quickly accruing a small fortune by having a penny every time a manga has a character that is a trans woman in all but name

well you see, all media about women, whether its yuri or trans, simply does not exist unless the author includes a personalized youtube video explaining the sexualities and gender identities of every character.

Otherwise they're just good friends/gnc cis people :)))

Also can i just say, incredible art. The paneling, the style, everything is so expressive and emotional

Reading some of the comments before the story like "Oh okay this is a story about a gender nonconforming boy with some ambiguity"
Which like, yes. technically...
There is also direct transphobia directed at the lead, and she is defended with feminine pronouns and the end of the story swaps to gender ambiguous pronouns "I just can't see this person as a friend". This seems pretty clear cut. I do love gender nonconformity, but please be for real. That character is transgender.
I was expecting to not enjoy this at all from the title, but damn was that good. I really hope we get some more.

last edited at Sep 8, 2026 8:52PM

Or shit that was serious analysis in a comment. Uh. Uhm.
The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn't A Guy At All, 2!

Reading some of the comments before the story like "Oh okay this is a story about a gender nonconforming boy with some ambiguity"
Which like, yes. technically...
There is also direct transphobia directed at the lead, and she is defended with feminine pronouns and the end of the story swaps to gender ambiguous pronouns "I just can't see this person as a friend". This seems pretty clear cut. I do love gender nonconformity, but please be for real. That character is transgender.

I mean, that's definitely my interpretation, but the story doesn't actually get into it and I've been disappointed in the past by how the author later developed things. They've left some ambiguity here. That could be used to explore how for trans people the gender identity process, expression, and support for it involves a lot of ambiguity. It could also be used to move the story down a cis crossdresser path. He may "just like cute things," "like crossdressing, but still wants to be a cis guy," "just cried tears of joy from being amazed by getting to crossdress," "just have been embarrassed about crossdressing, not feeling dysphoria." I would be surprised if the author was intending that route, but there's also publisher interference to consider.

Personally, I don't think the third person pronoun usage is evidence of anything from the text bc they're based on the translator's best interpretation of what it would be like in English, not a feature of the story in Japanese. Also, "crossdressers" famously may use she/her pronouns when crossdressing. Additionally, I've definitely seen a manga before where a crossdresser faced some transphobia but the mangaka decided to make it into "noo, actually this is the noble art of crossdressing, please don't make such defamatory accusations." Can't remember what it was precisely.

last edited at Sep 8, 2026 9:35PM

a heatstroke

This is the beast that will not die

IMO, while this author doesn't do this with this work, in general, explanations by cis authors to hastily protect the cisness of characters and deliberately & defensively foreclose the ambiguity of possible trans interpretations specifically in situations where we see dysphoria and anti-trans slurs in the text aren't to be taken as politically neutral statements (and of course, characters are characters not people so they can't say if they're cis or trans) rather than the societal influence of transphobia on them, in the same sense (cis & trans) female characters can be depicted in certain misogynistic ways and authors try to justify it by anthropomorphization. Watsonian explanations vs. Doylist explanations, and such. Just as one is correct to argue that a cross-dresser may use she/her pronouns, one is also correct to say many trans girls also call themselves boys sometimes (boymoder, etc) or are called crossdressing boys by others, so the position goes both ways. There was an Otokonoko-subculture pop-up cafe in Tokyo a few weeks ago where a quite number of the hostesses were out trans women. Ambiguity here is ambiguity of the terms and life experiences.

Either way, for tagging purposes the addition of the Transgender tag seems very clear cut: lots of comments see the interpretation and recognition here, doesn't mean having to take off the Cross-dressing tag because they can coexist for searching purposes and because cross-dressing is a big part of the story, she/her pronouns get used in this English translation (this was a deliberate contextual choice), anti-trans slurs and dysphoria are depicted, etc. To me, this is pretty much subtext, and not putting the Transgender tag on a work like this would definitely deprive people who might look for works on that tag for trans experiences from something that clearly resonates with a lot of trans people (as we see in the comment section), and tagging systems are first and foremost about searching to find content we like and resonate with.

last edited at Sep 8, 2026 10:01PM

Don't want a liver anymore? Take a shot every time a new font is introduced. (Not necessarily the scanlator's fault, but damn, this is vocaloid-levels of bad.)

