To add yet another transfem review in the 2020s, I think that this manga is interesting in that it's just barely over the line of "does the text agree that the trans woman is a woman", but then it just constantly treats her like shit and sees nothing wrong with that. Somehow during every single conflict in this manga her transness becomes the punching bag - someone has to strip her or grope her or call her a man or say she's selfish for transitioning in order to make their point. Her girlfriend openly admits to still seeing her as a man and wants to stop her from transitioning, and while this is certainly not unrealistic, it's atrocious how the manga treats this is a minor relationship issue to work through instead of a "girl GTFO" red flag.
It's not that I never want to see these things happening to a trans character, but it's horrible when they're framed by the text as relatively unproblematic, and especially when the trans woman in question is written as just taking all of this on the chin with a smile, being perfectly forgiving and friendly towards everyone who does all this fucked shit to her without ever getting mad for more than one or two panels.
The cis women in this manga are written better than that, especially Botan - her arc is great and wonderfully complex; she's allowed to have a breaking point, a line past which she will no longer be kind and caring and giving.
On also there's a bit of a framing where each sister has something selfish about her, their own flaw that makes them hard to live with - Momiji is asocial and otaku-ish, Sakura runs away from all of her problems, Botan sleeps with married men for fun, and Kashiwa... wants to transition. With her own money that she earns herself.
last edited at Jun 27, 2025 11:16PM
