Just got a bit of confusion: the girl with the cut hair, is she “transgender” or “tomboy” because she identifies herself as “Boku” which in Japanese means “I” for males. Anyone noticed that, too?
It’s kinda nice to know the boundary or threshold between those two tags. I mean, “Kase-san and Yamada” manga has a tomboy character, but she hasn’t identified herself as a guy. If it’s just a small thing as being socially identified as whatever they pick rather than going through the arduous phenotype changes, I’d like to know.
as i understand it, personal pronouns are more fluid in japanese anyway, at least in anime and manga, so it's possible a tomboy might use boku without it meaning they are trans, it's a 'masculine' thing but not necessarily a gender identity thing. it's associated with brash young girls i guess? though (and again this is just my understanding) an ordinary, adult woman in real life would basically never do this.
in this case i think she is just playing into heteronormative ideas about lesbian relationships that one should be 'the man', so she's presenting as more masculine and using boku to try to fulfil that role on the assumption that it will make her more attractive to her friend.
interestingly, we saw a related thing recently in "The Guy She Was Interested In..." where one mc never actually claims outright to be a guy, but does use 'boku' (and comments on it internally) and allows the other mc to believe she is one.
