design otherwise. Making his boy-self more believable wouldn't take much: I'd just remove the long upper eyelashes, giving him 'masculine' eyes. Everything else can stay the same. The designs of all other characters are nothing to write home about. Takeru's (Mizuki's childhood friend) and Yumeko's (Mizuki's crush) are vanilla and the latter even a bit disappointing. Their plain designs would have worked better for a shorter series, where their roles would just be "plot lubricant", but BG is somewhat long and you're supposed to root for these charas. Takeru does look handsome, chad, and easy on the eyes, don't get me wrong, but is unlike Mizuki simply not memorable. But I like that the creator went with an uncompromising "alpha male" design for him. ## Main character: 10/10. When his member goes missing, Mizuki cries out about having lost his "willy" ("チンチン"). This really tells you everything you need to know about this person. This boi has exactly zero testosterone, but has maximum innocence. (This isn't a statement about femininity per se, but his aptness for being "a man". It's not that adorkable innocence scores femme points, but that it detracts LETHALLY from manly points, and this very unbalancedly between the genders). *Godfather gesturing in the direction of Malezuki, minding his own business in the distance* Look what they did NOT do to my boi! In a world where magic exists, they keep him a boy. What a waste. It's not that Mizuki's mild and gentle character inherently codes feminine. But this combined with some other traits and the petite stature, paints a certain whole package. It's simply a situation that has no parallel IRL: if literal 'member'ship is zero-cost re-negotiable, would it, cosmically, be more fitting for Mizuki to belong to one gender/sex over the other, if one of these genders idolizes macho roughness or stoic austerity? I'm sorry, but when even before "the deed" you are censored with a cat instead of an elephant (like usually in manga), then the cosmos has very different plans for you, my friend. An aspect that gets mostly lost in translation is that Mizuki has a somewhat proper manner of speaking, while Takeru talks in a really slurred way befitting for his "cool" image. The only way it's conveyed is by certain word choices. E.g. Mizuki cutesily calling himself a "boy" instead of "guy" like Takeru does. Come on, what 16 year old does that? That he always uses only "boy" is an innovation of the translation to convey this manner of speech. In Japanese, he only uses (the even worse) "otokonoko" ("男の子") instead of "otoko" ("男") a few times. Hnnng. ## Romance & plot: 9/10. I loved the romance in this manga, it's really sweet and wholesome. The pacing is good, but it almost feels like one volume of development is missing. I get the effect the author intended: confessions and official moves only coming at the end "suddenly" is intended as a kind of "all dams breaking" regarding love between the two. They are after all childhood friends, which gives a profoundly different dynamic (reconceptualization etc.) than a love interest that was always just a love interest, discovered and haggled over on the dating marketplace. But still, the romance of this series could have been a bit better. Only Mizuki's perspective is fleshed out. Takeru's romantic feelings are just presented in a rough sketch, and the real driver behind most of his non-platonic moves is simple lust, coming to find Mizuki "cute", or what I'd describe as being mostly "male gaze"-fuelled. This isn't a problem -- it's one valid way (especially for a more ecchi direction) how you can characterize the male love interest in such a story, and in fact it's among the more realistic ways how such a scenario would play out IRL. But it ends up a bit tell-don't-show that the first move (that isn't just lust) Takeru makes is his confession near the end. He never goes on the offense on his own initiative. He never even tries something with Mizuki, just to explore if he'd like something more than a friendship (as said, besides fugs). This isn't really a bug, it's a feature: this inaction is mainly just out of respect over Mizuki's (apparent) wish to continue being treated as a guyfriend. Besides, Mizuki already has his own designs on Yumeko, and Takeru sees his own role as wingmanning for Mizuki's Yumeko dreams. (Translator's note: "Yumeko" ("夢子") means "the girl from a dream". Intredasting and melancholic framing ...) He always painstakingly tries to keep everything on the railroad track of a regular dudebro bromance. He's fighting that fight like the captain of an age-of-sail galleon does with the steering wheel during stormy seas. He also takes Mizuki's needs to reaffirm his masculinity very seriously. But Takeru is slow on the uptake that Mizuki really gets happy then whenever Takeru slips in this manliness stressing, even if s/he does not realize himself/herself yet. These are very conflicting feelings for Mizuki as well. If I had to describe the core spirit of this manga in one page, I would pick volume 5 page 47 (gym store room: "Don't ... say that ..."). The third pillar of the love triangle, Yumeko, is not intended as POV character, but even as a romantic objective-slash-rival, she is never fully convincing (however, Mizuki's crush on her is very convincing and it's conveyed well how for the longest time Yumeko is Mizuki's only love interest). There are also some red herring love interests thrown either Mizuki's or Takeru's way: a pervy lingerie designer, and a preppy overachiever for Mizuki; and a lesbian fujoshi for Takeru. None of these are great or memorable, their only role is to serve as utilitarian intra-volume conflict flashpoints. These caveats don't take away from my overall 9/10 view, because Mizuki's arc takes complete center stage anyway. ## Ecchi: 10/10. The ecchi in this is tbh GOAT, and I wish there was more because what relatively little (substantial) we get is that good. The standout ecchi is the two mains making out, which is on the explicit side. Even acts as alarmingly lewd as holding hands are rumored to lurk somewhere within the depths of this unchristian