Archive for the Guest Review Category


Dear Noman, Volume 1 – Guest Review by Luce

May 12th, 2021

Welcome to another Guest Review Wednesday here on Okazu! Today we have a new Guest Reviewer, Luce, who is going to take us through a series I haven’t even had a chance to look at, so yay, I’m totally ready to learn something new. ^_^ Please give Luce you attention and consideration!

I’m Luce, long-time follower of this blog, and I own too many Yuri manga. Not that that’s much of a bad thing, though… I can be found as silverliningslurk on Tumblr, and farfetched #1235 on discord. Anyway, on with the review!

Mashiro is ostensibly a normal school girl—except she can see ghosts and spirits. After a terrifying encounter with one, she meets Bazu, a crow Noman (the name this series gives to anything not living) and Nelly, who both work for the Border Preservation Society. Due to an accidental bond (read: kiss) with the vitriolic Bazu, Mashiro ends up deciding to work with them to bring Nomans to peace and prevent them eating souls.

There are likely a good many series that deal with a supernaturally gifted human teaming up with a supernatural being to fight monsters, and I doubt this series will do anything new, per se. We have the initial monster, the one the new girl manages to talk around from violence, and the more obviously sentient one. I haven’t read too many of these, so it’s not a tired trope for me. It’s interesting enough, even if the grading system the Society uses for these monsters confuses me somewhat. I hope future volumes will shed some light on it.

What is probably slightly more novel is a canon lesbian. Well, at least one. It’s not the happiest of stories though, as she is a Noman… But it is possible it could take a turn for the better. Another character states that her death happened at least a few years ago, and says that things have ‘changed for the better’. Not that that helps her much, at the moment. This volume leaves that story on something of a cliffhanger, albeit a low stakes one, so we’ll have to find out in the next volume. As for being yuri between the main characters, it has potential. The only problem is the visual age gap. I say visual because Bazu, being a crow Noman, doesn’t have a stated age, and clearly didn’t age by human standards whilst alive, so it’s hard to tell. Her body is most definitely adult, while Mashiro says she is fourteen, and looks younger partly because she’s small, and partly because she’s drawn to look young. Age is a funny thing in manga anyway.

Quite a lot happens here, although the pacing didn’t feel rushed to me. I’m curious to see what happens with the lesbian noman, and with what I imagine to be foreshadowing, in that Mashiro frequently writes letters to her deceased older sister. I also want to see Bazu and Mashiro evolve and grow, regardless of whatever it will turn into a relationship or not. Bazu is pretty harsh and aggressive initially, although we see later than she has a good reason for her hatred. Mashiro is a little naive, and perhaps blunt, but she does genuinely care about Bazu, and wants to learn more about her. I’m intrigued to see the effect they have on each other.

All in all, for a series that looks like it could be quite light, it gets surprisingly dark, but it balances these quite well. I like it, and I’m looking forward to the second volume, slated to come out in English from Yen Press in June.

Art – 6
Story – 7
Characters – 7
Service – Bazu has, to borrow another character’s comment from a different series, ‘some mad cleavage’. It is, thankfully, not used in a servicey way, and there aren’t many lingering close ups. I’d say 3.
Yuri – there are kisses between women. They don’t mean a great lot emotionally… Until they do? We shall see. Canon lesbian puts it up to 5.

Overall – 7

Erica here: Sounds like it could be worth a read. Thank you very much for the fab review! This series reminds me a bit of Ghost Talker’s Daydream, with it’s tragic lesbians. ^_^;

You can find Dear Noman, Volume 1 on Amazon, Comixology/Kindle, RightStuf, Global Bookwalker and manga stores near you!





Battle Athletes OVA/TV Anime Complete Blu-Ray set, Guest Review by Eric P.

February 3rd, 2021

Happy Wednesday and welcome to another Guest Review Wednesday here on Okazu! Today we welcome back our long-time friend and Guest Reviewer, Eric P. It’s always a pleasure to have him here and today he’s going to take a look at the new release of Battle Athletes Complete TV Series & OVA Blu-Ray! As always, please give him a warm welcome back. Take it away Eric!

