So many new chapters O-O Am I in heaven!?
So now we have Marika moving on and Parou moving on. Now up to saving Ryou! A second time!

ah, what a bad memory, one time a girl made the same thing of tamura at pag. 16 to my glasses,
she also was without shoes with black pantyhose, but we were in her room, and it was me who had to go away, i had the car, and without glasses i risked my life going home

Holy crap, I just started this today. This is amazing. I just couldn't stop reading. This was really heavy at times, but that just made me want to cheer the characters on even more.

Plus I like how it shows that there is a lot room when it comes to identity. Even if it isn't to level of Marika, I love how it shows the secondary characters dealing with these issues and questions, too. It's a great touch that really helps to expand and reinforce the theme of the book, at least me.

Also I just love the Nastume family. You know what would be awesome if the real world was like that, having so many supportive and understanding people. I would read series just about them.

volume 7 complete, now just need to wait months for next volume.....

I... have no words...

This is one of the most intense manga I ever read. It really hits home in all kind of places..

Even if I knew it already, Japanese manga artists are really something to be reckoned with.

I'm rooting for you, Ryou-chin.

Other mangas with this focus would have ended around this point in the story - Marika made her big decision, Parou has come to terms with some things, etc.

Not Bokura no Hentai, though - still going! It's shifting into something different now and I really like it. I figured the author was going to wind the series down, but a bunch of interesting stuff happens in this volume. Akane and Tomochi being regulars in the cast keeps it more interesting - Tomochi in particular is an interesting character. A lot of overlap with Parou & Marika but written differently from both of them and with conflicted motives.

Other mangas with this focus would have ended around this point in the story - Marika made her big decision, Parou has come to terms with some things, etc.

Not Bokura no Hentai, though - still going! It's shifting into something different now and I really like it. I figured the author was going to wind the series down, but a bunch of interesting stuff happens in this volume. Akane and Tomochi being regulars in the cast keeps it more interesting - Tomochi in particular is an interesting character. A lot of overlap with Parou & Marika but written differently from both of them and with conflicted motives.

If I'm not mistaken this is the last volume, so only about 3-4 more chapters to go. I wouldn't get my hopes too high.

If I'm not mistaken this is the last volume, so only about 3-4 more chapters to go. I wouldn't get my hopes too high.

According to the release post on hachimitsu's site there's another volume coming out in November and ongoing currently.

If I'm not mistaken this is the last volume, so only about 3-4 more chapters to go. I wouldn't get my hopes too high.

According to the release post on hachimitsu's site there's another volume coming out in November and ongoing currently.

This volume is definitely not the end. It ends on a cliffhanger. I can imagine the series ending serialization soon, certainly.

If I'm not mistaken this is the last volume, so only about 3-4 more chapters to go. I wouldn't get my hopes too high.

According to the release post on hachimitsu's site there's another volume coming out in November and ongoing currently.

Last I read on Hachimitsu scans, I was sure they said next volume is the last when they finished volume 7. I was wrong I guess.

if Marika goes to the all-boys school that would be so lame...

if Marika goes to the all-boys school that would be so lame...

No kidding. "I can finally be myself and everyone accepts me, time to throw it all away again so I can go to the same school as my fucked-up romantic interest!" Author please.

last edited at Aug 3, 2015 11:05PM

if Marika goes to the all-boys school that would be so lame...

No kidding. "I can finally be myself and everyone accepts me, time to throw it all away again so I can go to the same school as my fucked-up romantic interest!" Author please.

also, implying there are no strong coed schools? Like, really? Japan, I'm disappointed...

If I remember correctly, next chapter, Ryou confesses to Marika.

Poor Hacchi. All her efforts were wasted on Ryou.

that glasses guy has a thing for Ryou....

if Marika goes to the all-boys school that would be so lame...

No kidding. "I can finally be myself and everyone accepts me, time to throw it all away again so I can go to the same school as my fucked-up romantic interest!" Author please.

another cured ending? like hoshino from hourou musuko

last edited at Aug 4, 2015 9:53PM

that glasses guy has a thing for Ryou....

if Marika goes to the all-boys school that would be so lame...

No kidding. "I can finally be myself and everyone accepts me, time to throw it all away again so I can go to the same school as my fucked-up romantic interest!" Author please.

another cured ending? like hoshino from hourou musuko

You mean Yoshino

And she's not "cured".

My take is that she didn't really want to be a boy. She just hated to be a girl and going through all these changes. Only when she accepts herself as a girl, because other people start to see her as such, she stops wanting to be a boy.

Like they say in the story, it's ok to change your mind. You can't decide for her for your own selfish reasons.

At least, Shuu isn't cured.

But I would have liked her and Shuu being a couple. I'm not sure how long Anna is going to stand by Shuu's side.

another cured ending? like hoshino from hourou musuko

You mean Yoshino

And she's not "cured".

