This chapter and Asumi's conflicted feelings are a good example of why it's not typically recommended to sleep with your boss or a roommate, and Asumi's gone and done both at once with Nanao. It's almost impossible for her to keep this casual and draw boundaries without hurting Nanao or turning her down since they spend so much time together. There's some real drama fast approaching for the two of them. Maybe drama that will see Asumi find an excuse to take a trip to Tokyo to make some physical distance, hmm?

I'm still expecting, or at least hoping, the whole fate angle to be the bullshit idea of a dead president. It would be so much less satisfying than the story being about people and their choices rather than some predestined outcomes assigned to them. But the storytelling has been a lot more shaky recently than it had in the past so maybe the author really will just retread Walk In Death.
Actually now that I think about it I liked Walk In Death but was disappointed by that ending too. The whole time I was reading it I was debating whether or not the story has a unique idea or if the author had just watched the Final Destination movies and got inspired, and the ending definitely pushed me to the latter conclusion (fun fact: the unique cursed birth they describe in that ending is something that happens all the time, it even happened to me when I was born, it's extremely silly how the author frames it).
Maybe Ryouko-sensei is just one of those authors who struggle with endings every time. If so I hope for their next manga they move the focus away from overarching mystery, since that's a genre that desperately needs satisfying endings. This manga's first half, where we didn't really have any overarching structure except a couple forgettable pages in the first chapter and Satsuki's personal life, was basically perfect. The introduction of the student council president dropped that quality and we've been slowly sliding downhill since. This is one of the rare cases where I'd prefer an endless serialization format rather than the shaky and distracting series plot. Let Satsuki and Akira be Sam and Dean type characters, give them a sequel where they get a cool car and drive across Japan telling people they're siblings while secretly being lovers and solving distinct mysteries in each town they visit. Supernatural, for as much of a joke as that series became (similarly due to its bad overarching plots (and killing Felicia Day)), would be a much better influence than Final Destination lol.

last edited at Jan 28, 2024 7:12AM

I love this series, we get so many relationship dynamics that you basically never see in normal romance, because they're dynamics that indicate the couple isn't right for each other. And I love how the author approaches this not as dramatic conflict but rather two people with valid feelings that we fully explore on all sides. The thing with Miwa and Tamaki was especially so well done, I felt so bad for Miwa for so long but finally hopefully things will be looking up for her. And hopefully Tamaki can find a new relationship to sex that's better for her because her current one has some problems, like how she was willing to do it without wanting to as a favor to her partner rather than equally enjoying it. I'd imagine most likely though instead of addressing that she will just find another birthdays and Christmases kind of lover so the topic just doesn't come up with in their lives to make a significant difference.

last edited at Jan 26, 2024 11:54AM

Another possibility is that Kasumi, having been possessed once, was given some sort of charm or protection, or some sort of trap, or some lasting damage from the first possession. Aizawa gasps when her fingers sink into Kasumi's arms and then tries to flee, only to get sucked in in what looks a very unpleasant manner. When she's forced out as she's about to kiss Michi, Kasumi chokes and seems to be vomiting but otherwise stayed awake, which definitely did not happen last time: Aizawa came out and Kasumi fell asleep briefly before waking up as herself last time.
Edit: Aizawa's mood also could have massively changed things, since this time she was motivated by a negative feeling directed at the person she possessed, whereas last time she was motivated by a pure desire to help an injured Michi. This seems to be especially likely to influence the more violent effect the possession had on poor Kasumi.

last edited at Jan 24, 2024 3:55AM

I'm proud of Michi for standing her ground and not giving the Honami bracelet to Honda. Go make your own!
Looking forward to Michi now considering the fact that her ghost friend kissed her on the mouth using someone else's mouth (and almost did it twice). Considering how uncomfortable Aizawa looked during that whole sequence despite kissing Michi supposedly being her desire, it feels like perhaps there's some cursed hidden edge to that kiss, and certainly that possession. She's got uncontrollable urges and they can activate even when she's actively trying to stop it. It's kinda like when a hypnotized character in a story is in control of themselves until they hear the activation phrase and then watch in horror as their body acts against their will.
Also lol perfect image for the credits, Blamey

last edited at Jan 23, 2024 6:58PM

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.

Lol Xingyuan falling for that bait at the end of the chapter. Xiaoen really is being remarkably confident with this arc, huh?

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.

