After School Mate

After School Mate – Spoiler Free – Recommended TLDR Story – 6,5/10 – 6,5 x 0.275 = 1,7875 Art – 6/10 – 6 x 0.2 = 1,2 Characters – 7/10 – 7 x 0.225 = 1,575 Enjoyment – 7/10 – 7 x 0.3 = 2,1 Total: 6,6625 -> 7 Story – 6,5/10After School Mate is a manga written and drawn by Kuon Umino. After School Mate is the trans definition of a cute, sweet, and short manga about coming out as trans, living with your true identity, and making friends along the way. The relationship between the protagonist and his family was particularly heavy, since it deals with transphobia at the highest level – being utterly rejected by a close family member. The love story between Rika and Satsuki – as it clearly gains the dimensions of a love story – is, although cliché, well done. One of the fun facts about this manga is that the love story never ends up being a love story, which may also pander to the fact that dating in the trans community is very hard – or at least harder than in a heterosexual and cisgender way. This manga also shows that coming to terms with your transgender identity is something that not only the transgender person has to do, but the others around him must do as well: this is perfectly evident in the relationship between Satsuki and Rika, as the former as to grasp the fact that Rika is indeed a man, which would render him as not heterosexual. The fact that he feels betrayed by the fact that he still sees Rika as a female is proof that sometimes, no matter how close you are to the person and no matter how you love them, it is still very hard to overcome the fact that the person is trans. This is also seeable in the relationship between Rika and his family: in fact, the mother already knew that Rica had a lot of behaviours that would affiliate her to the male side, but yet decided to launch a stark resistance to the acceptance of his son. In this sense, more than being a story about love and friendship, It is a story about the hardships of the transgender community, both on the dating scene and on the family side. Transphobia is still rampant and is evidenced in Rika's fear of using the male pronouns with himself in school; in the same fashion, he still has to use the female uniform in school, which only contributes to his dysphoria. After School Mate is a manga that simultaneously is able to show in a very simple way the hardships of the transgender community and to present a beautiful love/friendship story. The ending, no matter how cute, may still be lacking for the people who wanted things to take a step further. Art – 6/10 The art style for After School Mate is pretty average, although fully functional. The scenarios, backgrounds, and landscapes are completely average and are what you would normally find in a romance manga, being nothing out of the ordinary. Character design is also average, but the characters are easily told apart. Moreover, the cadence of the panels and the page flow are especially well done, making the story very easy to follow. Characters – 7/10 This manga is basically focused on the two main characters – Rika and Satsuki, a trans man and a cisgender man, respectively – and their love/friendship relationship. We are given backgrounds to the characters, and they are somewhat developed for a two-volume manga, which is worthy of praise. The rest of the characters aren’t that important and are collateral to the story, although some of them – such as the uncle – play an important role in shaping both Rika’s and Satsuki’s lives. Enjoyment – 7/10 After School Mate is a short and sweet story about a trans man. Although the trans community wasn't especially lucky when it came to good manga about them, After School Mate is an exception, even if it isn't stellar. One can read it pretty quickly and easily, with a story that is somewhat gripping for a romance manga, finding a story where one can relate to the problems of transphobia, living as a trans person, and gender dysphoria. For all these reasons, it deserves a recommendation.

Many things could be written about the ideology connected to this manga, but that would make this an ideology review rather than a manga review, so I’ll try to stick just to the manga elements. So let’s start with the art instead. Do you see that cover picture of volume 1 right there? It looks alright, right? Well that’s the best the art of this manga will ever look, and by far. The drawings look really amateurish, and it has this weird mix of modern-like manga with oldschool gigantic eyes stylization which together with not sticking to the anatomy much makes the art look really uncanny.It looks a bit like a bootleg manga, something you would see in a western work intended to be a parody of manga. The story is… not that great either. Again, if we ignore the transgenderism, this is a very barebone coming of age storyline seen in many run-off-the-mill stories before. Angsty teenager with le bad parent, “It’s not just a phase mom!”, other friendly adults that accept the quirky kid as they are, the parent “sees light”, the kid was right and it totally wasn’t just a phase. For the quirk, add whatever of a youth subculture of the given era, which this time happens to be the transgender. This manga feels like seething author writing their fantasy how everyone other than their mom agree with them and they work to convince the mom to “get in with the times”. The second volume is a bit better as it focuses more of the other deutralogist and his more serious family situation, but it’s not doing anything special either. To be fair, there is one element that couldn’t be written without trans being part of the story, and that is the boy dealing with seeing a girl as a girl and in a romantic sense, and then feeling bad because the girl told him she’s a guy. It brings an interesting question to the whole self-identification question and how it affects the others, though I don’t really like how the story played it off like it’s actually mostly the guy’s fault and that he should be better, move on and stop viewing the tomboyish girl as a girl. But that would be getting too much into the ideology portion, which is a touchy subject. To summarize, regardless of whether you are pro or anti-trans, the story itself is not great or anything new, and the art is atrocious. So the one and only benefit this title has is being a manga with a trans topic, which there aren’t many, and potentially affirming your world view (if this is something you seek from fiction and the worldview of this work is the same as yours). And even for this there are better works out there.