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"The Mimosa Confessions, Volume 1" by Mei Hachimoku expertly combines classic school-life romantic comedy with dramatic social commentary, elevating both aspects with a humanizing touch and an earnest perspective. Set in the near past in a distant town cut off from the rest of the world, the most popular boy in school quietly, yet resolutely, announces that she’ll be living as a girl from then on. Her childhood best friend, since estranged, now feels the compulsion to rebuild his friendship with her - and perhaps build something new together, as well.

The story flows so seamlessly that once you start reading, it’s quite hard to stop, ... due to the steady flow of dramatic confrontations, lively student life events, and romantic cliffhangers. Our main protagonist, Sakuma Kakimi, is a thoughtful, introspective, yet anxious loner frustrated with living in a backwater town. He wants to be supportive to his new old friend, but is too unprepared and conflicted to lead himself forward. Our main heroine, Ushio Tsukinoki, is a would-be classic “cool beauty” - quiet, athletic, calm, has no interest in drama or causing a scene, but has clearly smoldering emotions beneath the surface of her admittedly carefully-constructed mask, much like her once-secret gender issues. (The “confessions” in the title is pluralized for a reason, after all.)

Meant for casual readers, the novel does its best to avoid overly ordained language concerning the subject matter, and instead displays all manner of human reactions towards the controversy as would naturally happen in a small rural town; casual gossip, helpless ignorance, light support, vicious bullying. One should commend the author for committing to the display of the full gamut of reactions - from Ushio’s subtle understated explanation of her own feelings, to 'Queen Bee' Arisa Nishizono’s extremely accurately-portrayed increasingly aggressive bullying. While some readers may need forewarning of such material, nobody who’s a stranger to modern day online discussions should blush overmuch. "What would realistically happen...?" is a question that must be asked and answered when writing earnestly, which pairs well with our protagonist who is constantly second-guessing himself and his own morals in a realistic manner.

Despite some heavy subject matter, most of the story is quite fun, light, and lively as Hachimoku balances each element of the classic Light Novel fairly well, and you'll probably laugh a few times too (Who eats french fries with chopsticks!?). The second half has a lighter mood as well, with wild playboy character Sera making a appearance in-between some literally feverish studying sessions in order to win the heart of a girl (Which girl, though?). The lighter romantic comedy school-life element humanizes the serious social issue element, and the latter enriches the former in turn. One might compare this to a more pastoral Oregairu with a touch of To Kill A Mockingbird, while remaining shockingly contemporary.

The author avoids making the characters too one-dimensional or perfect, and raises clear character conflict and exploration flags for later volumes. Sakuma deals with old burning feelings of jealousy for Ushio's former popularity, and even the antagonistic characters such as the aggressive Nishizono operates on their own underlying logic rather than being complete strawmen. There’s both an earnest humanity and frank reality to The Mimosa Confessions missing from many other stories like it, while still being an easy brisk read.

The story also explicitly avoids certain trappings often found in related media, such as not orbiting the entire conflict around gendered clothing/hobby stereotypes, or revealing some ulterior motive to Ushio's decision, showing a level of genre-awareness by the author. In an interview with LN-News, the author explained how his original drafts involved a magical/science-fiction gender transformation, to distance himself from the intimidating cultural controversy he was witnessing in the news and media at the time. His editor, however, questioned if such elements were actually necessary to tell the story he wanted to tell, and what remained afterwards was a clean and unmistakable narrative. The author took his own initial hesitation as an act of “discrimination” itself - the willingness to avoid uncomfortable topics, which can be seen expressed in the work itself. It is not squeaky-clean or focus-group tested, or overly didactic and moralistic, but an honest airing of human conflicted feelings while remaining highly empathetic, which makes it all the more interesting in today's cultural landscape.

Ushio’s very real physical issues are not brushed past or ignored, but rather the core to the central conflict itself, while also not being her only personality trait - a very delicate balance that few authors can ever reach, but Hachimoku surely accomplishes it thus far. Ushio humbly talks about herself and her issues in purely natural ‘human’ terms, suggesting a deep understanding of the issue by the author, who even includes a list of references containing several related autobiographies informing his writing, without ever coming off as cliché or too "textbook" and clean. The portrayal of Ushio goes deeper than tokenism, novelty, or second-hand guesswork, and towards a true sense of sympathy for both her pain and desires - it's the author's hope, he says, that Ushio becomes a widely beloved heroine amongst readers. Characters such as these tend to be either critically underexplored or relegated to the sidelines as support roles to the main couple, and are usually never allowed to seriously consider having any desires beyond the initial act of 'coming out' or transitioning itself. Hopefully, Ushio gets to experience true romance as well, as a heroine as any other.

I truly can’t wait to read more to discover and explore more about this colorful fun cast of characters, as it feels the story is only just beginning to unfold. The next volume is set to release by October, and I hope eventually all five completed volumes will be in my bookshelf someday soon. This is an extremely novel concept to approach not just in Light Novels, but in any currently published literature. It would be exciting to see it adapted to television anime as well, considering it seems fairly popular and well-received in Japan. Future volumes will apparently also switch between different character point-of-views, which will be exciting to explore as well.

The author has stated how he’d like everyone to read and enjoy Mimosa Confessions even if they are not interested in gender or any other heavy topics, and I agree. Hopefully, more people will give this a good honest try.