To add my cent to this discussion (I can't add two cents; I'm not that mentally wealthy): I've seen a few gender-bent stories where a male is transformed physically into a female, but the internal monologue of the character still presents as male. In English translations I can only assume we've lost some masculine pronouns (this is an assumption since I don't know Japanese and cannot confirm), but more specifically, this is shown in the artwork: internal thoughts will be associated with a rendering of the character as they were in their male form. To me, this ... kind of communicates that the character sees themself as a male, and if that is their identity, that is what they are, regardless of what they look like.
Though, I suppose one could also read it as... the way a character is introduced is meant to be a sort of identifier that will carry through the narrative; where that identifier appears, the story is communicating to the audience "this is that character". If that identifier ever changes, it could be confusing. For a gender-bent narrative especially, it could reinforce the trope that the character is gender-bent; if a male-to-female bent character ever switches their internal identity to female .... then ... they're not a gender-bent character anymore; they're ...... just a female .... who didn't start out that way. The story would stop being a "gender-bent" story and transition (hah) into a different type of story.
Is it still yuri if a male-to-female gender-bent character identifies as male? Is it still yuri if the artwork is female-female but the narrative relies on the identities of the characters being male-female? Are all labels ultimately arbitrary, malleable, and confusing when overanalyzed?!
Hiya. Sorry if this gets a bit rambly. There definitely are a lot of stories where the genderbent character just remains the man they were on the inside, but there definitely are a lot where even with the use of masculine pronouns, their gender identity can't really be placed into one definitive category.(I think this is the case for this series as well. During the translation I made sure to mark all uses of pronouns with the ♂♀ symbols. If they aren't present it's because Japanese simply does not rely on pronouns as much as English does and there actually just wasn't any pronoun used.) It's also important to note that a character's own internal perception may not be 100% accurate either since one's own perception can take a long time to adjust(For example, for me and I'm sure many other trans women it took a long time for me to adjust to perceiving and accepting myself as female even if sometimes I slip up purely out of habit)
Also, as you said, it is very common for characters to continue to use the pronouns they initially used in the beginning of the story simply because it's a genderbender story and that needs to be indicated. A really good manga "Ore ga Watashi ni naru made" (Until I♂ become myself♀) that focuses on the main characters self-perception after her transformation still has her use both masculine and feminine pronouns despite the fact that it's been clearly stated she completely rejects the idea of being male to the point that it's a serious cause of trauma for her. It would be pretty short-sighted to label a character exclusively as male simply because of their own pronoun usage even though their behaviour indicates otherwise(E.g. wants to remain as a girl, rejects the idea of returning, prefers the experiences they are now able to go through, etc.) As others in the thread have said, looking at gender as a definitive binary is pretty unproductive. It could very well be a case of a character not taking the time to ask themselves the right questions.
For this very story the title is actually contradictory, "I'm♂ a Girl in Love" has the main character use a masculine pronoun to identify herself as a girl, so how she perceives herself is murky at best. I'd go further into detail but I don't want to spoil the series I set out to translate so I'll leave it at that for now, but I hope people can look at it with an open mind regardless.
