Kanojo ni Naru Hi

*Some spoilers, be advised* Story: 6/10 The premise of this manga is almost irresistible for someone like me, who is part of the LGBT community. In a world where the male-female ratio is equal, when there is an imbalance, a person will ‘emerge’. That is to say, a person will change from one gender to the other, on a chromosomal level. I couldn’t wait to read this when I heard about it. I wanted to see the impact that such a change would have on psyche, but it barely delved into that aspect of the story. If you are expecting a deeply meaningful, psychological manga withelements of romance mixed in due to this premise, you’ll be sadly disappointed. In short, this is just a romance, pure and simple and it does not focus on the problem of ‘emergence’ as a form of psychological or emotional trauma for the characters. It’s a love story where it happens that one of the main characters happens to have been a male and the best friends Neo (was male but is now female) and Miyoshi fall in love after Neo’s emergence. While it does deal with gender differences and questions relating to being able to love someone despite gender, it’s very…shall we say shallow? It also tends to be very stereotypical, which isn’t surprising given that this is from Japan. Still, it’s stereotypical enough to make me cringe on several occasions. I was hoping for more, but I did not find it in this. That is not to say, however, that I did not enjoy it as a whole, because I did. I simply wish it had been done better. Art: 8/10 The art was very eye-catching, and is completely my style of artwork. While I’ve definitely seen better, I have nothing bad to say for the art. Character: 5/10 This is where the realism of the concept of emergence falls apart: the characters. While there are scenes that show discrimination for those who ‘emerge’ the characters themselves never seem to have the slightest problem with it. It’s completely accepted by everyone, which is very hard to believe. In this day and age, people have plenty of phobias regarding Transgender issues and it’s hard for many friends and families to accept because…well people generally don’t understand it. Yet in this manga, everyone (of import) is perfectly fine with the 17 year old boy suddenly becoming a girl, even the person in question. The father is fine with it, the step-mother, the little sister, the love-interest’s family, friends at school, etc…they even immediately switch to using the female pronouns, something that people even today have problems doing that easily. The only one who really seems to show any since of having problems dealing with the change is the love interest, which I feel is a very missed opportunity. It does mention that the Main Character, Neo, didn’t want to change, but we never really see that internal struggle. If we had, the manga greatly would have benefitted from it. Instead, it’s mostly just hinted at and never really delved into too deeply, which was a very missed chance for character growth and development. Overall, I found the love interest and best friend, Miyoshi, to be much more developed than any of the other characters. He struggles greatly with the changes in Enjoyment: 7/10 I did enjoy the manga. It was interesting to read, but it left me feeling…slightly annoyed. There were so many chances for this manga to be an extraordinary feat of perfection, but it never reached that protentional. Instead, the manga focused on things it should not (in my opinion) focused on. Examples: -When Neo came out, he acted as if he was fine with it. It was mentioned that he hadn’t been okay with it, but we never really see that from Neo’s perspective. We didn’t see that struggle from becoming a female after living happily as a heterosexual male for seventeen years. -It glosses over Neo’s struggle with fears of whether or not Neo can be loved by Miyoshi, something I thought was interesting, but it was done in a very haphazard way, and resolved way too quickly. -The manga never mentioned Neo’s thoughts on changing from a heterosexual male to a heterosexual female. If his mind was un-phased by the emergence, there should have been a sexuality issue. While the issue was addressed, it was so brief as to be non-existent. Neo simply comes to the revelation that the only guy he/she could be with is Miyoshi and that’s the end of it. Neo’s change to liking men is briefly explained by the amount of estrogen in his body, but even so it was a weak explanation as lesbians have plenty of estrogen as well, but they don’t suddenly start having sex with men because of it. -The manga focused too much on both of them getting jealous than it did most other issues, something I thought was irrelevant. Instead of focusing on petty jealousies, there was plenty of other problems the manga could have focused on. -Neo slept five years of life away, yet the impact that had on his/her psychological wellbeing wasn’t discussed at all. If a person lay in a coma for five year and suddenly woke up, I imagine the person would have a least a bit of trouble grasping that five years had passed without awareness, yet those missing five years didn’t seem to bother Neo in the slightest. -Too many male/female stereotypes for my taste, which was shown my pretty much everyone in the manga, even by Neo, who should have known better. I understand that to many, these many seem like petty, minor details, but they are the details which interested me most, and where simply not addressed or not addressed properly, which is a shame. Otherwise, it is a good manga. Once I began reading, I couldn’t stop, and finished it in one day. Overall: 7/10 I wouldn’t say this manga is a masterpiece, or even that the manga is great. I enjoyed it greatly, and couldn’t stop reading once I began, but there were too many problems for me to ignore because of that. It’s one I might read again, but not one I’d give enormous praise to. Hence, I’m going to rate this as a seven out of ten.

