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"What would you do if your best guy friend came to school dressed like a girl one day?"
-Mei Hachimoku

Ushio Tsukinoki is a boy who one day chooses to live as a girl. Naturally, she is not accepted by society, and the story is initially set on her struggles against societal prejudice she is confronted with. If I were to compare this to a book, To Kill a Mockingbird springs to mind.
However, there is much more to it: the book tackles tricky topics such as LGBT, gender dysphoria, infidelity/polygamy (what would you do if you found out your friend is dating 4 partners at once, with ... consent of each partner?) and questions them in light of contemporary societal norms, with funny twists and turns here and there to ease up the tension.

As for the characters, the main heroine Ushio turns into a girl and is supported by her two best friends, Sakuma Kamiki and Natsuki Hoshihara with each friend in love with the other (love triangle) along with your classic bully Arisa Nishizono who doesn't accept Ushio no matter what, backed by actual sound arguments.

Hachimoku juggles each of the three main characters well, allowing enough but not too much development, leading to an equal amount of "page time" to make a well-tuned orchestra.

I want to especially stress how Hachimoku portrays the main heroine Ushio in a thorough yet delicate manner was handled very well, especially due to the novelty and sensitivity of the topics addressed. Hats off.

What I also enjoyed was not the characters being the emotional driving force, but rather the circumstances the characters find themselves in being the main emotional generator, (i.e. a lot of plot convenience) as is often the case in light novels/animanga culture. What I mean is something is always happening, some (unexpected) event is always driving the plot forwards.

As for readability, the English is very easy to understand, and Hachimoku deliberately avoids certain words to make the book more accessible. Plus, a lot of tropes were used which made it a fun read (at least in the English version).

Last but not least, words do not do justice to KUKKA's illustrations. They're simply awe-inspiring.

It‘s a very clever piece. I‘d see it on eye level with Tunnel to Summer. You can definitely see the author‘s style and his fascination with time travel, especially a concept called boot-strap paradox but I’d say the it‘s slightly more complex than TtS. And the author does another amazing job at showing how fragile human relationships can be, how single events can flip any relationship upside down.

In terms of plot, it feels more consistent compared to TtS, something is just always going on, however, the climax comes near the very end, so if you decide to read, don‘t give up halfway if the ... story seems average at first, because it‘s necessary to build up to the finale.

However, what is different from TtS is that this book feels more like a detective story and if I‘d compare it to a movie it‘d be Christopher Nolan‘s masterpiece Memento. They have similar elements, because the story flows chronologically from backwards, depicting future events first, but the author does so really well, making it feel like a jigsaw puzzle that makes more sense the more you read.