Hina Change

A body switching story that doesn't shy away from showing how people can use it for their own selfish purposes. The manga focuses on Hina and Ren, two childhood friends that figure out that they have the ability to change bodies. This happens to benefit them both in certain ways, but as some friendships do, they change and falter as they get older. Ren is now a popular student while Hina is ostracized and bullied. Ren has a secret, but he jokes around about it when he wishes he could be direct and honest. Hina is in love with Ren, but the feeling isn't reciprocated.Using this to his advantage, he exploits her infatuation with him and asks to swap bodies... and things start taking a turn for the worse. The series deals with bullying, codependency, emotional manipulation, homosexuality, jealousy, sex and youthful ignorance. The series is a quick and engaging read. The artwork is fine for what it is, but the story more than makes up for that. We get to deal with two people who feed off of each other in an unhealthy way. The power dynamics change and the story ultimately comes to an end. There is a brief epilogue, but it leave you wanting more since it brings up some interesting questions. The manga isn't preachy and it deals with the consequences in a realistic manner, especially since not everyone reacts positively to the events that they went through. As of this writing, the manga is still available for free on the Manga Plus app. This is highly recommended and I'm looking forward to Gaku Kajikawa's next project.

Despite not being a fan of gender-bending stories, I gave this manga a chance due to my interest in bullying stories. It may not be categorized as a coming-of-age kind of story or slice of life, but Hina-chan change is a good representation of what growing up is. The plot follows high schoolers and childhood friends Hina, who is the victim of harassment by her classmates, and Ren, a closeted gay student, who discovered as kids their ability to switch bodies by touching each other pinkies. At first, Ren used the ability to help Hina due to her shy and withdrawn personality; but after a while,he decided to stop after realizing he was only going to injure her. One day Ren decided to confess his feelings to his friend Makoto, who rejected him for considering it a bad joke. Sooner, after a session of bullying by her female classmates, Hina finds Ren crying for his love not being reciprocated, and she convinces him of changing bodies. After that, Ren went after Makoto and had sex with him using Hina´s body. The plot onwards revolves around the two childhood friends swapping bodies and doing what they usually cannot do. The toxicity in the relationship of this manga can be compared to the ones of other well-known stories such as Scum´s wish and School days. By showing how despicable and abusive teenage relationships tend to be, and how impossible it is to fully accept you are not happy due to the innocent belief that things can get better. There is, yet, a perfect character development during the climax of the story, which shows the growth of the main cast and how their actions helped them to understand they need to change and love themselves by who they are, instead of living in a fantasy or denial. The drawing is neat, as well as the pacing. But, as I said in other reviews, what I like the most is when the characters resemble the age they are supposed to have instead of having a 17 years old protagonist looking like a 40 years old salaryman. In conclusion, this manga may not be a gem or a work of art, not even utterly enjoyable, but it is interesting to read if you have free time and want to read something short and somehow catchy.

Hina Change is one of those stories about miserable people taking turns hurting each other and themselves and digging that hole deeper, and that in and of itself does make it fun to read, on top of the added bodyswap element. But despite that it still manages to feel really basic and simple. Definitely not bad, but it doesn't stand out, either. Honestly, it's just too short. Most of the issues I personally had with it would've been solved by adding maybe even just one volume and giving it time to flesh some things out. Wouldn't be perfect, but it would be better, I think. Thehighlight of the story is definitely Hina herself. She's terribly codependent and has no self esteem even before the story starts, mostly but not entirely due to relentless bullying from her classmates. You get to watch her convince herself that she's fine letting her gay childhood friend that she is in love with use her body to date (and have sex with) a boy who rejected him for being gay until it starts to break her. Then you get to watch her try and be the selfish one of the two of them and realize that she can't bear that either. Ren is the gay friend in question. He's a good deuteragonist, popular but riddled with internalized homophobia and resigned to the fact that he'll never be truly happy, but he's a weaker character than Hina. I think most of that weakness comes from the simple fact that he's not really the point of view character. The appeal of these kinds of stories is watching the characters both be miserable even if it's not exactly equally spread between them and seeing what they do about it, whether they sink or swim, and you don't really get to see as much of that unhappiness on Ren's end. It's made very clear that while he's ecstatic to be able to date the guy he likes (named Makoto) he also feels terrible for using Hina the way he is, and that this exact situation is something he never wanted because he knew just how much he'd be taking from her, but we don't really get to /see/ it like we do with Hina. This is especially true for the first part, when Ren spends a lot of time off screen dating Makoto. We get a couple glimpses of him to let us as the reader know that he's not as happy as Hina sees him being and that he is thinking about her, but it's just glimpses. In between the two parts we do get backstory on how Ren suffered /before/ the story started as well as some explanation for why he's treated Hina like he has before then, but it's not quite the same. The story would've benefited from even giving us one Ren-pov chapter of him on a date and letting us see his conflicted thoughts. Because on top of using Hina, he's lying to Makoto, and this isn't even something it looks like he really thinks about up until the very end. The second part improves on this since he's spending more time with Hina and she gets to turn the tables on him, but it goes by a lot faster and feels like less. There's also a brief moment where it seems like, intentionally or not, Hina's going to negatively affect Ren's image at school, but nothing ever comes from it. Most of what Hina does in Ren's body feels like it isn't used to its fullest extent, which is a shame. As far as I recall, nothing she does in his body even really comes to Ren's attention. Which is kind of wild given what one of those things is. When we do get miserable Ren moments, though, they are good. Despite hating what he's doing, he's so easily convinced by Hina to keep going because in the end he really does like what he's getting out of it. He can't get what he wants without using her, and the fact that he wants it so bad makes it just as easy to enable him as it would be to talk him out of it. When Hina sees him on his knees apologizing for what he's done at the very start of the manga, she exploits that and gets him to keep using her so she can keep him close. Even if Ren benefits more than Hina, it's good for literally nobody involved, and that makes it entertaining to watch. Though, the whole Makoto aspect is actually really glazed over. I, again, blame this on the shortness of the manga. But before the end, the fact that they're both lying to him isn't really brought up. At all. They manage to have bits about how Makoto only likes Ren because he thinks he's Hina without actually acknowledging virtually anything about how Makoto would feel about it or how the whole thing is even more unethical when he's factored in. Aside from how much it would bolster Ren and obviously Makoto as characters, giving a little more attention to the fact that Makoto is also a part of this mess, and unwillingly so unlike Ren and Hina, would make the whole story a lot more interesting and it's a unfortunate that wasn't done. Then, when the truth gets out at the end, similar to the rest of the second part, it feels like the fallout blows over too quickly. The happy ending, though a little weak, is nice, and I'm not saying I didn't like it or even didn't want it to have a happy ending for these characters at all, but Makoto gets over finding out that his girlfriend was Ren in Hina's body and forgives him for it very quickly. All in all, I think Hina Change is a worthwhile read for people who like these stories. I did enjoy my time reading it, and as much as I think its short length is a detriment to its story, it's also why I think it wouldn't hurt to give it a read despite its shortcomings. I reread the whole thing in one day the other day (because I admittedly didn't remember ever reading it at all, and take from that fact what you will), mostly during downtime at work, so given how little time it takes up, if you think you'd enjoy it at all based on this and the synopsis, there's no harm in picking it up. It's got a nice little moral about how being completely dependent on another person for your happiness for whatever reason will make you miserable instead, even if it's a little messy with it. But on the other hand, if you are leaning more toward no or tend to be picky with stories about people being terrible to each other, you won't be missing much if you skip it and probably won't get much from it if you don't.