I don't know how you can read the character as a trans man when they don't express any particular discomfort with the physical experience of being a woman except "it's hard to sleep with boobs" on the first night. They don't express anything akin to gender dysphoria when transformed into a girl. There's the initial shock of a supernatural event, a bit of confusion, but mostly concern for their gf. The gf's parents even found it hilarious that the MC was more concerned about experiencing their first kiss than experiencing a genderswap. There's very little here to establish any sort of masculine identity for them except the one line at the end of chapter two, "Even if I'm a girl, I'll show you I can be a man worthy of being your boyfriend!" And to be honest that line mostly feels like it's there and written that way to be a funny punchline to end the chapter with, rather than informative about their character. As we see in chapter 3, the MC followed this up by pretty much claiming to be trans to their gf, who seems to love that idea and find the MC even more attractive because of it (lol chaser). They then enjoy dressing up, get really happy when complimented in feminine terms , and then finally look at their own reflection and feel spellbound rather than awkward, relating to their gf's earlier words about feeling confident through the "magic" of dressing up cute for your lover.

If the MC's gender identity is male then he's getting put through some kind of weird forcefemme conversion therapy by his gf and unlike real conversion therapy it seems to be working very well on him. That's a pretty disturbing narrative, a sinister tale of a man's identity being erased and rewritten without respecting his will, and I don't think the tone of the story is nearly that dark lol. i don't think I've ever seen any genderbender story go in that direction tbh.
If we instead read her gender identity as a woman, it's a tale of a girl having her egg cracked and getting to explore a wonderful new world where she feels like herself for the first time, and grows more and more comfortable with it. The tone of the series so far definitely seems more in line with that.

I'm gonna continue using they/them for the mc for the time being, they're being presented pretty fluidly so far, but it looks like it's leaning feminine pretty hard lately.

last edited at Jan 18, 2024 6:47AM

HayaH's argument is that the MC is becoming someone who has a male gender identity in a body typically considered female (i.e. uterus, ovaries, et cetera). It's a reasonable argument.

Conversely, one could consider MC a trans woman on the basis of being assigned male at birth if they turn out to identify as female, regardless of the curse.

Since this is a story about magic and stuff, at some point the regular definitions of cis and trans fail to apply. Language fails us here.

(must add where I live I can't change my name legally and it's really hostile area)

Oh, that's hell. I hope things get better. Please do take care and don't put yourself needlessly at risk.

We don't actually know if the MC has a uterus and ovaries in their girl mode: this manga is somewhat uncommon for the genre in completely excluding any mention of genitals so far. The only gendered aspect of their body they comment on is growing tits. Even by implication, the only thing is the gf's parents having kids. It's technically possible GRS is not part of this curse's care package lol. I'm not expecting that to be true but hey, you never know lol.

Well of this is what we are talking about then so be it

From my perspective the MC seems like a perfectly regular reserved boy. Who has neither shown any indication of not caring about genders nor being obsessed with them.

He lives with his grandpa and isn't very outgoing, desperately wants his romance to succeed, has a decent backbone, not used to being adventurous, bit of an overthinker.

Rather normal on most fronts

^This is what I'm talking about, my argument and very similar perception of the character.
And we have now supernatural element replacing this very regular boy into situation in which every trans guy finds himself.
Manga makes it look like "regression", contra transition (going backward of what usually happens in reality)

And this is very good example to show that every trans guy or girl, placed in right body assigned sex, would be just regular like any other cis person (like MC in his original form).
If you can catch my point and what I'm trying to explain to people.
You would not be able to find anything strange about them.
That's why transition is very important for majority of us and should not be denied or strictly controlled by some kind of "authorities" who are giving to themselves rights to make decision about our own destiny.
It's not human, it's degrading.

I have seen people I would have never suspected come out as trans

But with that said I'm in that boring camp that thinks that just because a story has gender bender it doesn't mean it's about being transgender. "What of someone ended up in an impossible experience" is one of the oldest setups ever

But of there are people who feel seen then good for them

Just coming to say that I freaking love this series

It's worth pointing out that this series has specifically signaled trans people as a potential topi, as both a lens with which to view those effected by the curse and a comparison to consider in the second chapter, where the gf says "I thought my father just changed sexes before now, believing in a curse was like believing in Santa Claus".

Maybe because I'm asexual also helps.

Ooo neat. I love finding fellow aceys in the wild. I'm gray-ace, myself.

(but I doubt that in manga MC as trans guy will really be the case if it is yuri ending)

We don't know that yet? I see this isn't tagged as either yuri or het, probably because mods are waiting to see which way this story goes.

