The Day of Revolution

"What would think if you were told you were the wrong sex?" One heck of a question, isn't it? Well, that is the question facing the main character of this excellent manga. Yoshikawa Kei collapses on the roof of his high school one day, and learns at the hospital that he is, in fact, intersexed. The way in which the mangaka handles such a delicate and complex issue, that is faced by many people in our ordinary reality, is a large part of why I love The Day of Revolution. Another part is how the mangaka facesdown another delicate and complex issue, and that is the decision Kei makes. Kei, admittedly having been failed in the information department by his doctor, makes the decision to go out on a limb at the age of 15, and become the young woman his genetic profile says he is, changing his name to Megumi. This is a big decision, naturally, and it brings it into a realm that I know intimately (which is the other part I mentioned a bit ago), transsexuality. True, as an intersexed person, Kei had a choice (ask any transsexual person why they chose that path, and you'll generally get told it wasn't a choice, but let's not get too deep into this, hmmm?), but Megumi does and goes from having lived as a boy for 15 years to being a girl. Anyway... Balancing two such issues so wonderfully while providing entertainment value isn't easy, but Mikiyo Tsuda manages it. Sadly, Megumi runs into her old group of friends on her very first day back at school, and she's forced to out herself to them (as well as a few others along the way). Her friends are, however, undeterred by who she used to be, one even directly proposes marriage then and there. This, naturally, freaks her out, and she refuses. The four won't be gainsaid, and they won't leave her alone, constantly trying to get her to date one of them and wrecking any attempts by her to have a relationship with anyone else. Anyhow, I think I've said enough for now. The art is wonderful, and the characterization couldn't help but be amazing as it's tied so intimately to the storyline. Everything came together, in my honest opinion, to create a very enjoyable manga. So, others may (and almost certainly will) disagree with me, and my scoring of this. But my subjective opinion, fueled by my ability to at least partially relate to the challenges of Megumi's life, is that this is a truly wonderful piece of work. And I certainly hope that you will consider reading this. You may even learn something about some of your fellow human beings, and what they've seen and gone through.

I joined just to rate this. Which means something happens in the manga to totally make it hard to enjoy. I'll do the first part without any spoilers. The problem I have with the manga is the representation of the character. It is immediately assumed that she will marry a man once the change has happened. While I'm glad this deals with the issue on genotype women with phenotype male characteristics, it immediately trivializes women and what they want in general. She is ignored and brings this point up continually. Allthe guys harangue her, including her new friend who herself is a woman, about how she must completely fill the gender role. She never becomes really more feminine (after telling her to be constantly) only visually beautiful. This seems to satisfy everyone because the main reason they are satisfied, appears in the ending. It was portrayed to me at first mostly, as guy finds out she's actually a woman and decides to take the surgery. Then is still attracted to women. SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER ////She//// becomes//// attracted////to////// guys//and//dates//one/////// All the time for most of the manga she is attracted to women, and is shown constantly her attraction to females is now trivial. So after surgery and still attracted to women, a guy proclaims that she is a woman and should be taken by him because he is a man so she is attracted to him. Before all this she was practically going out with a girl. Suddenly once he proclaims this her heart beats and that's the end of it. Never mind this happened every time she touched her girlfriend. Her hormones were already in effect before, she fainted because they were just increasing, so saying it's a surge of new hormones is not logical and so degrading to women on so many levels. I'd be fine if this wasn't so against the idea of Yuri. The men make light of her association with women and infer that it is something to be cast aside because it wont last. The one girlfriend is given many character flaws and is ambivalent after being an ideal significant other for the first half of the manga. Then suddenly shows character flaws once the guy she is to date is introduced. Why should a person suffering under this condition, have to be attracted to men after surgery which only changes her outward appearance and her girlfriend suddenly become unappealing? The story falls apart in my opinion at that moment. Why it's OK to tackle one issue and not support the other I don't know. END OF SPOILERS Edit: Aside from this main issue, the story is well done which only makes the bias worse and more intentional. If the main character hadn't been so staunch in her first belief I might not have felt this way.

Combining a real world thing like intersex and a slightly more grounded setting than a lot of similar gender transformation sort of manga ends up making all the standard tropes creepier than the norm is for the genre. This is a genre with a lot of extremely problematic tropes to begin. The protagonist's decision to transition is treated as a given and his opposition to the idea when they find out that most people don't do that is overridden by their parents with bad joke justification. The reason the protagonist gives for transitioning is that they wouldn't look like a man or be able to befully a man, which is an insulting bad reason. The sexual harassment by their friends is treated as mostly comedic. Homosexuality is never really considered to any real degree. Everybody just treats the idea the main character will date men and not have any romantic relationships with women as a given. The protagonist's wishes on everything is almost always ignored by supposedly supportive friends. I was able to guess who the protagonist would end up dating almost as soon as the character appeared. There are three characters who matter and have much of personality. This would not be a problem if I liked the characters, but I didn't. The protagonist is extremely reactive and doesn't make many decisions for themself without essentially being forced into it by others. The only female character with much of a presence in the story besides the protagonist is mostly there to pressure the protagonist into doing a bunch of different things. Her brother is characterized almost completely by hating being seen as not really a man because he is meek. Otherwise, he was really boring and without much of a personality. The gang the protagonist used to hang out with consists of interchangeable characters without any real personality differences that matter. The art was fine but nothing memorable.

This is about a high school boy who finds out one day that he was actually born female. (Hermaphroditism is the given diagnosis.) Instead of continuing life as 'half a boy', he decides to become 'a complete woman'. The manga follows his change into Megumi & then how she adapts to life, including returning to the same high school. There were a lot of really neat aspects to this story, but there were several times that I felt that the storyline was losing its potential. If this had been a series, I probably would have given up out of impatience but it's complete in twovolumes.