by Eleanor Walker, Staff Writer

Content warning: this series discusses topics including human euthanasia and suicide.

Perhaps inspired by the success of My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness and its sequels, Seven Seas has also published some other queer autobiographical manga, including The Bride Was a Boy and the subject of today’s review, X-Gender (性別X) by Asuka Miyazaki. X-gender is an umbrella term used in Japan to describe various non-binary and genderqueer identities.

This series is most definitely aimed at people who have no knowledge of LGBTQ+ or women’s health, as it was originally serialised under Kodansha’s Young Magazine umbrella, a seinen (aimed at young men) magazine. There’s lots of explanation of basic queer terminology which may seem superfluous for many readers of this site, as well as a chapter explaining periods, but probably needed for the average reader of Young Magazine. I hesitate to compare this directly to My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness, as I don’t really feel it’s fair to compare people’s real life experiences, but there are definitely some parallels to be drawn with the stories. Being queer can often be an incredibly isolating experience, and X-Gender tells the story of Asuka finding a community they can be a part of at local gay bar Poker Face, owned and run by a fantastic trans man known as “The General”, only to then have it ripped away from them by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Whilst volume 1 mostly deals with Asuka’s finding themselves as a newly out X-gender person, there’s a noticeable change in tone in volume 2. Japan and the rest of the world is shutting down due to Covid, and Poker Face, Asuka’s favourite IRL hangout, is closed. I did find this volume rather unfocused compared to volume 1. This is acknowledged by the author though, as they were finding life very difficult during the pandemic and lockdown. The chapters are much shorter, and there’s very little story continuity between them, they’re more like a set of short stories with recurring characters. I don’t like to criticise someone’s real life experiences when used as the basis for a story, but I do think that Asuka is a good visual storyteller, the panels flow nicely and it’s an easy read visually.

Overall, I’m happy this series exists and was released in English. It’s a good introduction to non binary identities for those who have absolutely no idea what they are. (I am a cis lesbian with many non-binary friends, and I acknowledge this is not a substitute for actual lived experience.)

Obviously this is only one person’s story and the non-binary experience is vast and variable, but I feel like a lot of readers of this site can relate to the feeling of not belonging in society or not being comfortable in our bodies, as well as the isolation many of us felt during 2020. For the cishet men this was aimed at, I hope it can be an insight into a life that’s very different to your own, but ultimately a reminder that we’re not so different after all.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 6. This one is definitely best read a chapter or two at a time, rather than all in one go, especially volume 2.
Character – 7. The General is by far my favourite.
Service – 7. There are some fairly graphic descriptions of the author’s porn and sex preferences but nothing explicitly illustrated..
LGBT+ – 8

Overall – 7