tome. ## Comedy: 5/10. This really is not the strength of this mango. Few of the laugh-out-loud-type jokes landed with me, and often I just thought "pls be over soon" when a gag/slapstick sequence started. They are mostly outsourced to side characters, thankfully. Lowlights are whenever the thirsty, meathead /fit/izen from the first chapter makes an appearance, and initial Yamada, a flamboyant beau who makes Pepe le Pew from Looney Tunes look like a monk (he mellows out, later). There are some other such annoying side characters, but they thankfully always quickly crawl back into the woodwork after their bit is said. Mizuki's father (who is fully ready and was ages ago for a daughter) has all the ingredients to be a disaster of a character, but actually, I found his scenes amusing because in his panels, he is always drawn in this intense, over-the-top "serious graphic novel" manner that is completely inappropriate for this light and fluffy manga, which cracks me up. Loki-chan is a neutral/fine factor, but she could have easily been a main source of hilarity (and also ecchi). I don't get why the mangaka spent so much time on throwaway characters while Loki's part (besides the start/end of the manga) kinda degrades into a cameo. Humor isn't the focus of BG, but still, some sections try very hard and the jokes from these that made me laugh can be counted on one or two hands. There are also great comedy bits, like whenever Mizuki is getting teased, or when getting flustered over his/her own escalating, derailing fantasies and waking fever dreams. Mostly, Mizuki's bits are not intended as laugh-out-loud knee-slapper punchlines, but slice-of-life cuteness. ## Gender themes: 10/10. Art style tells a lot, and BG has as somewhat 'generic ecchi-adjacent seinen' look. You'd be forgiven for thinking Boku Girl is just another one to chuck on the pile of gender bender ecchi seinen manga MAINLY about the protagonist being forced into various hilarious and lewd situations. But this is actually not the case with Boku Girl. BG has a surprisingly restrained approach to gender. One example of that restraint is how an episode about underwear plays out. When Yamada, the heir of a lingerie empire mentioned earlier, is introduced, you KNOW his part will be shenanigans how Mizuki is -- face red like a beet -- forced into modelling and wearing lingerie. I braced myself for the trainwreck, but instead, this trope is only used for one short gag scene and dropped after that. Mizuki only comes to wear (plain and cute) girl's underwear many chapters later under a completely different (much less racy) plot beat. This is how Boku Girl treats gender identity topics in general. Gender bender or TS is a genre that all too easily becomes smothered under a farcical tone that allows just superficial quirkiness and horniness, but BG allows for other of the genre's aspects to breathe, and you never get the impression the main character is just a caricature. The character development of Mizuki feels extremely organic and naturalistic. The question what kind of person an end-stage low-test herbivore boy like Mizuki could become (or always was, but I am of the conviction body matters just as much as mind) is handled in a really believable and wholesome manner. It has the right amount of delicacy, and at no point do you get the impression he/she is just an empty container or vehicle for ecchi/gender bender clichés to be trotted out, one after another, like prize-winning miniature pigs at a farmers' show. About "progress" ... essentially, from a daydreaming fantasy at vol 6 chapter 48 onward, Mizuki has a consistent fantasy about how her life and she herself could look like in the future, and it's very wholesome (hnnnng I'm dying). It's fair to say this was around the point of some kind of mental switchover for her. All in all, Mizuki-chan's arc is truly a great character study with genuine depth. ## Melancholy: "Yumeko" -- "the girl from a dream". Impressions from a future that appears like a half-forgotten dream: Mizuki, the patriarch of the Suzushiro household. Mizuki, the friend of Takeru. Mizuki, the lover of Yumeko. The road not taken. In the end, it was all just a dream. At this point, it is fading into a jamais vu. An ... admiration. Yumeko became just an admiration. And if this thing didn't happen? If these impressions had not been just a dream? Then Mizuki would be wondering, wondering, and it would have been just a dream. A road not taken. But here, it was taken. ## Conclusion: Broken down into parts and the sum of them, this manga is far from "perfect", but it resonated so much with it became one of my fav manga/media. There will never come a class of media that I'd put above Boku Girl in enjoyment. So for me, Mizuki-chan's story is a 10/10~ # ================= CLASSIFICATION ================= # Genderswap manga readily lend themselves to a classification scheme, so I have come up with the following reasonably cringe classification: ## Genres/themes: (subjectively, it feels like. "Gender themes" = almost always lighthearted slice of life) Volumes 1-6: gender themes (~40%), romantic comedy (~35%), ecchi (~15%), romantic drama (~5%), misc comedy (~5%) Volumes 7-10: gender themes (~40%), romantic comedy (~34%), ecchi (~15%), romantic drama (~5%), misc comedy (~5%), melancholy (1%) Volume 11: romantic drama (~40%), gender themes (~40%), romantic comedy (~10%), melancholy (10%) ## Transformation: Direction: MtF Source: magical; actor-caused (Loki-chan) Type: permanent/static; modification (i.e. no body swap, reincarnation, ...) Physique change: "equipment" only (i.e. no further alterations to looks) ## Character: Name: Mizuki Suzushiro (already ambigender); Mizuki-kun, Mizuki-chan Role: POV main character Personal pronoun: "boku" ("僕"); never deviates Male personality: effeminate Female personality: very girly Opinion: swap unwanted; wants to change back Public persona: boymode; keeps swap a secret (initially) Sexuality: is straight and becomes straight rather than staying straight
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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