My take is that she didn't really want to be a boy. She just hated to be a girl and going through all these changes. Only when she accepts herself as a girl, because other people start to see her as such, she stops wanting to be a boy.

Like they say in the story, it's ok to change your mind. You can't decide for her for your own selfish reasons.

At least, Shuu isn't cured.

But I would have liked her and Shuu being a couple. I'm not sure how long Anna is going to stand by Shuu's side.

From what I remember, people have asked Shimura about this before - What's the deal with Yoshino? and her answer was roughly I don't know. It's definitely not 'I'm cured'. I can't find the tweet I'm thinking of though so I might be mistaken. ~____~

'They realized what they actually wanted' is one reasonable interpretation. Another realistic (and relatively dark) interpretation would be 'they settled'. Many people settle for what they feel like they can achieve, because the alternatives are too hard. IMO the series primarily gives you insight into Shuu's mind and heart, not Yoshino's - since Shuu is basically the protagonist. That makes it hard to figure out what Yoshino's decision at the end actually means. They're definitely conflicted about it.

The same theme sort of plays out here - for a while Ryou and Marika had been trying to accept things the way they were and settle for what they had but in both cases it just wasn't sustainable. And in both cases, they needed a push from other people to take action. It's actually an interesting contrast with Hourou because while that series spent a lot of time dealing with the characters questioning their own identities, Ryou and Marika know who they are at the start of this series (though perhaps not in exacting detail).

last edited at Aug 5, 2015 2:25AM

@ Nya-chan & kaelynn
Really loving the comparison with Hourou Musuko. The way I interpreted how the story ended for Yoshino was not that she was "cured", but that she "grew out of it", so to speak. I feel that she genuinely wanted to be a boy when she was younger, but as she grew up and compared her situation with Shuu, I think Yoshino realized that wanting to be the opposite sex is the not the same as identifying as the opposite sex; Yoshino was an example of the former, while Shuu is a clear example of the latter. In a way, I commend Shimura for showing this dichotomy in the spectrum of one's identity, and for also showing that people do change over time, and it is not realistic to believe that you're always going to be the same person you were when you were 10/11 (I think that was their age at the start of the series) for your entire life.

Personally, I don't think Ryou or Marika have settled for anything up to now. If anything, they were both trying to escape their own realities and the pressures applied to them by society (in Marika's case) and family (in Ryou's case). Marika never let anyone tell her what she was doing was wrong, and remember back in volume 4 when she went off on those bullies at school? That shows she had a strong conviction in her own beliefs and identity, and wasn't about to let anyone tell her otherwise. Ryou was a slightly different case, where instead he simply kept most people out of the loop (he wouldn't even tell Marika and Parou the whole story with his mom's situation), but I don't think he was settling for that situation, since why else would he have called out to Marika and Parou online unless he wanted to find some solace and possibly also a solution to the problem. Even with his relationship with Hacchi, I feel that was just him escaping from the feelings he was clearly starting to have towards Marika, which may have scared him somewhat, though that's just my interpretation.

last edited at Aug 5, 2015 3:34AM

It's easy to compare Bokura and Hourou, because both have a boy character identifying with the other gender.

It just seems Shuu takes longer to come to term with it and making a decision to eventually transition, which is a bit more realistic.

As for Yoshino's case, while Shuu is the main character, she's her own person with her own issues. My understanding is that she crossdresses in the beginning, because everyone tells her she looks like a boy. In her mind, it's all she has to make her "different", to make her exist.

So, in a way, she comforms to the image people have of her and begins to think that if she were a boy, she would be totally acknowledged. Eventually, when she reaches puberty and become more feminine and cuter, people start to acknowledge her as a girl and she realizes that she actually never felt or thought like a boy, she just wanted to be comfortable in her own body. So, she stops wanting to be a boy.

I found the final encounter between Shuu and Yoshino particularly heart-wrenching, when they hold hand for the last time and she cries her eyes out. For most of the series, Yoshino has been aromantic, but in this final scene, she just has to give up a huge part of her childhood : her love for Shuu that bloomed too late, her feeling of guilt for "betraying" Shuu. It's like she has to give up everything that made herself up til this moment, so she becomes someone else : an ordinary, cute girl.

For Bokura, somehow, it looks easy for Marika. She doesn't go through the same ordeals as Shuu.

(Sorry, for the black bars, but Hourou Musuko isn't on this site)

last edited at Aug 5, 2015 4:04AM

It just seems Shuu takes longer to come to term with it and making a decision to eventually transition, which is a bit more realistic.