And just an innocent question in the room: how is a "non-transcoded GNC male" supposed to look like? Loudly stating "I prefer the feminine aesthetic but after introspection have decided to continue identifying as male" every thime he enters a room? I'm 100% certain that denial would be interpreted as evidence either way.

Wow this is so refreshing I can totally read a whole series of this. Translator thanks for the incredibly funny end page it hits too close to home. Also fang

ULTIMATE MANGAKA CHALLENGE: WRITE A GNC MALE CHARACTER THAT DOESN'T READ AS A CLOSETED TRANS GIRL (GONE WRONG) (VERY HARD)

God has trouble with this one too

cute read and the art is so good!

Don't want a liver anymore? Take a shot every time a new font is introduced. (Not necessarily the scanlator's fault, but damn, this is vocaloid-levels of bad.)

I can't believe I never noticed this wtf, but that could be indirectly suggesting the typesetting is pretty darn nice that all the font swaps just blended right in, for me anyways.

And just an innocent question in the room: how is a "non-transcoded GNC male" supposed to look like? Loudly stating "I prefer the feminine aesthetic but after introspection have decided to continue identifying as male" every thime he enters a room? I'm 100% certain that denial would be interpreted as evidence either way.

probably due to genuinely how much the worlds overlap it is not quite possible for any character such as this to not easily come across as trans-coded. unless we somehow get a detailed read inside their psyche and how are they feeling, are they, say, struggling with dysphoria or totally happy with how they present & identify, and on that matter -- how they choose to identify (which is not impossible to lay it out but it's probably too exhausting and unnecessary for most work to do so).

there's just a difference in "I'm trans and I found this character, trans or not, to be very relatable. and for that I interpret her as trans too." vs. "anyone who doesn't agree with my interpretation of the so-called "crossdressing boy" character being trans is obviously being transmisogynistic intending to erase trans identity." that being said I think this forum's chill so far and no one's going that far yet, so, yay. at most some vague snark.

last edited at Sep 9, 2026 2:15AM

To be clear, I've read the raws and in Japanese, the gyaru never refers to Homare as a "she". She always sees him as a male crossdressing, not as a girl.

In the sentence that was translated as "this person" on the last page, she actually explicitely uses "kare" (him) so the translator deliberately made it ambiguous, when in the text she still sees him as male.

The character himself uses "boku", which doesn't say much (some girls use it) but is still a standard male "I".

It's not the first time Elpsy does that. They chose to apply their headcanon to the translation, and make the people around the characters use the "right" pronouns even when in Japanese nothing indicates they think of them as any gender and even when they actually think of them as their biological gender, like here.

It was the same thing with "After school mate", "Girly Debut" and others.

As a translator, I can't agree to twisting a translation to fit a headcanon, but now you make of it what you want.

last edited at Sep 9, 2026 2:31AM

To be clear, I've read the raws and in Japanese, the gyaru never refers to Homare as a "she". She always sees him as a male crossdressing, not as a girl.

It's not the first time Elpsy does that. They chose to apply their headcanon to the translation, and make the people around the characters use the "right" pronouns even when in Japanese nothing indicates they think of them as any gender and even when they actually think of them as their biological gender, like here.

It was the same thing with "After school mate", "Girly Debut" and others.

As a translator, I can't agree to twisting a translation to fit a headcanon, but now you make of it what you want.

oof, that's not great. let's go to the extreme here and pretend that the scanlator and everybody else actively agree the original text is problematic and actively harmful, even then I still don't think this level of "sanitization" is warranted. I imagine fidelity has to be the first and foremost cornerstone to a good translation, that even the most universally reviled books in history are probably translated with this principle in mind.

that being said, I still otherwise appreciated your work, kurisumx. but if you're taking suggestions, could you revert to translating these pronouns how they were originally said? and if this is just your vibe that you won't budge on, might I suggest you add a translator's note by the end of each chapter you made such changes in?

Can't agree with "I don't like the original so I'm going to change it in my translation".

Wow. Another ElPsy work, and more interesting comments to comb through.

