I do strongly disagree with this view that nuance means being wishy-washy and permissive. You can be nuanced and take a strong stance. In fact, I'd argue excessive "nuance", is actually a position lacking in nuance ironically. Verges on, "there's always a middle" centrism

Casusby forbade me to comment here so here I am, because I hate to disappoint.

Honnestly, pleasantly surprised by nearly all posters here, including those I disagree with or those that are very angry. (Zesc your posts are so fucking good.) Looks like the classic activist shitshow. I won't add much to the discussion, just point a few things :
- "genderfuck" is a very queer term actually that is employed by very queer people like me in very queer places. I'm not sure why you would think it's transphobic or fetishizing - I really dont get it. I spent nearly a decade in the queer activists circles of my countries, where the more genderfucking you are the better. I'm friend with transmen, transwoman, and weird lifeforms that enjoy destroying gender everyday as a permanent performance and middle-finger to patriarchy. Genderfuck is our vocabulary.
- I loved prunus girl (and find Boku Girl hilarious) and I'm among the most queer transwomen you can imagine - HRT, FFS, SRS, but also tatooed enby short hair butch with leg hair that doesnt give the slightest fuck about how they're gendered. Most people IRL are so uncertain about my gender that they bug in real time.
- I do agree though that a lot of trans manga are perpetuating tropes that are harmful - but I dont quite understand why those would be the one quoted here. I pointed some in the past that didnt sit right with me, but honnestly prunus girl for example is very good at communicating a lot of very good and healthy stuff.

But overall, I'd just say one thing : nuance. It's what's usually lacking in social justice activism.

I dont like this manga, I find it rather poor in quality actually. I kinda liked it at first, but the more it unfolds, the worse I think it is. But is it transphobic ? Mmm not so sure. On the contrary I think "queer" and "genderfuck" are fitting. The manga annoys me quite frequently and some things make me thing the author would need the same educationnal experiences as their MC. But transphobic ? Doesnt quite feel like it so far. It pictures some transphobic acts, but it doesnt feel like it's validating them. Quite the opposite. Jokes are on common transphobic tropes, but are they communicating transphobia ? I dont think so either.

So that's my nuanced view on it : it's quite bad and poorly executed, but I dont think it's transphobic either, so far. Might change my mind later.

I don't agree with you much SillieHonka, but I like how articulate you are, and I understand the anger. It's not blind and stupid anger, so even though I don't agree with you, I can respect that.

However, I agree with Scorpion and Zesc in the sense that you should nuance your views a bit on this one. Being angry about something is fine (and I get how you would get angry at this manga - not blaming you for it), but you're not fighting cis straight guys reaking misogyny here. 90% of this thread is made of trans women. This forum has enough problematic people for you to get angry at - the ones on this topic shouldnt be your prime target. ;)

Why are you acting like some kind of authority? Like having your own opinion is one thing but this reads like you genuinely expect people to weigh your opinion over anyone else's.

Wow, That has honestly got to be one of the dumbest character motivations I've seen in a manga in a very long time, lol. Turns out slapping "sick mom" on a story doesn't automatically make it good.

I think that SillieHonka's concerns are more than justified and it doesn't sit right with me to be treating another trans poster like they're crazy for correctly pointing out a transmisogynistic trope and not being happy about it just because you didn't like the language they used.

Honestly, outside of the very combative attitude and accusations. I agree with a lot of what they said.

I was pleasantly surprised by the Kitano chapter, but yeah, it seems to rapidly be devolving into the pervy harem, objectifying high schoolers, type of manga I initially thought it'd be. Oh well. Can't say I'm surprised.

last edited at Jun 29, 2026 8:04PM

But there's no guarantee. Not enough to confidently state someone's handedness.

That wannabe detective work makes no sense. I exclusively wear my watches on my dominant wrist.

for what it's worth (could be nothing, for all I know) before chapter 32 (the final chapter) is released the author did reply on their social to some reader gushing over femboys saying:

“ありがとうございます！今後も頑張ります！
また男の娘を描く機会があれば見つけてください…！”

[google translated (feel free to correct any errors)]
“Thank you! I'll keep doing my best!
If I ever have another opportunity to draw a cross-dressing boy, please look for me...“

so it seems like the author’s intent could be that it’s mostly just a manga about crossdressing “femboys”, maybe even people who are secure in their assigned gender at birth but do enjoy crossdressing as a hobby. (I seem to get the vibe that many people don’t believe this can happen IRL and more often than not they’d just be trans women repressing but I digress.) or maybe the author’s just being kind to the reader who did use the word “男の娘” first.

Otokonoko does not simply mean crossdresser and actually can potentially lean more towards a trans reading than like josou danshi or something like that. It's actually a fairly ambiguous word at times that can be used for a myriad of amab gnc expressions. Including just straight up being a woman. Especially among those who don't know the word transgender. Of course I'm not making a positive statement either way. Just saying otokonoko doesn't rule anything out really.

I mean, "childless adult takes in a relatives child" is hardly a trope invented by Usagi Drop. I'm loathe to give that any credit. Lol

Honestly, I'm pleasantly surprised by chapter two. Normally I hate manga like this, but while I still won't call this a masterpiece or anything, I might keep reading it for now.

Platonic literally just means not romantic. You can't be both. Unless you want to claim that romantic couples don't love eachother in non-romantic or sexual ways. Which is absurd.