Set in the far-off future of 4999, Battle Athletes centers on young Akari Kanzaki who follows in her legendary mother’s footsteps.To do this, she attends University Satellite to compete in various sports tournaments for the top title of Cosmic Beauty, meeting different people along the way and growing up as both an athlete and person. That is the basic story  for the 6-episode OVA, while the TV version, Battle Athletes Victory, included far more elements in order to fill out its 26-episode length. In the TV-length series, Akari’s journey starts with her training to be a contender for University Satellite, followed by the actual Cosmic Beauty competition.  Everything culminates with—Akari and the other athletes fighting to protect Earth from an alien invasion. Turns out Cosmic Beauty was a front in searching for the best athletes to help decide Earth’s fate by tournaments, like a bloodless version of Mortal Kombat.

If that last part sounded goofy, it is, but it still works in its strange way. The TV version is sillier in nature than the OVA, with the humor driving much of the plot (the big revelation of Akari’s mother in the third act still makes me chuckle—it is something neither the characters or the viewers could ever see coming). Some viewers may better appreciate the more focused storytelling of the OVA with its minimal episode count, along with its more solid characterization. Akari herself develops at the right pace for the protagonist she is supposed to be, whereas in the TV version she is more likely to test viewers’ patience. As a consequence of having multiple episodes to pad the time out with, Akari struggles that much longer to come into her own. The real reason she is deemed special by everyone around her is due to her mother’s blood, and it takes quite a lot in drawing out that greatness like she is some kind of prophesied hero—which, she actually is by the end.

At the beginning of Victory, the one most responsible in driving Akari to be her best is her tomboy friend/fellow athlete from Osaka named Ichino. There are indications of something stirring between them as we follow them, but it never fully blooms due to their mutual denial. By act two they are forced to part ways, and the University Satellite is where Akari meets her new teammate in both the OVA and TV, Lunar-Priestess-in-training Kris Christopher. In the OVA, Akari gradually develops feelings for her that she later finds impossible to deny. Kris however remains a sexually ambiguous enigma since everything she does, including her kiss with Akari in the end, all get explained away by her religious customs.Victory is different in that regard, for there is no subtext in Kris’s love-at-first-sight attraction toward Akari. Her relentlessly obsessive pursuit drives Akari to maintain a distance much of the time for comedic purposes, although later on Akari does come around to embracing her teammate; if not so far as reciprocate her feelings quite yet. Once all the athletes gather to fight for Earth, as you might guess, we get the Yuri love triangle/rivalry that seems inevitable—the inhibited Ichino and uninhibited Kris have it out, with Akari helplessly stuck in between. Just as inevitable, the triangle ends unresolved, since leaving it up to the viewers to decide who Akari would choose was apparently meant to be part of the appeal.

This Sci-Fi Sports Yuri Comedy series was one of my gateway titles into Anime while growing up in the 1990’s. Like most Anime fans, I have watched several others as the years went by with only so much time to revisit old favorites now and then—then Discotek came along to license-rescue and re-release the complete collection in one Blu-ray set to be discovered anew. Originally standard-format, this is not an HD transfer so the picture quality remains the same as the original Pioneer DVD’s. Regardless, we get to have everything on one single disc including the special features. There is one other highlight that Discotek deserves kudos on—always missing from the Pioneer release but now restored, is the epilogue montage through the final TV closing credits, showing where all the characters wind up after the story’s end.

Having watched this series for the first time in so long, much of it still holds up well enough entertainment-wise—while some of the elements did not hold up as much as I would have liked. When I was younger, I thought it was neat how Victory was made up of a diverse cast of multicultural characters, with one athlete representing a major nation. Now I can finally recognize the outdated culturally ignorant stereotypes attributed to these characters. Some stick out like sore thumbs more so than others, especially with the conniving Chinese athlete Ling-Pha and African athlete Tanya, whose hyper-animalist nature will no doubt rub plenty of viewers the wrong way (she is more sensitively depicted in the OVA). Also, even though this series takes place in the far future when humanity is at its most advanced, a clear sign of the 1990’s is when the surrounding characters still react to homosexuality like it is something strange and stunning (and use dated language like “swing that way”), although Kris never views her feelings as such.

