Sazanami Cherry
Alt Names: | さざなみチェリー 涟漪上的樱桃 漣漪上的櫻桃 |
Author: | Kamiyoshi |
Artist: | Kamiyoshi |
Genres: | Comedy Drama Gender Bender Romance Shounen Shounen Ai Slice of Life |
Type: | Manga (Japanese) |
Status: | Complete |
Description: | Migiwa Kazuhiro has always been watching Ren, cute, admirable and his first love. With all his courage, he finally managed to give her a love letter and confessed on a train, only to find that Ren is...!? |
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17 Comments
It's nice to see one of these guy-drawn-as-fanservice-girl otoko-no-"ko" gigs that actually has some heart to it instead of being just a vapid fetish-fest of the type that I keep seeing lately.
Except maybe that's just because these scans are three years old. I don't know, as someone who enjoys seeing gender roles knocked down I find most gender-bender stuff attractive but I don't know what to feel about most of the ecchi "trap" stuff kids seem to be reading these days.
Metrosio--"Should we always default to "person is cis" if not explicitly stated though?" Well, that's a good question. I'm not committed to an answer, but one point that comes to mind is simply numeric. Most people are cis. Very few are trans. Even among people who at one time were male (and may or may not still be) and who currently dress as women a lot, I think the majority would still not be trans. So, I mean . . . there are albino crows, but we still assume crows are black. Kind of marginalizing for the albino ones, but it would be awful cumbersome to ditch the whole crow=black thing as a working assumption.
So yes, it's shounen ai.
And, i highly recommended Reversible! and Prunus Girl if you like this one.
-chronodekar
I’ll use a spoiler tag since I wrote a wall of text…
He also said that he dresses and acts like a girl because he wants to. It leans more towards gender expression than gender identity (Ren also refers to wearing girl clothes as cross-dressing; a transgender individual would never call themselves a cross-dresser, because they aren’t). Yes, Ren is most comfortable expressing himself as a girl, and even being treated as a girl, but he never actually identifies as one.
So, as far as we are shown, Ren is a cross-dressing boy, so it is shounen ai, and is actually a part of the otokonoko genre. In fact, I’ll say that this is probably one of the best examples of otokonoko shounen ai.
And it sure hit the right spot for me ( shounen ai and trap fanboy )
In any case, even though it's kinda problematic how there's nobody in the manga who seems to have the faintest idea that there are, in fact, hormone treatments that would help Ren's body develop as she wishes - I guess that's a problem with Japan, more than anything - I'm super happy to find a cute little love story involving a trans girl where the ultimate message isn't "playing around with gender is fine for kids, but eventually, you've got to grow up and stop messing around". It's not perfect, but even this much acceptance in a relatively easygoing manga is really nice to see.
And I love that Kazuhiro doesn't spend the whole story stressing about what gender Ren really is, or if he's alright with dating a trans girl, or whether this makes him gay or not. It doesn't take him long to get used to the idea, and he ends up championing Ren's right to be herself more than anyone else. Sure, it's common for people to have some problems with trans people, but I really appreciate the fact that the story isn't primarily about the feelings of the straight guy, for once.
I really liked this story, it would be great to see a continuation!
Besides the story, another reason why I like this genre, is because in general most have a very attractive art work.