"Gut, meet Fist. He's gonna be punching the shit out of you today."

wtf :(

This was so depressing that you put that tag twice. Makes sense

This was so depressing that you put that tag twice. Makes sense

It's depressing as fuck, but there's also a couple of depressing ass fucks that happen.

I didnt thought it was that depressing. He's finally facing things up and by living on his own he's free to ask for help to his friends or profesionally.

I didnt thought it was that depressing. He's finally facing things up and by living on his own he's free to ask for help to his friends or profesionally.

By facing things on his own you mean spiraling further into destructive habits that reinforce his internatlization of how he was raped and coerced into sex while dressed as a woman by multiple different men? He tried opening up and his mom refused to acknowledge it. How do you think that's going to make him feel about getting help professionally when the one who should love him unconditionally "didn't want to be troubled by it."

wow :(

that was really depressing. I was expecting it but I wasn't expecting it on that level

I think author just wanted to show that not everyone can have a happy ending. That's how life is.

In the end, Tamura's problems weren't solved and his own mother didn't want to hear about them. Maybe if Ryousuke had returned his feelings, things could have been different.

By the way, What does Ryousuke want to face his parents with? I didn't get what he was talking about.

By the way, What does Ryousuke want to face his parents with? I didn't get what he was talking about.

maybe the fact that he still crossdress I guess ?

TOzz posted:

By the way, What does Ryousuke want to face his parents with? I didn't get what he was talking about.

maybe the fact that he still crossdress I guess ?

As far as the end of the manga is concerned, I thought he had stopped.

" depressing ass fuck "

I just can't

did someone really tag this with "depressing as fuck" and "depressing ASS fuck" lmao.

Well that was an unnecessary depressing add to the story ovo

I'm really glad i read this though. Nornally I would've never picked this up purely because of the tags. But since i had nothing better to do...
And i have to say, I'm really glad i read this manga. It opened up my view a bit more about transgender people. And it was just a nice read tol, though really heavy and fucked up at times haha
I still don't get why Marika suddenly felt awkward about her dressing as a girl, as herself, and was worried if dressing like that was okay...

last edited at Jun 18, 2016 6:11PM

I decided to read the stuff under the transgender tag just out of a whim, and this was probably the most surprising of them all. It really turned out well in the end... It was a really moving story with all of them.

As for the afterstory, I don't think that Palow is as doomed as all that, he's got problems but I kinda think that he could have a real relationship if he met the right guy (hopefully before he gets a bunch of STDs). But his sexual tendencies are probably always going to be... unusual, and he's probably always going to have a big sex drive. That things haven't turned out for him YET is not EVER. I know lots of people who had various problems in their lives, that managed to find a way through later on (and "normal" people who ended up having serious problems). And lots of people have kinky sex.

Even with everything, I think Palow is MUCH more well-adjusted compared to what he was like at the beginning of the story. Really, he seems to be having fun.

This was so depressing that you put that tag twice. Makes sense

It's depressing as fuck, but there's also a couple of depressing ass fucks that happen.

"Depressing ass fuck" is the greatest tag of all time.

Hello people. I've been reading this series for quite some while and I wanted to post a review of it here. I am curious to know whether people agree or not with it.

The following review will contain some very important spoilers. For disclosure purposes I should mention I am myself a transgender woman and that many things I will critique about the series have to do with identity issues.

---

When I first started reading "Bokura no Hentai" I found myself intrigued. A manga that deals respectfully with transgender and crossdressing characters, without mixing up the two categories? A story that doesn't focus on fanservice but on the actual, real-life problems queer youth faces? Count me in!

"Bokura no Hentai", for the most part, delivers amazingly well on its premise. The characters are very interesting and humane, each one of them with their own life issues. Even more importantly, the trio of protagonists (Marika, who is the trans girl of the group, Tamura, who is crossdressing for his lover, and Ryousuke who does so for his dead sister) are not the exclusive focus of the story. Secondary characters like Akane and Tomochi also get some of the spot light and the mangaka manages to handle their cases very well.

There is a great deal of diversity among the protagonists and their experiences, so the story doesn't get monotonous. Moreover, the "plot" gives plenty of room for character development. Honestly, one of the most enjoyable parts of "Bokura no Hentai" is watching the characters I've come to love grow and learn from their experiences. It made me feel as if I went to school with them, listened to their worries and shared their concerns. It made me care about them a whole lot.

The art is great, minimalistic yet not simplistic. I especially loved the colored introductions in each volume. I believe that they give a warmer feeling to the story and they work great as a way to further humanize the characters.