If what Kirin-kun said is true, that is honestly annoying. I want to engage with the work honestly even if it might be unpleasant or lacking in ways. How else are we meant to have any kind of thoughtful conversation, especially about a topic such as this that depends so much on the false perceptions people have about the GNC and trans experience?

At the very least, I like the last few pages showing Kuramichi still liked Homare romantically. Was cute.

last edited at Sep 9, 2026 5:38AM

Characters dressing as the other gender is common in manga. Most of the time, unless it's specifically about trans-identity, authors never give any hints about the self-identification of the characters and just state "I like what I like, don't judge". It's more about challenging the rigid Japanese society of what is expected of you than about challenging gender perception.

Now, it's very different from what western readers expect, because they want them to have a label or something to frame the characters. So they always want the character to say "I'm gay", "I'm a man", "I'm a woman" and the other characters around to acknowledge it not only in speech but also in thoughts. If a character dresses as the opposite gender, they have to be trans or an egg.

Japanese culture about crossdressing doesn't work like that and it's creating endless conflict on manga like this.

last edited at Sep 9, 2026 6:32AM

The argument in favour of the trans reading appears to be an experiential and subtextual one that uses the text's scenes and slurs but one which does take liberty with the translation, and the argument in favour of the strictly-cis-not-trans (that is to say, transness is totally absent, not just "cis or trans") reading appears to rely on a strict and literal reading of individual words while avoiding the experiential context of what's depicted, and broad assumptions of authorial intent as intentionally lacking in subtext ("cis unless unless said otherwise") or declarative notions of a single interpretation as the "true theme of the work" ("it has nothing to do with gender or transness, just preferences").

Generally to me these standards are held much higher for this topic than standards for tagging relationships in general (yuri, het, yaoi, or otherwise), which to me feels like an obvious and persistent double standard. I don't think ElPsyKongroo has some kind of conspiracy intent to push an agenda rather than acknowledge and incorporate the context of both aspects here, especially for English readers and their social context and especially when in general experiences of transness and gender nonconformity do in fact overlap (especially in a society like Japan which is more conservative on gender and transness in general but also has existed in a dialogue with global & Western relationships to gender for 200 years now - the constant distinction between "the West" and "Japan" here as totally alien to each other with regards to navigations of transness always carries an orientalist lens even if unintended), and I think it's questionable to ascribe this motivation to "change the original because the original was believed to be lacking", this wouldn't have been translated if that were the case.

A lot of the times, people taking the strictly conservative (in the textual reading sense, not the political sense) stance of avoiding the context of subtext in both interpretation and translation tend to bring forth their own biases on which kinds of people are "the default in society unless said otherwise", when as discussed above, characters serve as functions and aren't real people, and quite a few works on Dynasty Scans already treat authorial intent as secondary to audience interpretation or tag navigation (this is why certain tags exist in the first place, such as Ambiguous Gender or Subtext).

The tagging of this as both Cross-dressing and Transgender seems to satisfy the function of the tags while incorporating both justifications, even while people can continue to debate in the comments their interpretations (art is meant to be discussed and debated, not treated as solely fixed). So I generally don't really see the argument against it, unless you're arguing from character ontology or authorial intent, in which case much of the site would require a tagging revision.

On the topic of labels: I don't think Western readers (or Japanese ones, for that matter), need someone to outright declare Their Identity or Label for them to embody experiences one may characterize with being named a particular identity or label, the opposite is the argument being made. The argument often made against the former (that one doesn't have to always be a strict label, I agree) indirectly pushes, effectively, that trans people don't ever exist textually unless a label is placed on them as "trans", but that the label itself "constrains" rather than "names experience". This subtly brings forth a double-bind, where transness does not exist in a work until it is named, but naming transness supposedly constrains things (for whom?).

But the argument people make for pro-trans readings is one that doesn't need to name transness to recognize experiences of transness as subtext, even when experiences of transness can coexist in ambiguity with experiences of broader cis gender-nonconformity. In a broader sense, the argument for reading characters as trans is the argument to acknowledge that trans experiences are material experiences of life even some "cis gnc" people may move through (a cis person questioning their gender is always a material experience of transness even if the cis person thereafter decides they are not trans). Trans people and cis people are, of course, not two different species.