This is my first time writing a review, so I apoligize if I do a poor job. Despite that though, I have to say this is a manga I've read the entirety of, and could never find myself enjoying. So, what is it that makes this story so awful to me? It's the complete and flagrant disrespect and ignorance towards transgender people. (please note that I myself am not trans, but as someone of the lgbt community, this still bothers me) Story: I'm a huge fan of shoujo, and I kept seeing this manga around, so I decided to finally read it. I'll be keeping this short,and trying to highlight the main problems I had with it. So, we have our two main characters, one of which has just been turned biologically female. From the beginning, it miffed me how they started to immediently refer to Nao as weaker then before, and started using female pronouns. It's alright in the end because Nao herself was comfortable with it. I liked Nao's loose views on gender, and thought this story might be trying to say that people are the same, no matter what gender they are, biolgically or otherwise, but I could not have been more wrong. When Nao started being viewed as nothing more then a character to project sexual advances onto, it was...disapointing to say the least. What plays out afterwards is your standard romance, accept for the fact that the female MC is almost always seen as nothing more than a doll. I enjoyed her personality, but even still, this story can't really be saved by just her. Now, I'll be going into the two inccidents in the manga that bothered me the most. First is the only actual trans character. I don't remember much about her, except that she desperately wanted to undergo the emergence, and be able to biologically transition the female, and so, was doing research on Nao. Despite this though, other characters constantly refer to her as a man, and act as though Nao should be wary of her because "that's still a man afterall". The second inccident is the bath house story. The son of a bathhouse owner the MCs went to has just undergone emergence, and had went into the mens bath, much to Miyoshi's horror. They procceed to treat this kid as a female, despite him being very much still male on the inside, and act as though he should just get over it already and accept that he's now a girl. I think I don't need to explain while this is a problem. I'm not saying this manga is a crime against humanity, or that you're wrong for likeing and enjoying it!! These are all my opinion, and I know I'm focusing on the negatives....but when the negatives are this huge to me...it's hard to see anything else.

[ Contains Spoilers ] ( First Review For Manga Without Adaptation And Boy x Girl ) When I was thinking about what I should write in this review for this manga. I thought about the manga's story about how the boy became a girl and imaged myself in that scenario as the MC. Imagining my friend become a girl.. It's unimaginable in fact but it does sound quite humorous. Fun fact, just right after I finished pondering and I read the next page ( final chapter - around where their daughter grew ). The name of my "childhood" friend pops up as the name oftheir daughter, making me laugh like crazy and accidentally woke my mom up. Bwahahahahaha! What are the chances?! This is probably the most funny and coincidental romance manga I've ever read in my entire life. Okay, aside from the occurrence. The manga's actually okay itself and held the romance standard pretty well. I was actually reading this in the toilet instead of masturbating because I suddenly felt bored and boy thanks to this manga I think that I'd be able to open up to more manga now. Kanojo ni Naru Hi is, well, a pretty hot romance manga that does live up to my expectations ( because it was able to make me forget about masturbating, it's pretty adept ). This manga is also the first boy x girl manga I've ever read without any adaptations and I think that this is a good start. I'm planning to read more manga and perhaps review them and that's all thanks to this anime for opening the path for me into the world of manga. This manga's pretty good. You can read it if you want but at the same time it's not necessary. The only reason why i gave it 10/10 is because my scale is pretty low and pretty much anything that can make me happy can get 10/10. That is all.

Usually, when it comes to gender bender stories they're preoccupied with turning back into the gender they started with, however, this felt surprisingly refreshing in how quickly the change was accepted (in a way the world they live in helped) and because of that, this felt like a trans story. In the beginning, you can tell that this was supposed to be very short, like a few chapters at most, so there are some very small inconsistencies to the story when new elements are added, but overall it is really well done and the characters continue to be layered throughout the short 20 chapter run. The charactersare the strong point of this series and the reason you should read it. They're adorable and approach their romance in such a human way that it feels like a breeze of fresh air as hot tears roll down your face. I really appreciated how the series stayed focus and moved the characters forward. It genuinely feels like we got to see a full romance from start to finish. And it was a pleasant surprise to see a few chapters go back in time to when the characters were kids and strengthening their bonds to the point where that you can see how they would have fallen for each other. Really well done and emotionally tight manga.