It's honestly a weirdly immature mindset to me. Like yes, the manga portrays it as being so mature. But to me it really feels like the childish urge to come across as so special and unique, "our relationship isn't friendship or romance, it's special and unique, you wouldn't understand, we are so much more enlightened than all those people who would just call it dating".

Self denial is part of the trans experience. "I'm not allowed to be a girl, if I really think about it, I'm still a man," etc. are pretty relatable moments in a trans journey.

Yeah, I know that, I'm trans myself. But as of now, I just don't think this is at all enough to say the character is meant to be trans and seems to actually be actively trying to turn down that reading. I've read more than enough similar manga that seemed way more trans that turned out to actually strongly deny that for me to think this is enough.

Personally, I'm also treating this as a trans story, even if it's comedic and not taking more than a few panels to explore concepts like dysphoria. Hopefully this'll help others understand why Hikaru is likely going to keep thinking "...though I'm a man" despite being very much a transwoman as it goes on. I'd also wager that this is why the author called it "not a yuri story" as was mentioned back on page 4; Hikaru is being considered a man, at least for now.

To be honest, I don't get why people are saying this chapter enhanced the trans reading. It looks to me like it's actually going out of its way to deny a trans reading.

Bit of a nothing burger really

Yeah, I gotta agree with the generic criticism. Also I imagined something way deeper than Ado for some reason, like, Ado is incredible, but not really where my brain goes when I think of a deep female singer, lol

also... not to revive an ended argument (i'm just sharing my perspective), but when you grow up autistic etc, there are a lot of things that just don't click for you until years later. like, oh, that's what they meant! that's why that happened! like the distance and experience ties up the logical loose-ends. it's not about blame or "who's wrong" so much as what's healthier for shou right now. what's going to help her grow as a person? it's like a kind of closure. yeah, these people hurt you for reasons beyond your control, and that sucks. but you're a little older now, a little wiser, and you can handle things better than you could as a helpless child, so you take the bad parts and learn what you can from them. it's not redeeming or validating the bullies -- if anything, it's making them even more irrelevant in her life and future.

Well to me, that equates to essentially victim blaming, and the equating of character growth with becoming more conventional and sociable is something I personally don't like at all. Though, it isn't really my only reason for falling out of love with the series. Just the general vibe doesn't do it for me anymore. Personal tastes or changes or whatever. Its not a big deal.

Yeah. I was feeling this last chapter, but I think I've fallen out of love with this manga. Oh well, it happens.

Yeah, this crap is killing my interest in this manga. It's a shame because I really liked it too.

I really wish I had known about that older manga, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten as invested in this manga. I'll check out next chapter. This very well could be a fake out. I can't write that possibility off. However, even beyond that, the sudden change in tone and writing style with this third character is already disappointing me, even if it doesn't go down a similar path to that other manga.

last edited at Aug 30, 2025 5:19AM

At first I was afraid this would be another Useless Princesses, a manga I personally despise. But, MC here so far actually seems way more self assured despite her introversion. So it may avoid the things about that work I hate.

About the versatility of the term between West vs Japan. Agree to disagree. Honestly it depends, when you read japanese articles about important yuri series from the past, Rose of Versailles is always there, never have I seen Dear Brother mentioned, even if it is “more yuri” than RoV. But then we have the resent discourse around Rock is a Lady’s Modesty in the west. It is a interesting topic.

This is why I personally increasingly prefer to just use GL. It doesn't stop all discourse, because people still argue about subtext, but I think it helps a lot.

I think it would be prudent to save any intense speculative discussion about authorial intent until we have a bit more material to go on.

This is always a super weird take to me, not gonna lie. Not just with this manga, but in general. The entire point of a first chapter is to get the vibe, if not the point, of a work across. The authors job in that first entry is to get people's attention, get them thinking. It's the perfect time to speculate if you ask me

I think crossdressing manga often exist in a sort of superposition where they're clearly trans but don't say so explicitly, presumably to avoid alienating a transphobic audience. That said, I can't say I recall many that are "very aggressively not [trans]"; most of the time they more sort of leave it ambiguous, like Prunus Girl, Koisuru Otome no Tsukurikata, or Misaki-kun wa Kouryaku Chara Janai. (Most of the time the crossdressing character's love interest is a cis boy too.) I don't expect the protagonist of this manga to explicitly say "I'm trans" or anything like that, but I think it's reasonable to expect her to enjoy living and being accepted as a girl, which is good enough for me. I don't think it's particularly useful to speculate about "what we're supposed to see the character as"; if the most natural interpretation of the character is that they're trans, then the character is trans as far as I'm concerned.

I'd argue all three of those are of the aggressively not trans category. Especially Koisuru Otome no Tsukurikata. But if some people enjoy reading it that way I can't stop them. But I think we should still be honest about what's being written, just so we don't get others hopes up, at the very least.

It's not what the character says about themselves but how the author portrays it what is the problem. And so far nothing the character has said screams "I'm a girl!" at all, they don't see themselves as a girl.

"If only I could abandon this body and be reborn as a beautiful girl..."

"Goddammit! I hate this! Even though I finally look like my ideal self!"

I've personally seen far too many crossdressing/gender bender manga, that seem super duper trans, then go on to be very aggressively not that for me to get my hopes up. There are many way way more trans coded ones than this that do this. Like one where the character insists they are a girl constantly, regularly wishes to be turned into a girl, and yet it still doesn't expect us to see them as trans. Forget what it's called. Anyway, this just doesn't have anything screaming that it isn't another example to me. Quite the opposite actually. Just, I hope nobody gets their hopes up too high