Yuri Manga: Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl, Volume 1

May 9th, 2005

Back in March, I reviewed a random set of chapters of this manga. Well, I’ve backtracked and bought the first volume of the manga to fill in my missing knowledge. I’m not 100% sure I know what’s going on, even after having read it all. ^_^

Okay, so the first volume begins with a picture of Hazumu being kissed by Yasuna in the classroom, as Tomari walks in on them.

The story immediately backtracks to some weeks previously. Hazumu is your basic “nice guy” type boy. We, the audience, never see his face, but when he manages the usual full-body fall onto classmate Yasuna, she comments with a giggle that his face looks like a girl’s. He smiles and says he’s always looked a little girly. Shortly thereafter, he confesses his like to Yasuna, who responds by bursting into tears and running away, saying that she’s sorry.

Depressed, Hazumu wanders off on his own into the mountains.

Where he is taken up by an alien ship and transformed into a girl.

Seriously, after reading this bit three times, I’m still no clearer on the motivation here, except to say that, it’s a “hand wave” that we must accept.

Since the alien ship approaching was very public, everyone in the world hears the alien’s broadcast, and everyone knows that Hazumu has become a girl. For the first several chapters of the volume, the media are parked outside Hazumu’s house.

Back at home after waking up as a girl, Hazumu seems remarkably complacent about his change. His mother admits to always wanting a daughter, and his father becomes a tiresome pervert who is supposed to be funny. Reading Dad’s “funny” attempts to sexually molest his “daughter” has led me to decide that I will start to carry around a rolled-up newspaper to hit boys who think that kind of thing is funny over the nose until they are better trained.

The next few chapters are taken up with crucial stories like Hazumu’s first bra and which bathroom to use. Bizarrely, we are supposed to believe that Mom, while out buying fourteen million dresses, has somehow managed to forget to buy underwear for her newly-forged daughter. Only a man would write that, I swear.

Hazumu’s best friend Tomari protects her from the media, just as she protected Hazumu the boy from bullies when they were young. It is *this* that makes Tomari realize that she is in love with or, at least, is beginning to fall in love with, Hazumu.

In the meantime, Yasuna admits that she likes Hazumu – who is confused at the news because, as a girl, she feels obliged to not fall in love with other girls…although she’s kind of unclear how to do that. Tomari starts to realize that Hazumu still has feelings for Yasuna, just as she realizes that she herself has feelings for Hazumu.

Hazumu couldn’t get one girl as a boy, but as a girl, has two. What’s the irony level there? Snort.

Yasuna also admits that, ever since she was a child, she has a hard time *seeing* the faces of males, although Hazumu’s was beginning to become clearer to her over time, and she was, genuinely developing feelings for him. But now that Hazumu is a girl – she can see her clearly and is very in love with her!

Yasuna comes to the classroom where Hazumu waits for Tomari and kisses her, just as Tomari walks in, thus bringing us full circle in a story so full of hand waves and plot holes that, if it weren’t kind of sweet and cute and harmless, it would really, really suck. ^_^

But it does not suck. It’s just sort of silly and stupid and yeah. ;-)

Ratings:

Art – 8
Characters – 7
Story – 5
Yuri- 9

Overall – 7

Anyway, I guess I’ll *have* to get the next volume and see what happens, huh?

6 Responses

  1. Anonymous says:

    I liked this one, too. Although the spaceship-turned-girl who is falling in love with Hazumu and goes “puu~!” all the time annoys me, I’m not sure why. Also the teacher who is always talking about how she’s 35 and can’t get a date. Although it is cute how she protects her students. Actually, all the hijinks with the aliens and their spying on Hazumu, coming to teach at her school, etc. kind of fell flat with me.

    I *think* the alien thing was some sort of apology for some sort of screw-up they made. They’d been observing/experimenting/whatever on Earth or something and slipped up. My memory is a little fuzzy on that, though, sorry.

    When Yasuna turns Hazumu down the first time, she also says it’s because he’s not a girl. At the time, I thought that was a big clue she might be gay, but then later we find out that she was already falling for Hazumu when he was a boy, so…

    The father creeped me out. Big surprise there, huh? ;)

    I must confess, I kind of liked the bra shopping scene, even though, as you pointed out, the reasoning behind it was very flimsy. And what I want to know is, if Hazumu’s mother already dressed him up as a girl when he was a boy, why is she suddenly excited about being able to do it now?

    Okay, I think that’s about it. Sorry for the long comment!

    –Erin

  2. punistation says:

    “Only a man would write that, I swear.”

    I always thought only guys say “panties”, but I guess it’s just an Australian thing, because the Internet’s proven me wrong.

    Hmm.

    Kisses XXOOXX
    Jen

  3. Anonymous says:

    I Think that is gonna be an Anime too…
    http://anidb.info/perl-bin/animedb.pl?show=anime&aid=2843
    really why dont they animemate at least a good story…?
    I think is too much to ask…

  4. Bottle says:

    In its official website, it said that the anime will start next Jan. The vol. 2 is out, but I haven’t read it yet… Need the translation.

  5. Kat says:

    This story might not be the best but when I was reading through every single gender bender story I could get my hands on without knowing why excactly (obviously cause I’m trans, but young me was dumb), it felt really nice to see a story like this.

    I was always sad to see that almost universally, stories that played around with gender would go one of two ways, the character remains a boy at heart and works to go back or refute femininity, or starts dating a guy thus concluding her storyline, truly thy hath become a true girl when you lie with man I guess.

    This story always spoke to me tremendously because I knew I desperatly wanted to be a girl but never felt like I liked guys and this is one of the, if not the only example of a story like this that I consider well… readable.

    It’s not like it means anything, I just felt like saying that this really did help me through my formative years, even if I didn’t fully comprehend WHY yet.

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