Despite the warts that mark it as a product of its time, my appreciation for Battle Athletes has not lessened, now that we have a new version. It is still a classic with charm one can only find from the 1990’s—one has to take it for the light, fun entertainment it was meant to be without taking it too seriously. Especially for those wishing for a newer sports-themed Yuri story to happen in the near future, there exists the original such title as an option until then.

 

Ratings:

 

Art—OVA:7, TV: 6 (The OVA being Original Video Anime, of course the animation would have more to it than the more limited TV series with the latter’s still/recycled shots. Either one is very ‘90’s, but not in a bad way)

Story—OVA:6, TV: 7 (The OVA and TV versions both have their strengths and weaknesses the other does not have, making it a matter of preference. I just happen to get more out of Victory, with the additional character stories and its inclusion of Ichino)

Characters—7 (The characterization may be more solid in the OVA, but we get far more characters and get more time well spent with them in the TV version, so it rounds out either way)

Service—OVA:7, TV: 3 (Both versions have it, yet the OVA is comparably more voyeuristic. Even without the scenes of nskedness, the camera takes plenty of convenient shots of the female athletes in their uniforms and body positions—it helps even less that the OVA version’s headmaster character is depicted as a stereotypical “loveable”[??] lech toward the athletes)

Yuri—7 (I would be remiss not to give a quick mention to two other athletes, Lahrri and Mylandah, in which at least one of them closely fulfills the traditional EPL role. Victory reveals tidbits of their complicated rivalry/friendship, but you will not find the same thing in the OVA)

Discotek’s Release—9 (If I had just one complaint—both inside and outside the slipcase the cover features almost each major character, yet it somehow misses Kris everywhere, while Ling-Pha somehow always appears twice. What’s the dealio, Discotek?)

Overall—lucky number 7

 

Erica here: Thank you very much Eric for taking a look at this now-classic Yuri series for us! I’m glad you didn’t forget Mylandah and Lahrri. They will always be the reason I love this series. ^_^

 





Assault Lily: Bouquet, Guest Review By Day

January 27th, 2021

It’s my favorite day of the week – Guest Review Wednesday! And today we welcome back Day – it’s always a pleasure to have Day’s insight, so I hope you’ll give them a warm welcome back and settle in for today’s review. Take it away, Day!

In a world in which monsters known as Huge (yes, really) present an existential threat to humanity, teen girls known as “Lilies” are what stands between these monsters and the rest of humanity. Riri Hitotsuyanagi, a newly-minted Lily, is beginning her new life at an academy dedicated to training and housing Lilies. Riri has dreamt of being a Lily herself ever since she was saved by one, and has especially looked forward to academy life since it’s a chance to reunite with that very Lily, Yuyu Shirai. Riri is particularly interested in being able to form a “Schutzengel” pair with Yuyu, a big sister-little sister style relationship that allows for mentoring both on and off the battlefield. But Yuyu dashes her optimism somewhat, as she’s grown cold and stand-offish sometime in the interim.  

And so begins Assault Lily: Bouquet, a series that is attempting to adapt a line of Azone International dolls with weaponry and short biographies into a cohesive single cour anime series. And that I phrased it that way may give the key hint to how that plays out ultimately, as while I strongly enjoyed the first few episodes as being exactly my kind of garbage (albeit with entirely too much thigh-gazing), alas, it cannot maintain that garbage truck pace. Instead the garbage truck stalls, it catches fire, and the structure ultimately dissolves into goo that really wants to kick some tears loose from the audience. And it even lacks the grace to do so using the story the shows launches on! Sure, pink-haired genki girl tries to melt the icy exterior of an aloof dark-haired girl is old hat, but it’s at least something, and that Yuyu is haunted by either a ghost or a hallucination of the partner she may’ve killed should make for plenty of fodder. I did wonder what the show would be about after they neaten up this problem in the early going and the answer is – not much, although it does give us plenty of time watching the characters bathe. The show does manage to remember that Yuyu has some trauma issues toward the end, but by then it is simply too late; I am bored senseless.  
 