So far I've described 99% of what "Bokura no Hentai" is. Honestly, I wish I could stop here. I wish I could just give it a big shining 10/10 and tell you it has earned its place among the masterpieces of our time.

SPOILERS

But, unfortunately, there's chapter 40. The chapter where Marika is having second thoughts about her identity. The chapter where she misgenders herself so that a group of irrelevant, anonymous cosplaying male students won't feel bad for not being as cute as she is. The chapter where essentially none of her friends tries to confront her about this attitude, in a way telling the readers that they too thought of her as a cute guy who crosses or, as the series tells us, a boy with a perversion. The chapter where she enters a crossdressing contest, even though from the first chapter of "Bokura no Hentai" she clearly, unapologetically states that she is not a crossdresser but a woman. The chapter where the mangaka managed, in just a few panels, to completely ruin every good thing had been done since the beginning of the story.

There are plenty of reasonable approaches one could take to justify this chapter. One could say Marika is still a teen, one who faced plenty of bullying that forced her in the closet. Perhaps the mangaka wanted to show us another issue transgender people face in our everyday lives (and doubt is undeniably one of them). Perhaps her friends didn't want to push her out of her doubts, perhaps they felt it was not their place to do so.

You know what? None of these excuses stands to scrutiny. First of all, the doubt/misgendering part came out of nowhere and felt completely out of character. Speaking strictly on technical writing grounds, it was the dumbest thing the mangaka could do at this point of the story. It'd be like having Tom Hanks in Philadelphia say something along the lines of "hey, am I really gay after all?" just a few minutes before the movie's ending. Yeah, it is that dumb.

Secondly, we never see Marika get over her self-doubt. Instead, we just get a "who cares?" attitude from the rest of the crowd, which I find outrageous for a story that did its best to convince us that this is an accepting, loving environment for Marika. What am I to make of this? That the ultra-supporting people who surrounded her simply thought of her as delusional? That for them cosplaying and being trans belong in the perversion category? Again, this is not what "Bokura no Hentai" showed us up until chapter 40. It's like the writer forgot about her own work and decided to do a fantasy (more like nightmare) version of this story.

Last, but not least, and this a completely subjective thought, it was not a necessity for "Bokura no Hentai" to deal with the issue of doubt. I am not the sort of reader that demands social justice to be the centerpiece of a given story. I can deal with very triggering and disturbing material. For example, I wouldn't care that much if this was a fantasy story where a character is trans but simply decides that it's all just a perversion or that they like to be bullied, etc. I may still dislike it but it'd be more forgivable.

"Bokura no Hentai", however, presents itself as a story that cares about such things, about the pains of real life human beings. And as such, it'd be dishonest on my part to ignore how much it failed to deliver here. Transgender people face doubt on every front of our daily lives. There's plenty of room to talk about that. But Marika's life was a best case scenario situation, quite possibly the most well present of its kind I've come across in any form of storytelling. It's one of the few times we got to see an optimistic view of a transgender life, where acceptance by one's self and the world rule the day. It's exactly because "Bokura no Hentai" gave me hope and joy that I cannot forgive this slip. Perhaps I'd be more indifferent to this part if I were not transgender myself, but honestly, I find this chapter to be indefensible.

SPOILERS END HERE

Despite the miserable failure that chapter 40 is, Bokura no Hentai remains an amazing manga, one of the best to deal with gender issues. If one ignores that one chapter, it's almost a masterpiece. It's just sad to look at it when I know that it was just one step away from perfection. Do I recommend reading it? Yes, I do. Just try not to get overexcited until you complete it.

Neko Chi posted:

Hello people. I've been reading this series for quite some while and I wanted to post a review of it here. I am curious to know whether people agree or not with it.
<.>
But, unfortunately, there's chapter 40.

Nah, everyone agrees with it.

Neko Chi posted:

Hello people. I've been reading this series for quite some while and I wanted to post a review of it here. I am curious to know whether people agree or not with it.
<.>
But, unfortunately, there's chapter 40.

Nah, everyone agrees with it.

Yeah, I saw the previous comments but I wanted to see if there were more people like transbikes that don't find it as offensive as you and I do.

Also (and sorry for the double post) I noticed something else. Read the last panel on the extra chapter, page 13 (11 on print)

http://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/bokura_no_hentai_boku_tabun_hentai#13

Is it my idea or does the dialogue go like:

Marika: It's not like that.
Tamura: Oh? Deprecating yourself is actually annoying.
Ryousuke: What he means is that deliberately pointing that out isn't right.

