hontou ni sou omou?

Just seen the whole of Vol.1 most excellently scanlated by hashihime. Unfortunately looks like no scanlation is being planned for Vol.2. T_T Tried to look for it at Japan Centre, Picadilly and the Brewer Street manga shop but both hardly carry any Dengeki comics at all. T_T Well, I *will* be looking forward the anime come Jan 2006.

Anime on my mind has an excellent post on what’s not new about Kashimashi and Okazu has a comprehensive summary of Vol.1 though I’ll have to strongly disagree with Erica for once. "Hazumu couldn’t get one girl as a boy, but as a girl, has two." Well yes, Yasuna turned down male Hazumu but then becomes interested in female Hazumu but it’s quite clear from Ch 4 that Tomari has always been interested in male Hazumu but probably said nothing because she knew about his interest in Yasuna (which she also encouraged him to confess to Yasuna in Ch 1).

Hazumu’s involuntary and alien-induced sex change wreaks havoc on this little emotional daisy change. Yasuna becomes interested now that Hazumu is female. Hazumu is uncertain on whether she wants to reciprocate Yasuna’s feelings, although her residual feelings are still strong, now that she is a she. Tomari is confounded about how she feels about female Hazumu, being probably the only member of the cast who has trouble accepting Hazumu’s sex change (haha!) but also being increasingly jealousy of Yasuna’s increasingly pushy advances towards Hazumu.

Overall It’s fun and quite sweet. I especially like this whole concept of how, if suddenly the characteristics of the container change from X-Y to X-X, feelings for the personality inside that container can or cannot change.

There are two things that stick in my craw though. Yasuna’s cannot-see-male blindness strikes me as an unnecessary complication. An overly contrived and convoluted way that the mangaka is employing so as to avoid simply characteristing Yasuna as a lesbian. It’s going to suck so badly if Yasuna’s "condition" is suddenly "cured". Equally sucky is that if Hazumu is changed back to male in the end i.e. the aliens lied about it being irreversible and it was part of their experiment in the first place. It is quite scary how both these can be incorporated into a "happy" inconclusive (i.e. copout) ending with Hazumu still being fought over by both Yasuna and Tomari. *face-palm*