In a way, yeah, but not always. Everyone's different, and even at a young age, I wouldn't say it's unrealistic that someone as in Marika's case would decide to start transitioning at a relatively young age (still in middle school) versus Shuu who didn't really solidify that conviction until near the end of high school). Marika even mentions in volume 7, chapter 26 that she couldn't go on living without transitioning, whereas in Hourou Musuko, Shuu didn't strike me as being all that desperate regarding transitioning, or at least no where near as desperate as Marika. Either way, I see both examples as realistic portrayals of transgender characters.

So, in a way, she comforms to the image people have of her and begins to think that if she were a boy, she would be totally acknowledged. Eventually, when she reaches puberty and become more feminine and cuter, people start to acknowledge her as a girl and she realizes that she actually never felt or thought like a boy, she just wanted to be comfortable in her own body. So, she stops wanting to be a boy.

Yoshino was clearly dysphoric about pubertal changes. Some girls may wish to be boys when they're kids but few of them will go so far as to buy and wear a chest binder or literally proclaim "I want a dick". Especially considering Shimura's response on twitter to the question "Is Takatsuki trans?", like mentioned above, was basically "It's up to the reader", "they settled" is a much more apt way of describing her and to a lesser extent Shuu's development. I think Saori had a big impact on her psyche and one of the biggest reasons she got so indecisive and insecure around middle school.

Actually, It's understandable that Yoshino's case is confusing a lot of people. Because the reasons she wants to be a boy are not really clear. Saori points out that she's just like any other girl, getting excited over a confession from a boy. She does not have the mind of a boy. She just wants to look like one. Up til highschool, she's aromantic and asexual. She says she wants a dick, but for what purpose? It's not because she wants to fuck a girl. To be more like a boy, so she doesn't feel like betraying Shuu? She's really indecisive. If anything, I'd say she's practically intersexual in her mind, somewhere in the middle of the road. In the end, Yoshino's choices may all revolve around Shuu. When she gives up on Shuu and so on her desire to be a boy, she "settles" for her genetic gender and cries, because it's the only thing that connected her to Shuu. She's not cured, she just grows up.

Aaand.... Ryou confessed... tum dum dum...

Ryou's grandma sure wants great-grandkids, doesn't she?
Ayumu is a good older sister.

Spoilers spoilers spoilers. I can't easily tag this whole post so scroll past it if you haven't read the latest chapter yet.

Ryou's dream in this chapter is one of the most interesting things in the series for me. I found it confusing in Japanese and it's no less confusing in English now that it's translated... it implies a lot of things and the imagery feels powerful to me even though very little is 'going on' in it.

Just the way he looks in response to seeing her again says a lot. I think the dream represents multiple things at once, all tangled up - but the details we get from Ryou & grandma in this chapter help explain it along with some other things that happened in previous chapters.

When talking with grandma, Ryou says he's not free of blame for what happened, which is a theme the series has flirted with a few times - the mutual dependence he shared with his mom, how she knew but was in denial, how his motives weren't entirely consistent or pure, etc. I think this is the first time he acknowledges the role he played in everything.

One of the main chapters this ties back into is Chapter 17. Ryou spends almost the entire chapter doing things without fully understanding his motives, feelings or desires. His world is changing and his response is conflicted. Then in Chapter 18 we see a bunch of the past from Hachiya's perspective and get the impression that Ryou never grieved and was locking away his emotions from the beginning.

So, the dream - I think it represents a few things. Ryou spent his whole life following in his sister's footsteps and emulating her, but suddenly they split onto separate paths and she entered... the world of a girl? Probably not quite that, but something along those lines. Up until that point he had no need to form an identity of his own, he could just go along with the sister he admired, since the two of them were similar and often confused for each other anyway. Then that changed, and he felt lonely and abandoned. You're going that way. In the first place, things like going out with Hachiya were his way of trying to assert that he was on his own path, even though he didn't know what his path was.

His conversation with Yui in the dream is interesting: "That doesn't make any sense, that's just gross, it's kinda creepy." "I was creeped out by it too, but I..." But what? Well, a few things I think: Being able to keep following in her footsteps is comfortable, being able to pretend to be her and capture some of his mother's affection (even if it's twisted) again is comfortable. He identified with his sister and envied his sister. The screwed up scenario he was in for most of the series gave him an opportunity to indulge his insecurities and desires, even if he was being pushed into it and horrible things were happening. The reason Marika made him so uncomfortable (especially early on) was because he saw some of himself in her, even though they had different motives and goals.

Then once things are 'fixed' that's all gone. He doesn't have any expectations to conform to anymore and he's being asked to figure out what he wants. He doesn't actually want to be in a relationship with Hachiya, so that relationship falls apart. Well, at the very least, as of this chapter he's figured out one thing that he wants - something the author showed us as early as chapter 5 - and gone for it!

last edited at Aug 7, 2015 3:55AM