If the MC's gender identity is male then he's getting put through some kind of weird forcefemme conversion therapy by his gf and unlike real conversion therapy it seems to be working very well on him. That's a pretty disturbing narrative, a sinister tale of a man's identity being erased and rewritten without respecting his will, and I don't think the tone of the story is nearly that dark lol. i don't think I've ever seen any genderbender story go in that direction tbh.
If we instead read her gender identity as a woman, it's a tale of a girl having her egg cracked and getting to explore a wonderful new world where she feels like herself for the first time, and grows more and more comfortable with it. The tone of the series so far definitely seems more in line with that.

While I agree, I don't expect this story to go either way. It'll probably be just "I don't care about gender so long as I can be with you", without any deeper discussion of gender identity, much like Nya-chan predicted. Just "i guess i'm a girl now, that's life, huh?"

Sorry, I haven't read the entire topic, but I will say that the MC could be gender-fluid or even gender-apathetic. I know personally, I'd love to be able to flip between bodily configurations freely, based entirely on whim. The MC did express that he's not exactly comfortable with the situation, but his love for his GF outweighs that. At this point, it really is just "wait and see".

The way the protagonist went back to (vaguely) confront - or mostly justify himself - to the (kinda) bully dude just comes across as incredibly weird.

Not sure what to make of the "dramatic development" at the end. Feels like it might be a rather unnecessary distraction from the relationship stuff.

I knew that choosing transition I will lose everyone, my "friends" and "family" and my privileges, but I am getting myself. He who lives in this body is precious to me and I won't give up of him until he is born in completely safe place.

Good luck to you. I hope you find new connections with the right kinds of people.

I was for so long very reluctant to comment here openly as trans guy, because of all those circumstances in rl. I suppose additional pressures are make me feel like a snail.
It would be really pity if people here become hostile toward me.

Dynasty is ~generally~ very trans-positive. I can say that most people here will be welcoming to you. That said, if anyone tries to give you shit about being a trans guy (or asexual, or whatever), I and others will come to your aid.

I would like just to have some enough safe space to rest from my battles in reality (but I won't put my guard down even in my sleep until I turn the whole world into safe place for everyone oppressed now)

Whoa, calm down, you don't have to change the world by yourself! There's plenty of us out there, we're all working together to build a better society, locally and internationally. So if fighting ever becomes too much, take a moment, breathe, leave the fight to us for a while, until you recover. It will be all right.

After "day D" (when I died and returned) it seems that I reached some kind of... nirvana? state. I lost my desires (not from depression, I did not lose my will and joy for life) -trust me, losing desire for alcoholic drinks during life-cut, was something wonderful. I had a habit to buy beer cans, trying to drink as usually, but when I noticed that I'm throwing out almost full cans day by day, I just stopped to buy them to save my money and stopped to drink alcohol. And never again I felt desire to drink again.
Really strange, I was an alcoholic drinking daily, and from "today to tomorrow" I wake up and I find that I'm not an alcoholic anymore. Great, just great, what else I can say?

That's really interesting, thanks for sharing!

There's comments in threads on here going back years and years because this site has been around for ages, and if it's older than about 2018 casual transphobia isn't that rare. Thankfully though all of that is much more thoroughly policed now, and people in general are a lot less likely to have those kinds of ignorant beliefs :)
Of course we have a post in this very thread claiming "gender politics can't matter to this manga because Japan doesn't play by our rules"... Perfection is still off on the horizon lol.

There's comments in threads on here going back years and years because this site has been around for ages, and if it's older than about 2018 casual transphobia isn't that rare. Thankfully though all of that is much more thoroughly policed now, and people in general are a lot less likely to have those kinds of ignorant beliefs :)

I don't think it was that common. I've been around since 2014/15 (this is my second account). There have always been transphobes on the internet (and there will always be), but dynasty had relatively few of those, and I never had to fight alone.

Of course we have a post in this very thread claiming "gender politics can't matter to this manga because Japan doesn't play by our rules"... Perfection is still off on the horizon lol.

Come on, that was really mild.

Honestly, any amount of apathy towards gender (including "turning into a girl is a huge pain but whatever, I love my girlfriend") is such an endearing character trait to me. It's kind of nice that we get to see some level of fluster, but I'm also looking forward to our main character being a "accidental girlification senpai" and showing the new victim the ropes.

Akira? Not enstars akira right? Right? ( kodama Naoko flashbacks )

Urgh, the direction implied in the bonus chapter sounds ... very meh.

I'm a big fan of the art in this manga. I'm not sure why but I just really like the way this sensei draws eyes and expressions.

Akizuki himself seems weird to me. What's up with him seemingly not remembering his past and not acknowledging how odd that is?

