Mr. Mallow Blue

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"As long as 'I' remain the same and 'that person' doesn't change, I won't be able to escape this world."

Biological sex. Gender. Sexual Orientation. Three factors that affects a person's self-conceptualization and how they interact with their society. Yet when faced with the need to change oneself, rarely would one think of changing these factors. They are often thought to be set in stone, unchanging, and if even it were possible it is not thought of as desirable or even worthwhile. Indeed, many modern issues regarding these three factors utilizes the language of "truth" rather than "change"; 'discovery', 'reveal', 'coming out', 'correcting', 'real', etc. But ... given how important these three factors are to who you are, what if you were to change them?

This manga is not about those three factors. Rather, it is a manga about despair. Despair at one's interactions with society. Despair, enough to want to fundamentally change oneself. Shizuki Aoi was bullied and after dropping out of high school and living a long period of seclusion, now stares at a pair of scissors in his hands aimed squarely at his own body. Tsumugi Sakura, currently in high school and also being bullied, jumps a flight of stairs with the sole wish of switching places with someone else. And so the two protagonists switch places... with each other. What happens when you change places with someone and yet somehow your issues remains? Join the ride and find out.

The art style of the manga fits the dark themes of the story and conveys both the dark tones and atmosphere as well as the gloomy emotions of the characters. It can be characterized as the typical shoujo manga art style yet it draws enough from some manhwas and BL works to become quite distinct.

So far the overall manga has managed to be interesting without any glaring flaws. Interesting enough that I was driven to write a review once I saw that none was present in MAL. I therefore recommend any curious readers to give at least the first few chapters a try and be your own judge as to the potential this story holds.

38 chapters in, Mr. Mallow Blue is one of the best body swap manga series and one of the better romance mangas that I've read.

In a rare move in either genre, the characters are complex, interesting, and don't seem to act in strange ways simply to progress the plot.

In an even rarer move, the manga doesn't use the body swap mechanism to make up for bad writing either.

The story doesn't waste time on pointless flashbacks just to fill up pages--the flashbacks help to reveal more about the characters, and the reveals make sense.

Unlike most body swap manga, "Mallow" also doesn't rely on SA scenes to ... quickly progress the story along or rely on a bunch of fanservice to distract from bad writing.

As you can tell from the cover, too, the art is great, especially in its use of watercolors and, in some chapters, well-placed splashes of color.

Akaza Samamiya (the mangaka) makes particularly great use of facial features, especially in Tsumugi's and Aoi's expressions.

That said, it's a small grievance but, for the first 30 chapters or so, it often feels like the characters' faces look weird from the front--the faces are too long and angular, too short, or somehow both. The lips can look a little weird, too.

Again though, it's a small grievance and it seems to really improve in about ch. 30 or so.

Fair warning: There's also some self-harm and suicidal ideation in the story.