You’ll excuse me for being confused by what is really a simple storyline. When I first discovered Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl, I started at the end, then read the beginning and totally missed all the middle bits. Now I’m caught up and it all makes more sense.

Hazumu was a girly boy until an accident in which a alien space ship crashed into him ended up with him turning into a girly girl. Then the girl he liked fell in love with her, and the girl he didn’t know he liked, and who didn’t realize she liked him, realizes that she loves her.

So we have your basic love triangle in which both girls – ultra-femme Yasuna and boyish Tomari – vie for the attention and affection of now-female Hazumu. Really, quite simple.

Volume 2 of the manga establishes the backstory between Hazumu and Tomari, which I was totally missing. Now I can declare Tomari’s interest legit, where before I thought it a mere annoying plot complication.

The rest of the volume is taken up with the three of them having very romantic days during summer vacation, at the beach, at the usual summer festival, etc., while Tomari and Yasuna develop a kind of détente. A date between Yasuna and Hazumu gets a little intense, as they spend a day alone and Yasuna marks her territory again with a kiss, but Hazumu responds by running off to reaffirm her need for Tomari, too.

Will anything be resolved between them? *Can* anything be resolved between them? To be honest I doubt it. But no one is really unlikeable here, so we’ll just watch them revolve around one another in an unending gavotte until the center ceases to hold and things fall apart.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Character – 8
Story – 7
Yuri – 8
Service – 5

The story is not going to get better I fear (for good reason – the most recent chapter in Dengeki Daioh was mind-numbingly trite) but I’ll tag along until it gets unbearable or Hazumu turns back into a guy, whichever comes first.

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?