The reason works like these tend to cause such a stir in comments has less to do with any issues with the work or the author themselves and much more to do with audience discomfort at acknowledging the overlap between experiences of gender nonconformity and experiences of transness (and especially transfemininity), and how arguments about tagging turn into discussions on character ontology. But characters can't speak for themselves, characters are not human, tagging serves human functions, the author is a human in the context of their life, the audience is a set of human beings (who may have differing interpretations on a character, but some of whom are trans people who agree that this being tagged as Trans would function for the purposes of the tag, strictly from a pragmatic perspective). Inevitably, art that resonates is often going to be ambiguous, because art is never just strictly the author's solipsism but a social relationship that communicates. The irony of course is that everyone in the comments really likes this work and would love to see more of it. Hence, I think the Girly Debut Protocol for this work is the best option here, which still leaves enough room for ambiguity.

I feel like as both "yuri" and "cross-dressing" works continue to grow in popularity, and quite obviously touch upon experiences that real lesbians/bi women and real trans people experience in real life within both the Japanese and Western context, and works incorporate this, then of course it makes sense that more queer people and trans people see their experiences depicted so literally in fiction as tied to or drawing from their lives and experiences. The slur in Japanese (that is translated here to tr*nny") is of course a word with a real-life history. This is going to keep happening, so it's better to figure out how to deal with this ambiguity and coexistence now.

Long post! Don't read this as negative or anything, I just wanted to lay down my views on the above. But since it's getting sticky (as it does for any works of this type, unfortunately) it might be best to wait for moderator decisions on tagging.

last edited at Sep 9, 2026 9:27AM

I think it's questionable to ascribe this motivation to "change the original because the original was believed to be lacking", this wouldn't have been translated if that were the case.

A lot of the times, people taking the strictly conservative (in the textual reading sense, not the political sense) stance of avoiding the context of subtext in both interpretation and translation tend to bring forth their own biases on which kinds of people are "the default in society unless said otherwise"

true, the motivation could be innocent enough, maybe even weirdly enough to make the comic flow better. for example, while reading this I didn't feel the shifting pronouns jarring, felt quite natural, in fact, in spite it apparently not being in the original text. that being said, these changes (if true) very much did shift the characterizations of both characters. I don't think these changes made without even putting a footnote to clarify is a good practice at all, and understanding of the subtext probably should not be reflected in this particular way.

I agree that people seem to be reaching very hard to ignore the experiential context. "I was told to stop wearing girls clothes because of social norms" and "Crying at the sight of yourself finally looking feminine in the mirror" are like. THE most standard, possibly cliched transfem coding there is. And yet people are reaching for "well they never explicitly SAID" or "this word in Japanese means this is ABSOLUTELY a normative relationship, actually." It's like I'm on r/killlakill in 2013 again, arguing about the finale.

last edited at Sep 9, 2026 10:08AM

it's hard for me to ignore the text. The last sentence in Japanese is : やっぱり彼をただの友達としては見れないみたい

She uses specifically, in thought, the character 彼 with can't be interpreted any other way than "him". Male pronoun. So she sees Homare as a boy.

The translator ignored the actual text and put "this person" instead, to fit what they thought it ought to be, because they know better than the author.

Or it would mean the gyaru is transphobe or wants to erase the transnesss or something and obviously we can't have that.

If you're willing to ignore purposeful mistranslations, you're free to read this as yuri, but in the text, it's still het and that Homare is transgender is up to interpretation.

That's still kind of a reach, if you're asking me.

Also we're all kinda looking at this with a very black and white viewpoint (insert joke about how of course we are, only the first page is colored)
This stuff is never actually all that clear cut irl either. We are in fact looking at the very start of these two's journey together, and likely not going to see more beyond this.

Does the character have an explicit identity as a trans woman? Well, you're right, we can't definitively say that for sure. Does she know it's an option? Well. We can't say for sure. We could take the interpretation that homare has a fluid, or perhaps under-contemplated gender identity.

