Gender manga thoughts

These are some manga that are "gender" and some personal thoughts on them. "Gender" meaning ""gender bender", but that moniker is old and dusty and implies some straight unbent gender. Gender is wacko to begin with, always, the question is whether it's looked at or not. Also, come on, you know what "gender" means". Trying to keep myself to manga that are gender at large, rather than just minor characters, but really that's the only restriction.

I wrote a version of this in the summer of 2024, just at the cusp of my transition. Or like it had started but not really gotten rolling. In the 8 or so months since* I've grown a lot, not just physically (boobs and hips are nice) but also as a person. So all these are "new". Now probably I'll grow even more and then some of these takes will seem dusty, but that's a problem for future me.

*17 months if you count when I first publish this, and not when the above intro was written.

Lets get to it!

Ranma 1/2 is how it started for me, at age 7 or so (discounting Naruto's transformation techniques). It taught me two things: girls are awesome (if I didn't know that already), and you don't want to be one. This caused me to invent the concept of forcefem as punishment, which speaks of a cruel misdirection. It was kid me who needed to be force femmed, not the boys in my class, even if they were jerks.

Why is the manga that is decades ahead of its time about the girl being a girl, otherwise mediocre (I think, not my genre) netorare? And other questions posed by No Bra.

Past Future is a manga where the plot is very cruel to its main character, but the narrative is not. I feel very fondly for this bite-sized story, definitely one of my personal favorites on this list. Definitely not for everyone, though. (Keeping it short here, I could babble about this manga forever but this is not the place)

Ayakashi Triangle is a weird porn not of my own taste (the porn part; it is still cute), but it also features a canonically bisexual girl and her transbian girlfriend as the main characters. And it did this in Jump. One has to wonder, is the genderisms in service of the porn, or the porn in service of the genderisms, or is this a false dichtonomy and the notion that media can only be either porn or intentionally clever puritanist nonsense?

Stupidity and ignorance are at times welcome. They are the backbone of the egg fic, scenarios where two "crossdressing boys" blush at each other and we the reader know it is bona fide yuri. They are also what allow the tragic comedy of the cis straight guy who has been traumatised by straight women and can only fall for lesbians (but is not aware of this himself due to heteronormatively - he does not understand the girls who treat him as just some guy are gay). In Crossplay Love: Otaku x Punk, however, there is no "at times". The same heteronormative, cisnormative, and gender essentialist assumptions are held by all characters and the narration. Even if you try to read it as what it *should* be, lesbian jokes about heteronormativity and transgenderism, the text will actively fight you.

Idol Pretender holds the thesis "gender does not matter". Why, then, does every single character want to be a girl? I generally try to avoid attributing too many traits of a work of art to the identity of its author. It stereotypes in your mind what thoughts and knowledge has gone into the creation, what tropes they may play with. But here the author, just as my middle school self who held the same thesis, could clearly be saved by some estrogen. I hope she is well.

Love Me for Who I Am is very easy to read. In a panel-to-panel way, but also the plot beats. You could put it in a middle or grade school library, and the kids would be smarter for it. Then again, why are the café waitresses so cutesy? This is a general manga trope, that characters who traverse gender towards the more feminine, tend to be feminine to begin with. Not in personality, but their bodies, how they are drawn. This is a doylist issue to discuss in length, but LMfWIA gives a watsonian explanation for it: a character skipping meals to avoid growing... It is complicated, cruel, and personal to me, and puberty blockers/HRT should be available to everyone.
On another note, Mogumo feels like they started off as a pikachu gijinka OC.

The "pandemic" in Tensei Pandemic is not a body-morphing virus, but the realization that transgenderism might be something for *you*. It spreads by meet others who have already been "infected". For having such an optimistic and understanding core, the manga is rather stupid and mid.

Ookami Shounen wa Kyou mo Uso o Kasaneru is a beautiful story which is predicated on transphobia. It breaks my heart.

Gender manga is not normally a genre where I can trust an author or the work they put forth. But OH MY GOD what a relief it is when I can. Vae's For You, I'll Dress up in a Lie is not a happy-go-lucky story, but when I read it I can go happy and lucky.

Shitsurenshita node Vtuber Hajimetara Toshiue no Onee-san ni Motemashita is a mouthful of a title, and also a forcefem. A traditional soft coercion story; boy gets mistaken for a girl, plays into it because how-bad-could-it-be, and suddenly everyone thinks "he" is a girl.

What's with hetslop TS Manga, like Ore no tomodachi ♂♀ ga kawai sugite komaru!? The moment the author gets tired of the status quo and decides to genderbend the main character, it becomes more interesting. Is it that as a lesbian I prefer what can be read as yuri, or that by genderbending the teenage boy self-insert (as opposed to the romantic interest/fanservice other), the manga is forced to discuss gender more sincerely? Or allowed?

Sazanami Cherry is bad because 1. there should be hormone blockers and HRT involved, and 2. the boyfriend character serves no purpose. Real deal "what if transfems existed wouldn't they be beautifully tragic?" type narrative.

The thing with Waai!, you know, the magazine, is that most of the manga from it is not worth even commenting on. Kudos to Hachirumi Scans for scanlating much of it, still. Negative kudos to them for using the T-word as the translation for otokonoko, though it was default at the time. Accordingly, that word found some usage in my Swedish middle school, to refer to trans women. Alongside porn terms and occasionally "trans".

Sometimes compet is so strong with a manga, it tries to convince you its main character is "male". Kunoichi no Ichi is one such manga.