Ikenai Hito, which is no longer on this site.
Explains why I couldn't find it! Thank you so much!
Thank you for reminding me this exists.
On a different note, I am looking for the title of an unusual gender-bender manga that was likely not found here on Dynasty. It was a poignant story where a young boy who bullied girls suffered from a disorder that changed him into a female. What made this story so unusual was that, unlike 90% of gender-bender stories that go down this sort of route, it was not fetishized in any manner. The story was played completely straight and realistically with a slow burn nuanced characterization and development of the protagonist as it followed them through their early childhood into their high school years.
The story touched heavily upon issues of self-identity and how the former boy and those around him came to terms with the changes and complications they went through as they grew into their new self. As for details, the protagonist is haunted by the memory of what they did to a female student back when they were a young bully and the subsequent trauma they suffered at the hands of their male friends who post sex change pinned him down and stripped his clothes off in the bathroom at school to see for themselves if it was true, What follows is the protagonist being ostracized by all the girls for what he did to them in the past while he is actively abused by his former male friends, The kid is forced to change schools and moves out to his grandmothers with his mom who gains a lot of weight after his parents split up over the stress brought on by all that has happened. Now terrified of boys and incapable of relating to girls the kid is alone. He is ultimately saved from his solitude by the kindness of a single little girl who becomes his only friend.
As the years pass the protagonist slowly adjusts and grows into their new identity eventually making other friends, but they are plagued by the existential crisis of not really knowing if they are a boy on the inside pretending to be a girl, a girl both inside and out, or something in between. The kid's mom assumes he is a boy tormented by having to act the part of a girl in society and she fails to see that her child may actually be coming to terms with being female and no longer thinks of themselves strictly as a boy trapped in a girl's body. This in turn upsets the protagonist making them ashamed of the more feminine things they have come to truly enjoy and identify with. The story sounds really harsh in my description here but it's actually quite life-affirming and heartwarming overall. It has a sort of dramatic slice-of-life vibe to it.
There is a load of other details I can remember but I hope this slab of text is enough that anyone who has read it and remembers the title should be able to identify it.
last edited at Feb 12, 2023 3:56AM
