Yukarism

Seeing as this series lacks a review here, I decided to write my little thing on Yukarism. This won't be the most comprehensive review as I feel that giving people an understanding of the series is more important than presenting my own opinions Yukarism begins in modern-day Japan with our eccentric and wondering male protagonist, Yukari Kobayakawa. He's a 17 year old author who writes novels about the Edo Period. The curious thing is, he doesn't research the period. He's lived in. The theme of reincarnation is used well in this manga and you'll see numerous crossovers and parallels to the Edo period as Yukari isthrown into the period as his past self. Now this is where the Gender Bender element is introduced. Yukari's past self works in the Red Light District so there's some hilarious scenes when he's in his past self. Added to this is the addition of other characters who share Yukari's memories of a past life except theirs are more instinctually based then memory based. The story presents these characters and there's an element of mysery as Yukari tries to connect the characters of his past life to those that have been reincarnated. There's a few twists here and there but it's fairly easy to follow. Yukarism's art is good and the scenes that contain comedy are especially good with plenty of hilarious faces to accompany Yukari's bemused attitude. The area that the art falls down on is the more detailed drawings and especially far-away shots of characters. The characters themselves might look fine close up but they look almost unnatural when they're further away. I quite enjoyed this manga and although the English translations haven't yet caught up and are quite outdated it's still worht a read. If you like Gender bending and a simple, unique and interesting story with plenty of comedy added in then Yukarism is definitely worth a try.