Colorless Girl

Colorless Girl has more to respect than it has to necessarily enjoy. There's a niche microcosm of LGBT manga that seem uncertain as to whether they're narratives or how-to guides. These works are almost always well-intentioned explorations of queerness within various Japanese communities, but seem to sabotage their own potential with an unclear purpose and a muddied intended audience. Colorless Girl, like so many in its sphere of influence, is confused. What is it even trying to be? The manga slowly introduces an ensemble cast of characters that rotate POV, though it always returns a single, primary focus: the ostensible protagonist, Aoi. Aoi presents feminine in herdaily life, but was assigned male at birth. The overarching plot of the manga follows Aoi's journey of self discovery through her first year at an art university. All the while, time is allotted to various side characters who rotate time in center stage. Many of these Aoi-adjacent characters are queer themselves (though not all), and the chapters centering them tend to explore their unique experiences. It's a fairly tried and true method of kitchen-sink style LGBT storytelling, though admittedly more rare coming from Japan than the west. When Colorless Girl is in its stride, it tells a compelling drama about identity, purpose, and goals that feels incredibly grounded in a wonderful primary cast of characters who feel like real human beings. Where Colorless Girl always seems to stumble is its focus. The side characters are well humanized and mostly compelling, but their inclusion as POV characters in the first place seems to stem from a desire to cast a wide net over queer and ally experiences and not to tell a cohesive, overarching narrative. At least half of the manga is spent in the head of a character that isn't Aoi, yet these chapters almost never feel like they justify themselves. At best, they're mostly related to Aoi and/or the main plot, adding a degree of depth that couldn't be gained otherwise. At worst, they feel like wholly unnecessary departures from the happenings of the primary cast. These departures into the POV of minor characters always tend to highlight queer experiences outside of Aoi's very specific perspective. They're mostly well written and never seem to grossly misrepresent the lived experiences they're aiming to highlight, but they also never feel particularly compelling. Each mini-narrative, be it centering a gay man's perspective, a trans man's perspective, or a gender-norm-rejecting ally's, suffers from the same sterile, purposeless malaise. No story in Colorless Girl feels like it's exclusively designed for those whose experiences it's aiming to capture, nor do any feel like they're wholly for an outside perspective. Instead, in a well-intentioned effort to do both, Colorless Girl manages neither. Colorless Girl does not know if it is a manga for queer readers or for allies. It tries to be both, but only muddies its purpose and undermines its pacing. Everything is presented with tact and deep care, but ends up ringing hollow as an effort at crafting an interesting story. Perhaps if you're more inclined to relate to or project onto queer stories than I am, you'll find more to love from this. I genuinely hope that if you're a member of a group being represented in this manga, you feel that representation and that it feels good. It just did not quite land for me.