Ranked #2476

The Change! (Manga)

This is a brilliant manga that I don't believe has gained the credit it deserves. As the summary states, it's mostly about the cross dressing of a boy and a girl, and the various misadventures that they encounter while doing so... It sounds rather cliche, doesn't it? Not worth reading?

It just so happens that it is bloody spectacular.
The story is set in the past, in the Court of the Emperor in Ancient Japan. First off, I want to say I know absolutely NOTHING about Japanese history, but it seemed pretty accurate to me.
It gave me a taste of the ongoing in court life, the gossiping, backstabbing and pampering. Everyone wearing the period clothes, all detailed with flowers and swirls was just brilliant eye-candy for me. (At least to me, it was periodic. I say again, I wouldn't know period clothes from a Jabberwocky)

I thought the plot was good, though the ending could have done with a epilogue to tidy it up a bit. Usually in manga (Particularly in Shoujo manga) I get bored by events that just go on and on. People never seem to know when to finish a plot. I found this manga very fun though, and I wasn't bored for a moment. The situations, I think, were just brilliant. While they weren't extremely original or unpredictable, but they made me laugh every single time.

Just to make it clear, the manga isn't remotely serious. The manga-ka loves to make hilarious faces, make people faint and swoon, and add eccentric or clueless characters. I think nearly everyone fainted or got sick at some point... Though it was of a great comedic factor.

A lot of the manga today are lacking plot and have too many brainless people, or characters with the sole purpose of looking cool or giving off sex appeal. This is a rather old manga, and thus it seems to avoid some of the more modern mistakes. It doesn't escape having lots of bishounen men, but no one is complaining.
I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who wants to see a bit of Historical Japanese eye-candy and have a lot of laughs while doing so!
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I'm very surprised no one has reviewed this manga yet. It was really a fascinating read. Although it starts out comically, with the siblings switching genders for relatively frivolous reasons, it really shows the far-reaching consequences of their actions. The main character is intelligent, energetic, and naive but at the same time able to masquerade quite believably as a man. So although those adjectives sound like she would be your typical shoujo heroine, she is really something unique and quite a fascinating character. Another thing I really liked is that although there was a great deal of drama and the main character was often in distress, it was over situations that you don't often see in a normal shoujo and I didn't have the feeling that problems were dragged out to make the story longer. The art wasn't anything special, but the characters were attractive and to my totally untrained eye appeared to be entirely in period dress, which was fun. My only complaint is that I would have liked to see an epilogue, but other than that the story was immensely satisfying and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in historical or gender-bending shoujo. read more