Is kuramichi using masculine pronouns in that panel? According to you, yes. But what does that really mean? What actual interpretation can be drawn from that? Is a high school gyaru going to be Wokezilla 3000? Well, maybe. Maybe not.

The story is just that- a story. What one takes away from it is going to be inflected by the lens you bring to it.

But saying all that.
"I used to wear my sister's clothes because I liked it and I still want to dress femininely now, despite social norms and Some Guy yelling at me that I'm a gross weirdo for that" is not a cisgender thing to say.

Is kuramichi using masculine pronouns in that panel? According to you, yes. But what does that really mean? What actual interpretation can be drawn from that? Is a high school gyaru going to be Wokezilla 3000? Well, maybe. Maybe not.

I just have issues with the translation. Whether the character is trans or not, readers can think what they want.

But the translation took several liberties with the text to push the idea that Homare is trans, that Kuramichi actually acknowledges it and is woke.

When Kuramichi calls out the guys for the slurs, she's made to use "she" and "her", when in Japanese there are no pronouns and she later refers to Homare as "him."

When I read it in Japanese, I have a completely different impression of the characters and the story than when I read this translation and I'm not sure this is a good thing.

But saying all that.
"I used to wear my sister's clothes because I liked it and I still want to dress femininely now, despite social norms and Some Guy yelling at me that I'm a gross weirdo for that" is not a cisgender thing to say.

periodt! there are zero people who's cisgender, are GNC, and enjoy crossdressing. none in fiction, and obviously none in the real world either. and crossdressers (let's deign to pretend they exist for a sec) would never face weirdos yelling at them and find that to be a challenge of them freely being their authentic self. "this is highly relatable to me" directly equates to "my interpretation of this is the aboslute truth"

that being said, if someone crossdressing is struggling with dysphoria not at all alleviated by it, uh, I do have a punk quote for them that I stand by that's definitely only about punk and absolutely nothing else: "DIY or die" (the "or die" part is very metaphorical I should be clear, the other part is not)

Is kuramichi using masculine pronouns in that panel? According to you, yes. But what does that really mean? What actual interpretation can be drawn from that? Is a high school gyaru going to be Wokezilla 3000? Well, maybe. Maybe not.

regardless of what it really means, Kirin-kun's main argument is that it should not have been substituted during translation. I fail to see how that final "he" in Japanese would lose any potential nuance or subtext if it had been translated as "he" in English. or how in the raw the gyaru never once referred to Homare using "she" but she has in this translation, and the obviously added and changed subtext because of that.

all of this is of course assuming Kirin-kun's being truthful (being that I haven't checked the raws nor can I really read Japanese), but I really fail to see why a established scanlator on this site would lie like that so that's an assumption I'll gladly make.

last edited at Sep 9, 2026 12:00PM

periodt! there are zero people who's cisgender, are GNC, and enjoy crossdressing. none in fiction, and obviously none in the real world either. and crossdressers (let's deign to pretend they exist for a sec) would never face weirdos yelling at them and find that to be a challenge of them freely being their authentic self. "this is highly relatable to me" directly equates to "my interpretation of this is the aboslute truth"

Your sarcasm is noted and your point accepted. I was talking a big game about leaving room for nuance and not making definitive black/white interpretation there and I immediately undermined my own point with some hypocrisy.

last edited at Sep 9, 2026 12:42PM

If you're willing to ignore purposeful mistranslations, you're free to read this as yuri, but in the text, it's still het and that Homare is transgender is up to interpretation.

I don't think you can say "in the text it's still het" when we barely get Homare's point of view and they never give any indication of their gender identity. If Homare being trans is up to interpretation, then Homare being cis is equally up to interpretation (and, I would say, is a less coherent interpretation, the pronouns used by the cis girl protagonist with little knowledge of trans topics aside).

For this reason, any translation that pushes the idea Homare is definitely cis would be at least as much of a "purposeful mistranslation." The fact is that any translator, to some extent, is going to reflect their own views in their translations, especially with something like pronouns in Japanese to English translations since Japanese uses third-person pronouns way less often. I think it's fine to disagree with translation choices but accusing someone of deliberate mistranslation because of a couple word choices is pretty rude imo.