Not helping matters, the entire cast is a set of cookie-cutters. Some are certainly even more distinctly lacking in life than others, but even with the ones I like, I can’t deny that they’re well-worn variations on well-worn types. That the show sees fit to print the names of every character on-screen every time they first appear in an episode, no matter how regular a member of the cast the person is, leads me to think even the production crew knew no one was going to remember who half of them were.  
 
The visuals are a bit more interesting than the story or the cast, but not in a positive way – there’s just some rather odd choices made with the visual presentation. Shaft is the studio, but outside of a few shots (including some in the primary ED), one would never guess so from how generic everything looks. The animation does kick into a higher-gear from time to time, but rather than doing so during battle scenes, its most often for moments where there is little reason to bother splashing out. Bafflingly, the show also insists on using CG for a tea-set the cast uses throughout the show, a distractingly bizarre move when it appears in scenes that are otherwise wholly 2D.  
 
People weren’t precisely wrong to smell Yuri fumes whiffing off of this one, but anyone searching for something substantive is going to come away disappointed; outside of suggestive shots in the ED, Yuri cred mostly hangs on the thin thread of intense gazes and intense friendships… and Kaede Johan Nouvel, who in a different show would be the evil psycho lesbian, but here is mostly played for jokes for her obsessive focus on Riri.  
 
Ratings:
 
Art – 5  
Story – 4
Character – 6  
Service – 5 (no full nudity but plenty of thighs, baths in crotch-emphasizing towels, and characters who enter scenes boobs-first)  
Yuri – 1
 
Overall – 4
 

I might actually be more upset over this not being good garbage than I end up feeling upset with shows that start out as Good before swerving off the road into crapsville! Good trash is hard to find! 

Erica here: Just a reminder to commenters – I know at least one of you has strong feelings about AL:B and so I remind you that if you liked this anime, you may feel free to express what you liked about it. We would be delighted to learn what you though made it good. But you may not be rude about this review or other comments, unless you are able to be very, very funny and rude. ^_^

Thank you Day for another insightful review. I agree, it is hard to find good garbage…and that this was not it. ^_^

 




Vlad Love (ぶらどらぶ) Guest Review by Megan

December 23rd, 2020

Today is my favorite kind of day – we have a brand new Guest Reviewer here on Okazu! Many of you will have noticed that Megan has been a strong advocate for the newest “girl-meets-girl” vampire series on the block. Her persistence was impressive and I finally watched the first episode – and I didn’t dislike it. But it seemed like there was someone else who deserved to do this review more than me. ^_^ So, please give Megan a warn Okazu welcome!

Okazu readers – welcome to my guest review series for Vlad Love (ぶらどらぶ)! My name is Megan, and I share my thoughts on Yuri and Japanese LGBT+ media on my twitter (@AnimeSocMegan). Let’s get on with the review because there’s a lot to talk about!

You can watch the first episode on Vlad Love’s official Youtube with English subtitles worldwide.

Oshii Mamoru is back with a slapstick Yuri vampire anime. That’s not a sentence anyone, including Oshii, quite expected a few years ago. But here we are, with Vlad Love’s premiere ending on an unmistakable mission statement: “And that’s how I became an unstoppable phlebotomist for Mai, my slightly peculiar girlfriend’s, sake”. 

Vlad Love’s premise is fairly simple. Mai, a vampire girl from Transylvania, runs away from home and washes up in Japan. In her search for blood she runs into Mitsugu, a girl crazy about donating blood but held back by her rare blood type. Mitsugu brings Mai back home, and the two form an arrangement of sorts – Mai gets Mitsugu’s blood, Mitsugu gets a live-in girlfriend. Mitsugu later sets up a school blood donation club with the help of school nurse Chihiro, which is how we’ll probably meet the supporting cast. 

