Uruha no Sekai de Arisugawa

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Normally, i don’t like to review an ongoing property, but there’s no information on this site about this series, so i’ll try to fill the gap. Arisugawa In The Beautiful World is about a girl named Arisugawa, who hates men mainly because of her father and older brother. She’s gained a reputation as a man-hater all around town. One day, Arisugawa is kidnapped by a ninja with a complex about his feminine appearance, who wants to use her as a sacrifice in a spell meant to give him a more masculine body. Unfortunately, the spell goes wrong, and Arisugawa is turned into a guy.

At only ... ten chapters translated into English, it’s hard to judge the story, which focuses on Arisugawa’s struggles in her new body and attempts to find a way back to normal. The comedy is mainly body-focused, as Arisugawa discovers the woes of her new body. If she hated the penis to begin with, imagine her frustration getting a hard-on every time the wind blows. I’m sure anyone with a penis can sympathize. I’ve only seen this aspect of puberty addressed two or three times in fiction, and never at all in manga, so i found it oddly refreshing here.

The characters are delightful. Arisugawa is a perfect fish out of water, and sadistic ninja Kuro takes a certain amount of glee in being the only one to know the truth about Arisugawa. He, too, has a vested interest in finding out just what went wrong with the spell that transformed Arisugawa, so the two of them are unwilling allies. As a trans reader, i can’t help reading this manga as a parallel to the trans experience. I doubt that was Anzai’s intention, but Arisugawa’s discomfort with her newly masculine body, and Kuro’s discomfort with his feminine appearance, feel all too familiar to me – they are incredibly relatable – and i’m enjoying seeing it play out metaphorically in a comedy/fantasy setting. The other ninjas in the group play off each other and the leads well, and i look forward to seeing more of them.

Parts of the story do seem recycled from the author’s best-known work, Flame Of Recca. Such aspects as ninja, time travel, and an organization called Uruha all featured in FoR, and some character designs are similar. That said, the way they’re used in Beautiful World is very different, so it doesn’t feel like a retread of the same material.

So far, Arisugawa In The Beautiful World is a fun series about a girl lost in time and in a body that just doesn’t fit her. If body humor isn’t your thing, you might want to give this one a miss, but i’ve enjoyed it immensely.