In what way did I "put a ribbon on" anything. I just noticed that the trend is actually Nene being way more of a red flag, something not as obvious at first glance since she's our perspective character and the audience is always biased to accept the perspective of the previous perspective character.

Just reread everything since it's been a long time between updates, and honestly especially with this new chapter Tsu doesn't look that bad. Bad for Nene? Oh yeah. But like not personally evil. She didn't actually tell Nene to dump her friends, just comforted her: if she was intending to isolate Nene, she also would have cut off public contact with those people lest she act as a bridge for them to reconcile. And now with chapter 4 she's casually introducing Nene to her gamer discord lol. Honestly with these four chapters combined Tsu looks like a bit of a flaky fuckboy but not someone scheming to do something bad, unlike Nene, who does actually want to have Tsu cut off from everyone else and just belong to her.

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".

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.

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

I don't care about the specific arguments for and against the sports shit and especially I don't at all care about the sanctity of "fair competition" compared to the rights of individuals to live and work in public without strangers fucking with their bodies. The example is purely about the potential emotional impact of forcing someone to change their hormones and generally their gendered aspects: most people know that's wrong on a gut level, even if they'd force it on other people. Even the transphobes think trans people are somehow "forcing" people to join them. The MC of this comic is forced to change their body by the "curse" and seems basically fine with it, which is an abnormal response (reread chapter two, the parents are pretty explicit about this, most people react extremely negatively). That tells us something about their character.
I could get into more details that convince me the MC is likely being intentionally written as a trans character, like all the details about their life as a "guy" especially, but those aspects are more vague and if people can't see it, then they can't see it. I've tried pointing that stuff out in the past and only other trans people tend to get it, unfortunately.

What dialect do you think they should've used, then? Considering Nanami's dialect in the original, it makes perfect sense to render her dialogue in some similarly divergent dialect.

This is one of my favorite series, but I've had several friends hard bounce off when it I rec it because of the dialect choice being so jarring to them. I apparently put blinders on and got through it and I'm always surprised when they comment on it and I go look and well... I can't tell them they're wrong.

To me personally, a regional dialect would be more appropriate. I think typically they fall back to very light American southern with a note saying the Japanese dialect she was speaking in in case someone wanted to google it. Vs what comes off as a separate national dialect entirely and very heavy. A few y'alls would be enough for me along with the occasions other characters note it, but I'm not the one who worked on it. Dealer's choice. I hope if it ever gets licensed they go my preferred route tho so I can get other people to read it easier.

the scanlator who made that choice was offering commissions priced in euro, so I'd imagine for them the scottish accent WAS a regional accent.

The point is not that if you're finding the story compelling, you're obviously trans and should seek transition. It's that if the story speaks to you in certain ways it's worth figuring out what those reasons are, and working with people to help you on any journeys of discovery that might come along with it. The goal is not transition but a deeper understanding of what your own self-conception actually is, and that can't be done without exploring some ideas that might otherwise remain covered up in a bigoted society.

Thank you, I'm glad someone understood what I meant :) I very specifically did not say "if you'd take this bargain you're trans," just that you've got some big questions to think about and to talk about, just like our MC in this manga. Our MC who probably is trans or genderqueer based on their surprisingly high degree of being comfortable being in a woman's body lol.
A very under-discussed aspect of sex and gender is hormones, they might be the single least publicly appreciated part of the whole thing. It's hormones that inform how your body develops in the first place, and there's various situations that can cause those hormones to be different than expected, resulting in cis women with XY sex chromosomes for example. A great indicator that someone might be cis is if that person is comfortable with their body's default hormonal environment that it internally produces and only that environment: When you give a cis person the "wrong" hormonal environment, they tend to have strong negative reactions to the feeling on a gut level. It's a relatively common experience that there's lots of testimony for, like cis men getting treated for prostate problems with T blockers, and they report feeling discomfort with it and tend to be weepy. This is also why those international sports decisions demanding certain women take hormones to change their body's natural hormonal environment is so unbelievably cruel, and many people realize that on an emotional level without even needing specific knowledge.
So when our MC is suddenly thrown from 100% male body to 100% female body type, and adapts really well to it and is pretty much stable? That tells us they've got at least a far more flexible relationship with gender on a gut level than a typical cis person. And sure, you can handwave that stable reaction as part of the "magic," but that's a boring and lazy idea. We can't just assume there aren't plenty of men in this setting for whom this kiss would be a nightmare just because it isn't a nightmare for the MC. If everyone who gets turned into a girl by this "curse" likes it, then it wouldn't be a "curse" at all.

