For an anime that came out in 2011, I was shocked by how progressive this anime was.
After watching Ouran recently and being disappointed at how poorly it tackled gender, I was thrilled to finally watch an anime that tackled gender and other LBGTQ+ themes so delicately. This feels like a story clearly made for a queer audience. That alone made it all the more enjoyable for me. While I personally can't relate to feelings of gender dysphoria like Nitori and Takatsuki, I was very quickly reminded of what it was like growing up as a closeted queer individual and the burden of holding in a huge secret. Beyond Nitori and Takatsuki, I appreciated that no secondary characters faded into the background; they were all well-rounded and each had some form of a character arc (Maho's boyfriend is personally my favorite. I love how deeply he cares for Nitori and how he manages to still undergo a character arc while arguably being one of the most minor characters in the show). While not every character was tackling LGBTQ+ issues, this anime did a fantastic job of balancing slice-of-life themes with queer ones.
Beyond the fantastic character writing, I loved the artwork as well! The soft backgrounds and pastels felt like an appropriate choice in sharing a story about adolescence - as young as the characters may seem, throughout the anime, they are each dealing separately with the consequences of puberty and slowly losing their childlike innocence. This anime really treats itself as a serious form of artwork, and for that, I respect it that much more.
Unfortunately, like most queer anime, the ending is a bit open-ended, and the romance is never fully-developed, but I figured this would be the case going in and am now reading the manga to get a complete version of the story. I wish this anime had come out in more modern times, as I think it would have had a larger following given how much LGBTQ+ rights have exploded in the last decade, but I am thankful for what I received at least.
I definitely recommend this anime to queer individuals! It definitely does not represent the trans experience completely accurately for being an older manga/anime but compared to other LBGTQ+ anime, I didn't find it to be fetishizing at all and thought it accurately portrayed parts of the queer experience. It's definitely on par with other fantastic queer anime like Bloom Into You.