Most reviews of anime wouldn’t include an overview of the show’s funding and production, but for Vlad Love it is worth mentioning. Instead of the “Production Committee” model used for a vast majority of anime, Vlad Love as a project has only a single investor: Ichigo Animation, a subsidiary of real estate and energy firm Ichigo Inc. This arrangement has given Oshii a great deal of creative freedom. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine Vlad Love in its’ current form making it past a more standard anime production process. For better or for worse, Vlad Love is no more and no less than what Oshii and his handpicked team want it to be, and this alone lends it a uniqueness amid recent anime. 

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet. This premiere, for all the zany slapstick trailers promise for the rest of the season, is relatively straightforward. (Vampire) girl meets (blood-donating maniac) girl, girl moves in with girl, girl sets up a blood donation club. It’s nothing remarkable, but the storytelling is efficient.  No scene takes longer than it needs to, no line of dialogue is out of place (other than the Oshii lore we’ll get to shortly, but that’s just part of the package deal). Without feeling weighed down by exposition, this first episode equips us with most of the information we need – about Mai’s backstory, both girls’ family situations, Mitsugu’s rare blood type, and more – before the introduction of the rest of the cast probably starts in the next episode. 

The episode and staff interviews establish Mitsugu and Mai’s relationship as the anime’s focal point. Mitsugu’s attraction to Mai is portrayed at this point as based on her beautiful appearance. As Mai’s voice actor commented, Mai flirts with Mitsugu to get access to her blood, but Mai’s feelings probably don’t go deeper than that yet. The task for the next episodes is to develop their bond beyond blood-sucker and blood-donor. 

Vlad Love probably won’t win awards anytime soon for pushing forward lesbian representation in anime, but there’s still some things worth praising here. Mitsugu seems more confident than many Yuri protagonists in her attraction, especially physical attraction, to women. An awkward nude scene is such an old trope Evangelion parodied it, but Mitsugu is completely into it. Another refreshing moment is Chihiro’s line about Mitsugu’s “first girlfriend”. This line isn’t a punchline, or really met with any reaction at all. 

On that note, one question going forward is the influences on the Yuri. The premise of a strange, magical or alien girl moving in with a run-of-the-mill protagonist is almost as old as anime in its’ modern form, and the series that arguably did more than any other to popularise this trope is Urusei Yatsura (1981)… the first 106 episodes of which were directed by none other than Oshii Mamoru himself. From the premiere, this sort of perennially popular shounen romance represented by Urusei seems to be a more obvious source of inspiration than tropes the Yuri genre has developed in the decades since. Oshii has said he doesn’t watch modern anime, so I’ll be keeping an eye on whether the show overtly draws from other Yuri works, or continues to tread its own path going forward. 

A slapstick show could be said to live and die on its animation, and even if the show’s slapstick side hasn’t completely taken off yet, Vlad Love is delivering pretty well on this front. The art looks a bit rough around the edges by modern standards, though this may be an intentional retro choice, but this is made up by the great work on expressions – I was never left wondering what any character was thinking – and the pleasing sense of physicality. The show hasn’t exactly shown off its sakuga chops just yet, but with reports of a solid lineup of animators to come, it looks like we’ve got more to look forward to. 

Before we wrap up, let’s go over the Oshii references in the premiere. The opening scene gestures heavily towards the likes of Jin-Roh. This scene and the OP feature a blond-haired doll tied to a girl back in Transylvania, possibly Mai’s sister or childhood friend, and the visuals imply a tragedy in Mai’s past greater than she’s currently letting on. One of the more inexplicable lines, about Fallout 4, is also an Oshii reference – he’s a big fan of the game. Another strange tangent, about Social Democratic Lower House speaker “Otaka-san”, was the nickname of Japan’s highest ever ranking female politician, Doi Takako. 

Vlad Love‘s first episode didn’t show its full hand yet. The show’s apparently signature slapstick is only getting off the ground, we haven’t met most of the cast, and our two female leads’ romance has just started. Still, the early signs are pointing in a positive direction. For fans of Yuri as well as oldschool slapstick or Oshii’s other anime, I invite you to join the ride with what is shaping up to be 2021’s most unique Yuri anime. 