last edited at Jan 17, 2024 8:19PM

Just read this series, and I really enjoyed it. It's got a slow start but from the explosion of plot events at chapter 16 onwards it was great. Aoi's one of the best side characters ever, the extremely rare example of the "bisexual slut" character archetype portrayed positively with her proclivities practically being a superpower to open up plot threads and get shit moving. She even turns Hime-chan gay just from one overheard conversation! You have to give her credit for that efficiency lmao.
Speaking of Hime-chan, her (emotionally) smacking the shit out of Kaede was very satisfying, I didn't expect that comeuppance to happen but Kaede'd broken three different women's hearts by being a flaky childish coward and she absolutely needed to have somebody finally turn on her for it instead of letting her off easy. The "Is that how you saw my confession too!? Just another goddamn mess to clean up!?" scene might be my favorite in the whole series, even though my favorite character Aoi isn't part of it :P

cecile posted:

I was going to address the "gender politics" thing but I guess other people already made very good arguments in that regard. Simply put, it's an internet forum topic about a gender bender story, you should expect discussions of gender. If you don't like this part of the debate you can simply ignore it. Talk about the stuff you're interested in, instead.

Tbh, I don't find this manga particularly interesting.

I didn't like that much their previous series (Koi to Uso) either. I dropped it at some point, because it was boring.

Their MCs are supposed made to be likable, but I just find them boringly "proper".

About the gender thing, the MC isn't a trans woman by any definition. It's not like he was uncomfortable being a guy before.

When you talk about a trans girl in manga, I would think about the MC of "Hourou Musuko". She was very obviously a girl from the start and I have no problems with that. It's a really good portrayal of a trans girl.

But here, it's not obvious at all. Take a "normal" person and change their gender by magic.Suddenly, they're supposed to have been wanting it all along?

It's the problem with "magic" genderbending. It's not a choice, it's imposed magically on the character. They just have to accept it.

Other manga have tackled the subject of "magic" gender change much more intelligently, like "Until I become me", or "Shishunki Bitter Change", where the change itself is not something natural for the characters and they struggle with it and their identity and it's the whole point.

Here, the MC is like "Oh, I become a girl when I kiss and it may become permanent. Okay. if I can be with my beloved I can accept that". Zero depth. I couldn't care less if they're a trans woman or just thoughtless.

Your disinterest in the story is obviously coloring how you read it and how much you pay attention while doing so, because you're missing some pretty crucial details all throughout this latest chapter where the MC is constantly thinking about their gender and being nervous and experiencing new things. They even have a moment of gender euphoria after the bra scene.

While I can understand not being interested in a particular story for whatever reason, I don't understand continuing to read it and comment on it. For example, I find the zombie genre almost universally boring as dirt, it's all the same exact "man is the real monster" beats repeated forever. While I might occasionally give a zombie story a try when they're popular, I never bother actually commenting on them just to confirm to everyone "yeah this sucks and is boring I don't care if any of these people live or die". Because if somebody IS enjoying the zombie story, they probably want to have a discussion with people at the very least paying the same level of attention with the same level of investment to notice things so they can talk about them. If you don't care about something, why would you care enough to bother commenting?? Surely there's something else around that DOES spark your interest. Wouldn't it be better to go talk about that instead?

Akizuki seems pretty obviously like a trans-esque character: if they really had a solid male identity, being turned fully into a girl temporarily would make them not want to do that again, and they'd especially flee when learning about the PERMANENT GENDER LOCK TO GIRL. No romance is worth lifelong gender dysphoria. Instead, Akizaki is anxious but also a fully willing participant and is growing to be comfortable with transition more and more. This is not a character tied to being a man lol. Actual men would not take this bargain. If you think you're a man and would take this bargain, you should discuss this with your therapist and start thinking deeply about your gender identity, because there might be some stuff about yourself you haven't realized before lol.

Also, stop trying to shoe in gender politics in a manga (who's trans, who's an egg, who's a woman or not..). It's rarely the actual topic of this kind of genderbender/genderswap manga. Japanese authors are not playing by your rules.

There's been explicitly trans manga and trans mangaka for decades some of it translated and on this very website. Just because you don't know it doesn't mean it's not out there. This dumb trope that queer identities as we know them in the West don't really exist in Japan is very silly and very easily disproven by obvious evidence. And those real existing groups of people in Japan more and more are actually influencing art like the gender bender genre, as authors become more informed about the real possibilities they were only imagining before.

last edited at Jan 17, 2024 3:53AM

Use your fingers to... what? what?!? what?!?!?!?
I need to know! I think I'm gonna go crazy if I don't find out!