If I've gotten the dialogue right. is Ryousuke referring to Marika by using "he"? Is this a translation error or should I feel ever more outraged about this title?

last edited at Jun 26, 2016 3:45PM

Neko Chi posted:

Also (and sorry for the double post) I noticed something else. Read the last panel on the extra chapter, page 13 (11 on print)

http://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/bokura_no_hentai_boku_tabun_hentai#13

Is it my idea or does the dialogue go like:

Marika: It's not like that.
Tamura: Oh? Deprecating yourself is actually annoying.
Ryousuke: What he means is that deliberately pointing that out isn't right.

If I've gotten the dialogue right. is Ryousuke referring to Marika by using "he"? Is this a translation error or should I feel ever more outraged about this title?

Would need to see raws, but could be just a typo. At first I assumed Ryousuke is explaining what Tamura meant, but now I realized it wouldn't make sense.

Is there any way to contact the scanlation team to make sure?

Neko Chi posted:

Is there any way to contact the scanlation team to make sure?

You can try on scanlation group site I guess

Haha, this is me being really late to talk about Tamura's abuse and subsequent dealings with it ✌(◕‿-)✌ as a person who has suffered sexual abuse at a young age, i can relate well to Tamura and his after-effects, especially because he hasn't seen anyone to discuss these issues/got shot down by his mom about it! haha, too close to home... but i do think that he's improving, and even if he is going down a downward spiral, that it can't get better than that.
i don't think he's unhappy, or he's having a great life. but he's coping as well as he can w/o seeing a therapist, or without crying on a bathroom floor to illustr8 how fucked up he is for the viewers, thank god. he's just living life, he has constant reminders of what happened to him now that he fully remembers and he's still fucked up to all hell, but you can't escape being fucked up from that, you know?

So as unhappy as Tamura's life may seem... and also, how obvious it is that he is still overtaken by what happened... that's normal. In fact, it's healthy he's addressing it at all, especially with his mother. CSA doesn't go away. I spent two years of my life pretending it never happened, and then one little thing reminded me all over again. And now i live with it. It's made me bitter, and a sexual 'deviant' and has also made me hate sex sometimes.

i relate the most to tamura, obviously. i don't want to get into details, but i could see my life becoming what tamura's is. During the whole series, he restates the idea that he's 'darker' than they all are, and he thinks that he's broken and crazy and he's not right... And i don't know how much he actually likes thinking this way, but it's a way to cope with that. And sometimes it's nice to think that because of what happened, i am now fucked up and crazy, but that's okay? It's okay, because..... it's made me apathetic, and it's made me trust people less, and it's made me manipulative. but i don't know. i see these as good traits. kind of like how Tamura smiles through being a pervert because of what happened? i hate what happened, but what i've become because of it is fine. does that make sense?

ha, i don't even know what i was trying to say. and this was all probably very unhealthy (but how would i know ♒((⇀‸↼))♒) but this is like the first time i've been public about something like this.... so, enjoy.

edit: also, no big surprise, i didn't see his ending as 'depressing' it just felt normal. understandable. chapter 40's treatment of marika does suxx ass tho

last edited at Jun 27, 2016 1:08AM

Ok, I got the reply I wanted. It's better than I thought it'd be.

"Hi, sorry if there was any confusion. You are right in the order: first it's Marika, then Tamura, then Ryousuke. When Ryousuke says 'what he means...', he's referring to what Tamura said in the previous line to try to soften Tamura's bluntness. This is somewhat alluded to by Ryousuke's line on the next page when he tells Marika not to worry about the details (i.e. that Marika is trans) and just live her life how she wants."

https://hachimitsu-scans.blogspot.gr/2016/06/what-dreams-may-come.html?showComment=1467240853771#c5939223545732602705

Hello people. I've been reading this series for quite some while and I wanted to post a review of it here. I am curious to know whether people agree or not with it.

The following review will contain some very important spoilers. For disclosure purposes I should mention I am myself a transgender woman and that many things I will critique about the series have to do with identity issues.

---

When I first started reading "Bokura no Hentai" I found myself intrigued. A manga that deals respectfully with transgender and crossdressing characters, without mixing up the two categories? A story that doesn't focus on fanservice but on the actual, real-life problems queer youth faces? Count me in!

