Idol Pretender

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I recommend this manga to people have read gender-benders before, and to people who are tired of a cut-and-paste RomCom full of sexist fan-service and unrealistic character behaviors.

I'm a big fan of the gender-bender genre I think it adds a really interesting and unique-to-its-genre dynamic that you just can't compare to the other genres out there.
That said, there are a lot of problems that a lot of gender-bender writers fail to work around. A lot of works tend to be sexist and blatantly unapologetic for it. As much as I love the genre for its potential, too seldom is it written with the potential it ... deserves.
Idol Pretender IS NOT one of those mangas.
It's so much BETTER!
It actually took a much more mature approach about the situation and the emotional effects of the bend.
Now it's not perfect... it is still a manga aimed towards young boys and it has a lot of fan-service that really doesn't fit very well with the maturity it shows elsewhere, and its humor isn't amazing either. It's funny, but not brilliant.
The thing about this manga is...

...It has a great message. "Gender doesn't matter."

And I loved that. It's not a perfect work of fiction, but it is SO MUCH MORE progressive than a lot of other examples of the gender-bender genre.
It never made fun of the fact that the main character, who used to be a guy, is unsure of whether he identifies as a man or a woman.


It clearly states word for word, that gender doesn't matter. I makes it okay for someone who calls himself a man's man, to love another man. It never pokes fun at the characters who cross-dress as men or women, despite the typical revulsion you usually see in Japanese media.


It really is very progressive compared to a lot of Japanese manga, especially considering that its a gender-bender, which usually only acts a a scape-goat for boys to get to imagine themselves as the suddenly-a-female character groping themselves and bleeding out the nose in the hot springs among all the other girls.
Now... understand that it's once again, NOT PERFECT.
It has those things in it too, BUT it doesn't make a huge deal about it.
THAT'S WHAT'S IMPORTANT ABOUT THAT.
It doesn't make fan-service the focus of the series, which is where so many gender-benders fail. The story, a love story... a love story with a rare flare... is the most important and intentionally aided part of Idol Pretender.

If you know anything about Japan, and you probably do, you know that its a very, very. very very sexist country.

I'm absolutely amazed that this work made it the printing press. If I had to guess, the only reason it had what fan-service it did have, was so that someone would allow it to get published (and you KNOW that the publishers think it's important to have it in their so they can target the teen boy audience).

I recommend this manga to people have read gender-benders before, and to people who are tired of a cut-and-paste RomCom full of sexist fan-service and unrealistic character behaviors.

Great… another gender bender manga… It’s almost like the authors of these mangas really hate men because it seems that almost all the men end up as women in these types. And then to top it off, we have a harem of boys and girls who like the character and each personality is pretty much infatuated by the main character. But anyway, I drew the short straw of the randomizer (I sometimes use that to figure out what I will be reading or watching next) so now I have to dive right in.

I’m sorry to bring this up but isn’t it really bad when there ... are guys really going for the centerfolds of a woman that used to be a man? That’s the type of manga this is, and its worse when there are a ton of times you see her naked, in sexy poses and such to. I feel like it’s another side of Yaoi that I’m not so sure about… or is it Yuri when there is a woman you like is a male who has turned into a female? The whole thing confuses me to no end. Not to mention that the story pretty much ran its course of Chinami starting to act more and more like a love sick girl to a point I was getting recaps of Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl. Seriously, it was enough for me to want to bang my head against the ground when almost every single character kept chanting the same thing of it not mattering weather someone is a boy or girl, it only matters what’s on the inside. I mean, I go by that idea too in a sense but it really didn’t apply all that well with this type of story.

Characters pretty much had only one thing on their mind the whole time, and their personalities only grew a little, if not at all. The only character that grew a lot and had anything going for them was Chinami and even then I felt they milked the feelings part a little too much. It was just too much for what they were trying to do. I could see it if there was a little more to get me interested but the character flip flopped way to much and again, I wanted to hit my head against the table in a fit of annoyance.

The artwork is beautiful but very moe. Everything looks like it has a really strong shine to it like the characters are made from plastic. Characters have really childish faces, large glass-like eyes, and small faces. If you really want to think of what its like, think Lucky Star goes ecchi. With that, Chinami is actually supposed to be a really sexy women and everything but I can’t get past her looking like a little girl. Not to mention her breasts look a bit too big for the body she has. Her hourglass figure just feels like the proportions are off in some areas. Her hair is almost always a mess to and I don’t think that if she was going to be trying to be an idol, she would leave her hair like that. They look much more like clomps of tentacles going every which way then hair.

The story began with the protagonist being macho and Uber manly. Then suddenly with a dose of girly drugs he became extremely sexy and lost all of his muscle mass. To make matters worse he had a huge crush on some chick. Yet he still tries to pursue her as a girl.

It's been years since I read Idol Pretender. The logic in this manga blows me away. His pursuits worked out in his favor but the girl he had a crush on became creepier.

As a job or a joke he became an idol, the opposite of an extremely masculine man and admitted something in the ... end that disappointed me greatly.