Dingdang believes her husband is a MAN. She has no reasons to doubt it! So what does she plan to use her fingers for!? It can't be lesbian sex— because she has no clue that the emperor is a woman.

The only thing I can think of is...
She plans to stimulate her man's prostate through his rectum. ಠ__ಠ
Unaware that it's HER rectum and SHE has no prostate.
This cannot end well. v.v

It's almost certainly the prostate thing if we assume the name of the comic is still correct (a big assumption). Remember that one of the things Dingdang needs to foil the Empress Dowager is to get knocked up, which means milking the emperor is it comes to that lol.
Since there's presumably no actual milk to milk there, I'm gonna predict the solution will be inventing an excuse for the two of them to travel for a long time, and adopting a baby in secret somewhere far from the palace.

last edited at Jan 15, 2024 12:30AM

She's probably making less than a magazine published author with a similar level of popularity, simply because those mangaka get paid for the magazine and for the volumes and she's just getting paid for the volumes.

I don't know how much an author published in a magazine is making, but I've always heard it's not that much, and much of their income comes from volume's sales. If you have more information, I'd be interested.
But knowing her manga is being sold at a higher price compared to your average manga (about 50% higher), I wouldn't be surprise if she was making more than a magazine published author with a similar level of popularity.

Also, no chapter this week.

I didn't know the sale price of the manga is higher than normal, although it makes sense and I'd imagine at least a large portion of that is because this comic isn't in normal black and white: printing with all that green ink probably changes both the printing process and the paper used. I wonder how it compares to printed copies of full color webtoons?
edit: browsing these bookstores' websites without knowing much Japanese is hard lol. And I noticed toranoana at least seemed to be adjusting prices upwards noticing I was international, listing prices in USD and then converting that back to yen at a premium higher than what was listed at first. The basic no-frills volume jumped from 1210 yen in the link in this thread announcing its versions to 1430 yen when I clicked the specific sale page for it. I sadly don't know enough to be able to make the comparison myself lol. As far as I can tell none of these sites was listing an ebook version, which feels like it would also be a useful comparison (since color in a pdf doesn't cost any extra).

last edited at Jan 14, 2024 9:51AM

I'm not too surprised. She's getting train ads, Nirvana merch, and name dropped in Kadokawa's financial reports. Somebody is making the most of it. Maybe not her since since on top of her work she keeps taking illustration jobs on the side too. I'm not sure at what point it all trickles down to the mangaka. Maybe with that illusive English language release someday.

My Kinokuniya has been carrying it on it's front display as well as the back yuri section. They are tag agnostic.

She's probably making less than a magazine published author with a similar level of popularity, simply because those mangaka get paid for the magazine and for the volumes and she's just getting paid for the volumes. As far as side work though she draws 4 pages a week, that's a lot less than typical for those published mangaka. She's probably not desperate and doing overtime taking those illustration jobs, this manga just is probably not a full-time occupation (although it probably is temporarily right now due to the volume preparation).

Love a boundary setting queen. Lol her getting caught being happy at work thinking about divorce.
I don't think they ending scene implies it's going to be prostitution or even dating, because she's meeting that unknown guy in the middle of the day. It being a job interview is way more likely than anything else

Respect for the maturity from this manga. Shigisawa not only set boundaries and maintained them, she also has a female friend she's out to (and who seems to be lesbian too) AND that friend gave solid, sympathetic advice. Also, despite the reputation the author seems to have (personally I haven't read anything by her), Gotou doesn't seem to be a super bad or toxic person at all, she's certainly troubled and I can see how that might become an issue down the line, but she's not all that bad. Even if she now goes down a delivery health or whatever route, that doesn't really make her a worse person, if anything, it is just sad.

If you haven't read any of her other works, I'd definitely recommend "Days of Love at Seagull Villa". It's in my top ten manga of all time :)

I'd almost forgotten Satsuki's "EAT Everything" shirt, it's so iconic and perfect for her. Memories from better times~

Odoro Dorothy has written a comedy horror BL one-shot (at least as far as I can tell it's a one shot?) and it looks hilarious even without being able to read it, hope somebody translates it
https://vxtwitter.com/loveodoro/status/1700063926090916339