Story: 6/10
The premise of this manga is almost irresistible for someone like me, who is part of the LGBT community. In a world where the male-female ratio is equal, when there is an imbalance, a person will ‘emerge’. That is to say, a person will change from one gender to the other, on a chromosomal level. I couldn’t wait to read this when I heard about it. I wanted to see the impact that such a change would have on psyche, but it barely delved into that aspect of the story. If you are expecting a deeply meaningful, psychological manga with elements of romance mixed in due to this premise, you’ll be sadly disappointed.
In short, this is just a romance, pure and simple and it does not focus on the problem of ‘emergence’ as a form of psychological or emotional trauma for the characters. It’s a love story where it happens that one of the main characters happens to have been a male and the best friends Neo (was male but is now female) and Miyoshi fall in love after Neo’s emergence.
While it does deal with gender differences and questions relating to being able to love someone despite gender, it’s very…shall we say shallow? It also tends to be very stereotypical, which isn’t surprising given that this is from Japan. Still, it’s stereotypical enough to make me cringe on several occasions. I was hoping for more, but I did not find it in this. That is not to say, however, that I did not enjoy it as a whole, because I did. I simply wish it had been done better.
Art: 8/10
The art was very eye-catching, and is completely my style of artwork. While I’ve definitely seen better, I have nothing bad to say for the art.
Character: 5/10
This is where the realism of the concept of emergence falls apart: the characters. While there are scenes that show discrimination for those who ‘emerge’ the characters themselves never seem to have the slightest problem with it. It’s completely accepted by everyone, which is very hard to believe. In this day and age, people have plenty of phobias regarding Transgender issues and it’s hard for many friends and families to accept because…well people generally don’t understand it. Yet in this manga, everyone (of import) is perfectly fine with the 17 year old boy suddenly becoming a girl, even the person in question. The father is fine with it, the step-mother, the little sister, the love-interest’s family, friends at school, etc…they even immediately switch to using the female pronouns, something that people even today have problems doing that easily.
The only one who really seems to show any since of having problems dealing with the change is the love interest, which I feel is a very missed opportunity. It does mention that the Main Character, Neo, didn’t want to change, but we never really see that internal struggle. If we had, the manga greatly would have benefitted from it. Instead, it’s mostly just hinted at and never really delved into too deeply, which was a very missed chance for character growth and development. Overall, I found the love interest and best friend, Miyoshi, to be much more developed than any of the other characters. He struggles greatly with the changes in
Enjoyment: 7/10
I did enjoy the manga. It was interesting to read, but it left me feeling…slightly annoyed. There were so many chances for this manga to be an extraordinary feat of perfection, but it never reached that protentional. Instead, the manga focused on things it should not (in my opinion) focused on. Examples:
- When Neo came out, he acted as if he was fine with it. It was mentioned that he hadn’t been okay with it, but we never really see that from Neo’s perspective. We didn’t see that struggle from becoming a female after living happily as a heterosexual male for seventeen years.
- It glosses over Neo’s struggle with fears of whether or not Neo can be loved by Miyoshi, something I thought was interesting, but it was done in a very haphazard way, and resolved way too quickly.
- The manga never mentioned Neo’s thoughts on changing from a heterosexual male to a heterosexual female. If his mind was un-phased by the emergence, there should have been a sexuality issue. While the issue was addressed, it was so brief as to be non-existent. Neo simply comes to the revelation that the only guy he/she could be with is Miyoshi and that’s the end of it. Neo’s change to liking men is briefly explained by the amount of estrogen in his body, but even so it was a weak explanation as lesbians have plenty of estrogen as well, but they don’t suddenly start having sex with men because of it.
- The manga focused too much on both of them getting jealous than it did most other issues, something I thought was irrelevant. Instead of focusing on petty jealousies, there was plenty of other problems the manga could have focused on.
- Neo slept five years of life away, yet the impact that had on his/her psychological wellbeing wasn’t discussed at all. If a person lay in a coma for five year and suddenly woke up, I imagine the person would have a least a bit of trouble grasping that five years had passed without awareness, yet those missing five years didn’t seem to bother Neo in the slightest.
- Too many male/female stereotypes for my taste, which was shown my pretty much everyone in the manga, even by Neo, who should have known better.
I understand that to many, these many seem like petty, minor details, but they are the details which interested me most, and where simply not addressed or not addressed properly, which is a shame. Otherwise, it is a good manga. Once I began reading, I couldn’t stop, and finished it in one day.
Overall: 7/10
I wouldn’t say this manga is a masterpiece, or even that the manga is great. I enjoyed it greatly, and couldn’t stop reading once I began, but there were too many problems for me to ignore because of that. It’s one I might read again, but not one I’d give enormous praise to. Hence, I’m going to rate this as a seven out of ten.