Ratings:

Story – 8, unremarkable yet but well told

Art – 7, expressive and fun if a little rough 

Yuri – 5, early days but the intent is there 

Service – 7 by TV anime standards, Chihiro when she strips off doesn’t leave a huge amount to the imagination. 

Overall – 8 

Thank you for reading the review! I would also like to thank all my twitter mutuals and followers who’ve given me their support, and of course Erica, for giving me a spot to share my enthusiasm here on Okazu. This guest review series will continue after the show’s airing begins at a currently unconfirmed date. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to reading your comments! 

Erica here: Thank you, Megan. Your enthusiasm motivated me to watch episode 1. The highly detailed backgrounds, the fanservice and the comedy felt so much like Oshii’s Urusei Yatsura, with that pervasive “what fever dream am I watching?” sense that I associate with UY Beautiful Dreamer. (Which admittedly, I saw at 2AM while working 7 days a week at 3 different jobs, one of them a Renaiassance Faire., so life was actually pretty surreal. ^_^) We look forward to watching this along with you!





Love Me for Who I Am, Volume 1, Guest Review by Xanthippe

July 5th, 2020

Hello and welcome to a special Guest Review here at Okazu! I’d like you to welcome Xanthippe, who will be taking a look at Love Me for Who I Am, Volume 1 by Kata Konayama, from Seven Seas! I’m thrilled to have this review and I hope you will be as well.

Before we begin, I want to quickly note that this title has been polarizing and there have been some inappropriate comments made by fans of this series on other reviews. Therefore, I want to let you know that all comments to this post will be moderated. You are very welcome to state your opinion of this series, to comment on the substance of the review. Comments about the reviewer or any criticism of their person will not be allowed. I know Okazu readers understand this, but if you are new here, please take a look at our community standards before commenting. I welcome your thoughts. Xan, the floor is yours!

I’m Xanthippe, and I make comics about trans stuff. You can find my work at https://comicsbyxan.com/ and https://pandorastale.com/

Historically there haven’t been a lot of manga dealing with trans people, but two that I think about frequently are Stop!! Hibari-kun! from 1981, and F. Compo from 1996. Both are slice-of life comedies featuring a bland-as-biscuits male lead thrust into the mysterious world of trans people, and in both stories said male lead holds himself back from pursuing someone he is obviously attracted to, because they’re trans and he doesn’t know how to deal with that. There’s a superficial “will they or won’t they?” hook, but reading them as a trans person, you quickly get the feeling that they probably won’t.

These series show us trans characters from an outsider’s perspective. They’re surprisingly progressive for their time, though both still have plenty of problems. Trans people are used as a spectacle: the shocking twist, a source of comedy and drama. The mangaka appear to be working from a position of relative ignorance on the topic, and so there’s a sense in which these series end up working in spite of themselves. We get likeable, identifiable trans characters seemingly by accident, because you know deep down that catering to trans members of the audience wasn’t the goal here.

Love Me for Who I Am feels like it belongs to the same stable. It’s a modern manga and consequently feels a lot more progressive and respectful in its portrayal of trans people. The cis male lead is actually comfortable with his attraction to his trans co-star, for one thing, and there’s a lot less mining of transness for humor. But the outsider’s perspective is alive and well, and while we’re no longer being used for jokes, there’s something just a little bit fetishy in how the trans characters are presented. Like Hibari and F. Compo before it, I liked it a lot, but there are some caveats.

The main setting of the series is Café Question, a maid café whose gimmick is that the wait staff are all crossdressing boys. Tetsu, our cis male protagonist and the brother of the café’s owner, notices his lonely classmate Mogumo, who is assigned male at birth but wears the girls’ uniform at school. At his invitation, Mogumo comes to work at the café, but a conflict emerges when Mogumo explains that they’re not a crossdressing boy – they can’t be, as they are neither a boy nor a girl.

