12 Days of Aniblogging, Day 5This year, I read two mangas with trans identity and gender nonconformity as their primary themes. The first, Fukakai na Boku no Subete wo, focuses on a bunch of vulnerable teens running a ‘girlyboy’ (scanlator’s word, not mine) café and navigating their identities within. The second, Kanojo ni Naritai Kimi to Boku, concerns itself with a newly out trans girl in high school, and her friend’s struggles to help her and also work through her own gendered issues. On the surface level, these mangas are very similar, both containing plenty of melodrama, angst, and painful exploration of gender. Hell, both even have crossdressing characters working in restaurants. Where they clearly split, though, is artstyles. While Fukaboku renders its characters with kind and forgiving bodies, the art in Kanoboku is often in direct opposition to the characters’ goals.Fukaboku stars a nonbinary protagonist who finds and starts working at Question, a café for ‘girlyboys’ or whatever you may call them. The other servers at Question are all AMAB people who present as female while working there for various reasons – one hides his gay relationship by passing as female, one just really likes cosplay, and one, well, really genuinely wants to be a girl. But it doesn’t matter their reason or intent of dressing up. Fukaboku’s soft artstyle renders these characters very fluidly. A change of outfit can really make the difference between presenting male or female, and even when the servers are next to cis female characters, they still pass perfectly and are visually indistinguishable. One of the main characters has an older sister, a trans girl who explicitly has trouble passing as female in the story. Despite this, every time we see her, she looks perfectly feminine, the only noticeable challenges being that she’s a little taller than everyone else and doesn’t always wear breast forms. It’s a cruel joke contained within the cutesy artstyle – she looks perfectly feminine to the reader, but some trait invisible to us causes her to get clocked.Overall, Fukaboku’s soft and cutesy artstyle suits its messages well. Exploring identities is a constructive activity, it never hurts to try and change aspects of your presentation and see how you feel, and gender can be quickly performed and undone, if desired.Kanojo ni Naritai Kimi to Boku is a different beast, coming to many of the same conclusions through the exact opposite methods. A character’s ability or inability to pass is not told to the reader like in Fukaboku, instead it is painstakingly depicted. Akira towers over everyone, and her shoulders and body are far broader than any other girl’s. Her girl’s uniform is far too baggy, and she’s very prone to distress-based blushing and sweating that hampers her whole presentation even further. Watching someone desperately try and fail to pass is absolutely miserable, especially having so viscerally been there. While Fukaboku is very clearly about exploring identity, Kanoboku has a slightly different angle. Instead of focusing on Akira, we spend most of our time with Hime, her childhood friend who tries her best to support her but is constantly strung up over not knowing how. From her viewpoint, there’s a lot more focus on “How do I be a good LGBT+ ally?” Luckily, Hime’s friends, family, and teacher all have bits of advice to help her. Stand up for trans people, but don’t speak for or over them. Don’t change your identities because of other people’s approval or disapproval, do it for yourself and the support will follow. Be there to help your friends when they face hardships for their identity, and in turn they’ll help you back. Hime repeatedly tries to change her identity as a response to other people – wearing the boy’s uniform to take attention off of Akira, cutting her hair and presenting unfemininely to avoid the male gaze. As her peers tell her time and time again, she must figure out how to change herself for herself, otherwise she’ll always be dissatisfied with how her presentation change didn’t make much different. As of right now, it’s unclear whether Hime wants to be a boy or if she is simply scared by undesired side effects of feminine presentation, such as being hit on by guys. Either way, between the unclear plot progression and Hime’s lack of results from her wardrobe shifts, the manga seems dangerously close to making a “you can’t escape the horrors of being a woman no matter what you do to change yourself” argument, which would be bad for all sorts of reasons. But we’ll see what happens! It’s worth noting that Kanoboku does have a character who can crossdress and pass to the reader without an issue – Hiro, Hime’s friend who secretly dresses as a waitress to cheer up his sister who has been facing the horrors of Female Objectification at school. To do this, Hiro has to put tons of work into his presentation, from wigs to makeup to outfits. It’s unclear whether he’s being set up as a foil to Akira or not, but either way, it shows that this is still a world where it’s possible, just difficult, to pass as a different gender.Kanoboku and Fukaboku share some central themes – exploring your identity is important, support your friends in constructive ways, respect each other despite your differences. However, in Fukaboku passing is taken as possible by default, while in Kanobuku passing is rather difficult, or at least out of reach for our protagonist, who can’t even grow out her hair because of her not-quite-accepting parents. With this major starting difference, it’s been interesting to see how each manga has unfolded, and I’m looking forward to where they’re each headed. On both sides, I hope these wacky kids keep sorting their shit out. ?
Dec 18, 2019 • Subscribe
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