Rating: 4/5, good
I’ve only read volume 1 so far, but this manga is really cute!
It’s a bit old (2003), but I think it’s still worth a look.
I picked this up at the swap meet at Fanime.
It’s about a teenage boy and a teenage girl, Akira Uehara and Nanako Momoi, who switch bodies in one of Nanako’s grandfather’s experiments. They ask the grandfather to switch them back, but he leaves town and they’re stuck indefinitely.
Akira was always kind of a soft boy, meek and conscientious. He wants to return to his body so he can pursue his crush on Nanako, but everyone seems to think being a girl suits him better.
Nanako is an aggressive, rambunctious tomboy. She makes herself right at home as Akira, becoming a star basketball player, dating girls, and scaring Akira’s bratty little sister into submission.
The story is told from Akira’s perspective, so we see a lot of his doubts but Nanako appears totally confident. I think this is a really smart way to tell it because it highlights their contrasting personalities.
I don’t know if this is really a trans story… the characters aren’t explicitly trans but it does touch on a lot of gender issues, and I think the narrative is sympathetic to gender nonconformity. I think it’s classic body-switching fantasy and it’s a lot of fun, with both of the main characters discovering all the physical and social advantages and challenges of being the opposite sex.
The art is very cute and dynamic and the panels and dialogue flow smoothly. I would say it’s compulsively readable, my attention span’s been crap lately but this went fast.
Have you read the rest? What did you think (yay/nay)?
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