"Bokura no Hentai", for the most part, delivers amazingly well on its premise. The characters are very interesting and humane, each one of them with their own life issues. Even more importantly, the trio of protagonists (Marika, who is the trans girl of the group, Tamura, who is crossdressing for his lover, and Ryousuke who does so for his dead sister) are not the exclusive focus of the story. Secondary characters like Akane and Tomochi also get some of the spot light and the mangaka manages to handle their cases very well.

There is a great deal of diversity among the protagonists and their experiences, so the story doesn't get monotonous. Moreover, the "plot" gives plenty of room for character development. Honestly, one of the most enjoyable parts of "Bokura no Hentai" is watching the characters I've come to love grow and learn from their experiences. It made me feel as if I went to school with them, listened to their worries and shared their concerns. It made me care about them a whole lot.

The art is great, minimalistic yet not simplistic. I especially loved the colored introductions in each volume. I believe that they give a warmer feeling to the story and they work great as a way to further humanize the characters.

So far I've described 99% of what "Bokura no Hentai" is. Honestly, I wish I could stop here. I wish I could just give it a big shining 10/10 and tell you it has earned its place among the masterpieces of our time.

SPOILERS

But, unfortunately, there's chapter 40. The chapter where Marika is having second thoughts about her identity. The chapter where she misgenders herself so that a group of irrelevant, anonymous cosplaying male students won't feel bad for not being as cute as she is. The chapter where essentially none of her friends tries to confront her about this attitude, in a way telling the readers that they too thought of her as a cute guy who crosses or, as the series tells us, a boy with a perversion. The chapter where she enters a crossdressing contest, even though from the first chapter of "Bokura no Hentai" she clearly, unapologetically states that she is not a crossdresser but a woman. The chapter where the mangaka managed, in just a few panels, to completely ruin every good thing had been done since the beginning of the story.

There are plenty of reasonable approaches one could take to justify this chapter. One could say Marika is still a teen, one who faced plenty of bullying that forced her in the closet. Perhaps the mangaka wanted to show us another issue transgender people face in our everyday lives (and doubt is undeniably one of them). Perhaps her friends didn't want to push her out of her doubts, perhaps they felt it was not their place to do so.

You know what? None of these excuses stands to scrutiny. First of all, the doubt/misgendering part came out of nowhere and felt completely out of character. Speaking strictly on technical writing grounds, it was the dumbest thing the mangaka could do at this point of the story. It'd be like having Tom Hanks in Philadelphia say something along the lines of "hey, am I really gay after all?" just a few minutes before the movie's ending. Yeah, it is that dumb.

Secondly, we never see Marika get over her self-doubt. Instead, we just get a "who cares?" attitude from the rest of the crowd, which I find outrageous for a story that did its best to convince us that this is an accepting, loving environment for Marika. What am I to make of this? That the ultra-supporting people who surrounded her simply thought of her as delusional? That for them cosplaying and being trans belong in the perversion category? Again, this is not what "Bokura no Hentai" showed us up until chapter 40. It's like the writer forgot about her own work and decided to do a fantasy (more like nightmare) version of this story.

Last, but not least, and this a completely subjective thought, it was not a necessity for "Bokura no Hentai" to deal with the issue of doubt. I am not the sort of reader that demands social justice to be the centerpiece of a given story. I can deal with very triggering and disturbing material. For example, I wouldn't care that much if this was a fantasy story where a character is trans but simply decides that it's all just a perversion or that they like to be bullied, etc. I may still dislike it but it'd be more forgivable.

"Bokura no Hentai", however, presents itself as a story that cares about such things, about the pains of real life human beings. And as such, it'd be dishonest on my part to ignore how much it failed to deliver here. Transgender people face doubt on every front of our daily lives. There's plenty of room to talk about that. But Marika's life was a best case scenario situation, quite possibly the most well present of its kind I've come across in any form of storytelling. It's one of the few times we got to see an optimistic view of a transgender life, where acceptance by one's self and the world rule the day. It's exactly because "Bokura no Hentai" gave me hope and joy that I cannot forgive this slip. Perhaps I'd be more indifferent to this part if I were not transgender myself, but honestly, I find this chapter to be indefensible.

SPOILERS END HERE

Despite the miserable failure that chapter 40 is, Bokura no Hentai remains an amazing manga, one of the best to deal with gender issues. If one ignores that one chapter, it's almost a masterpiece. It's just sad to look at it when I know that it was just one step away from perfection. Do I recommend reading it? Yes, I do. Just try not to get overexcited until you complete it.

I completely 100% agree :)