It’s proposed that the café could easily adapt their gimmick just a little bit to make room for the nonbinary Mogumo, but this provokes the ire of one staff members in particular, Mei, who is very invested in the “crossdressing boy” identity and finds Mogumo and their lack of gender perplexing. In what’s absolutely my favorite section of the book, Mei comes to accept that she’s a trans woman, her previous bluster having been a consequence of the deep denial she was in. While the overall story is centered around Tetsu, Mogumo and the beginnings of a relationship between them, Mei’s story is what stands out in this volume, at least for me. Mogumo gets the most focus, but by the end of the volume they’re still a bit of a cipher and it’s hard to get a handle on their personality.

Rounding out the café’s staff we have Suzu, who originally got into crossdressing to impress his boyfriend; Ten, who just enjoys cosplay, and the café’s owner, Satori, who’s a trans woman. She’s the character I most enjoyed: I can’t tell you how satisfying it is to have the wise mentor and most competent character of the bunch be an openly trans woman.

This is all to say that Love Me for Who I Am works best when it’s an ensemble piece about its various characters figuring themselves out. Almost everyone here is some variety of queer, so it’s striking how little these kids know about queer topics. Whether it’s general confusion about Mogumo being nonbinary (Satori has to explain the concept to the rest of the staff), or Mogumo innocently dropping a homophobic slur, it’s clear that they’re only just learning most of this stuff.

On the one hand, this would seem to indicate that the characters have some growing to do. But this is where that outsider’s perspective becomes a problem again. I don’t know the mangaka’s gender or if they’re trans or not, though they state that they didn’t know nonbinary people existed when they started work on the story (which, for a story about a nonbinary person? Yeah, not ideal). Regardless of their gender, this feels like a story from an outsider’s perspective, and so I can never quite let my guard down. Is Tetsu misgendering his sister out of ignorance, or is this an oversight on the part of the creator? I want to believe it’s the former, and if this was a story by someone I knew to be trans I probably would, but instead I’m constantly bracing myself for something to be handled badly.

Which is a shame, because for the most part the book clears these hurdles well. At one point Mogumo wonders if things would be easier on Tetsu if they were a girl, which leads to some experimentation with their gender presentation. This isn’t quite resolved by the volume’s end, though there are moments here and there that indicate Mogumo really wouldn’t be happy just being a girl. All in all, it’s a fairly tactful exploration of an experimental phase that a lot of trans people experience, but when Mogumo first wondered if they should become a girl for Tetsu’s sake, it set off some alarm bells to be sure.

And then there’s the art, which is well done and all, but there are times when the characters are presented in a way that feels objectifying and, to be honest, porny. The actual content of the book gets no more explicit than a single panel of Mogumo with their shirt off, but… I mean, look at the cover art. Just look at it. The mangaka used to draw femboy porn and it shows. It creates a weird atmosphere because the story is innocent enough, but that art style makes it feel like it could turn into porn at any moment.

It might seem odd for me to dwell so much on the book’s flaws while saying I liked it, but those flaws are frustrating because they drag down a story that’s genuinely nice and sweet with a presentation that sometimes makes you worry that someone might be looking over your shoulder and judging you. I recoiled slightly at the sight of the cover. I cried when Mei tentatively asked her coworkers to refer to her as a girl. I wish I could have one without the other.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 6
Characters – 7
LGBTQ – 9
Service – 7 based almost entirely on art style

Overall – 8

I’m 39 years old – the same age as the Stop!! Hibari-kun! manga. I went through most of my life with very few positive portrayals of trans people to look to, so I’d latch onto anything half-decent. I adored Aoi from You’re Under Arrest, even though she was a minor character at best, and not always treated particularly well when she got her moments in the spotlight. Point is, I’m used to making compromises with my media. I’m used to accepting imperfect handling of trans characters because those perfect stories so rarely exist. Love Me for Who I Am is a book with its heart in the right place, a surprisingly gentle tale of queer kids learning to be themselves, and I’d recommend it, provided you can tolerate the occasionally skeevy art style. I like this book, though I wonder if perhaps I like it more for what it could be than for what it is.

Erica here: I cannot express how excellent a review this is. I’m so very grateful for this, Xan and I hope to have you back again soon!