Honestly, with that preview.... Doesn't it feel kinda super early for that kind of drama to happen? We're only three chapters in and suddenly this romcom has an antagonist who wants to see the world burn lol. I expected the scene at the end of chapter 3 to be a preview of future drama, where he'd turn back relatively soon (in chapter 1 they says as early as a few hours, no later than overnight) and the culprit would only be hinted at for the future.
Also I really hope shark tooth doesn't fall in love with boymode MC. As much as people suggested he might be gay there really wasn't that much of anything there except maybe future potential, he said he had a crush on Shishizaki instead, and one of the absolute worst tropes in the gender bending genre is when changing sex changes a character's sexuality, going from straight guy to straight girl or vice versa. If shark tooth is gonna fall in love with the MC he'd better wait until it's good and gay first, one way or another.

After figuring out about myself, I contacted LGBT in my area (still 4 letters in that time) to ask for some directions. And received very transphobic and unhelpful answer from some guy who continued to use wrong pronounces after all I said clearly in my mail.
I felt terrible seeing that someone who should be my people closed the door to me. I thought: "OK, I'm on my own now. I'll go my way without any support of others!"

My "parents" also did not support me. Someone of them poisoned my food after seeing that I won't give up under their pressures.
After (some kind of) divorce I was living in my city one year with my kids, taking care of them alone, "parents" bought house in some village and allure me to come to live with them. Little did I know that it was a trap to suffocate my transition in perfidious ways.
After poisoning (7 years ago), I realized it would be smarter to keep it for myself, stay where I know my enemy, than go somewhere where my enemy could be anyone.
(especially when you are trans person, already marginalized and discarded by society, what can you do when your word already means nothing? To whom to speak and how to prove, being alive, that someone killed me? Anyone would take me as an insane person)

I moved in some two-rooms storage next door, in very bad condition.
There was no water for 2,5 years, damaged walls, only outer roof.
I had to leave every luxury to keep my life safe.
I was living in inhuman conditions, appalled for months, almost speechless. Probably with some terrible PTSD (my body passed through the most terrible distress of dying), and I passed through all it by myself.
After recovering, I started to work on that place, and turned it slowly in very comfortable place for living.
I fixed walls, made new door with my own hands, some window too, got water after 2,5 years, air con, etc.
All those handy works without previous experiences.
I worked on myself in same time, without having any friends or real supporters.

For me, the most important thing was taking my life in my own hands.
Yeah, I became poor, so what? Better poor and still alive than rich and dead. When I'm alive I can work on everything to change my situation.
I saw that I'm actually very capable to overcome anything what life throws in my face, and my self respect grew a lot.
It was like living in very much war-like conditions, but for me it all was connected with my personal growth. I was someone sheltered and maybe a little bit spoiled, constantly obstructed by others to grow.
New reality gave me a chance to discover real me, to see that I'm capable to do life-changing things while having just a little.
I don't just look like some trans man who is transforming by hormones, I'm becoming visible for who I am inside.

Now I think, if I'm still here after all, maybe there is some reason why I'm here now and not buried under the ground? Maybe some day I could do something to change the world?
I'm smart enough to find my own way and contribute.

I'm very thankful to you and all the others who are fighting in your own way for the same goal as me. I'm strong individual who finds my own ways, so, however strange I am, please let me do it my way.
We'll meet "somewhere in the middle"

I hate that all of this had to happen to you. Thank you for sharing your story.

I had a habit to buy beer cans, trying to drink as usually, but when I noticed that I'm throwing out almost full cans day by day, I just stopped to buy them to save my money

"Throwing out", I meant throwing away, throwing in garbage almost full cans of beer, not vomiting (because I could not drink them, it was just some habit of buying what I knew I needed before)

Oh, that was correct already. "throwing out" and "throwing away" are more or less the same thing. Vomiting is "throwing up". Phrasal verbs are a bit of a pain for people learning english as a second language, aren't they?

Sorry, I haven't read the entire topic, but I will say that the MC could be gender-fluid or even gender-apathetic. I know personally, I'd love to be able to flip between bodily configurations freely, based entirely on whim. The MC did express that he's not exactly comfortable with the situation, but his love for his GF outweighs that. At this point, it really is just "wait and see".

The awkwardness he has shown would indicate that he is neither

I think it's pretty clear that the story is about "pick your poison, get cursed or lose your love" and he is gonna do the boyish thing and cling on to his love with no clear plan about how he's gonna deal with it

She on the other hand seem to be bi as fuck, and if their family has carried that curse for generations then that might be an evolution, considering what will happen to all their partners

I am entertained by how great they always look when they get gender-bent lol

I understand the attitude, but there's only so much hell you can raise exclusively by kissing people to turn them into girls...

Mashiro's about to run an unlicensed gender clinic exclusively for trans women, gonna to have a line of girls kissing her everyday.

Mashiro's plan is weirdly evil.
I'm sickened but curious.

last edited at Mar 21, 2024 4:03PM

So edgy...

/s