glam reads trash (KANOJO NI HARU NI REVIEWED)

[GlamGrimfire]

haha hey there I guess if you’ve been keeping up with that other guy youd know that im without a means of my own space right now which is why its the perfect time I dig into my old hobby: trash

no no yes you haven’t wandered into Another Realm where you are mistakenly browsing King of Posters
if you thought hands-on-their hips anime bullshit could only be purveyed through videogames you’re wrong (dead wrong.) I am a master of it and without a ps3 to distract me ive been forced to start making daily trips to the comic book store every day

that’s right!! Japanese manga!! woooowowowowo

so on my sojurn up to One Town Away (29 miles = 53 minutes) to the local Comic Joint where this nerd who stood next to me for 15 minutes in the manga aisle and when I finally asked him how I could help him he just said “oh I just needed to uh get uh around uh you, sir” man am I that old + masculine, completely disgusting.

anyway I was looking for something I wanted to read with no idea of what I wanted to read and decided to pick something by basically the cover alone, which is always my Shopping Best Practice (it can be urs, too)
anyway I picked up the new comic by the person that did Battling Boy but also: I got this shit:

the fact that that image also includes the back tells you more about my tastes in media than I could ever come up with excuses for

as something awful forum goons call it, it’s a harem comedy where all of the girls are cute + dumb but going into something like this I have absolutely interior motivations: I’m sad and I miss being in love

the series introduces us to our protagonist Kuromine Asahi whos Protagonist Gimmick is that he’s so awfully bad at lying that people come to him for honest advice on things because hes the worst goof ever when it comes to making up fibbing.

his friends are the standard Supportive HIghschool Friends From Manga if only different because Asahi isn’t the Big Man On Top in his group of friends but more like the dude they constantly pick on
see: part in manga where he gets epically shut down by a girl he likes before he can even ask her out

Our Boy falls for Shiragame Yuoko who he describes as a mysterious aloof beauty who never speaks and its kind of funny because while hes pining for her the artist is doing his best job of drawing her like shes the main character in a shojo series all eyelashes and sharp jaw.

also went into this expecting lots of fanservice but across six chapters (the entire first volume) theres None like what the fuck, the series almost kicks off at exploring an actual romance between these two characters!!

oops not. because asahi is a fuckup and instead of telling Yuoko he likes her he instead finds out she’s a vampire and if anyone else finds out she has to leave forever (but u read the back, what am I saying) so instead of starting as a romance, the series is about me rolling my eyes and groning while asahi talks about friendzoning but is also completely self aware of the fact that he didn’t tell the girl he likes his true feelings

also I kind of want to post more scans but theres not any good ones on google images so heres a picture of Yuko in the artists really wonderful cartoony style that actually gets used inside the actual manga itself

[contentdeleted]

Curious as to where you go up there. Bookmans maybe? they have a pretty big comics/manga selection iirc.
not that I would ever engage in such shameful hobbies, of course. certainly not

[GlamGrimfire]

https://www. cabcomicsaz .com/

warning: everyone in this store except for 1 guy maybe I have ever met is a huge petulant jerk

[botagel]

@GlamGrimfire

anyway I was looking for something I wanted to read with no idea of what I wanted to read and decided to pick something by basically the cover alone, which is always my Shopping Best Practice (it can be urs, too)

[Mothra]

Well, it looks adorable and I’d’ve probably checked it out too.

BUT god how is it that every series like this is just ready and willing to full-stop all forward momentum the moment their quirk is established? The zero-confidence ninny protag is built from the ground up to be the kind of guy that never changes or challenges his situation, leaving the onus of action completely on Vampire Gurl, which requires some incredibly weird leaps of narrative acrobatics to build up a motivation.

I dunno it’s just weird that THIS is where the formula stopped and locked into a holding pattern: at the absolute start of anything possibly interesting. It then becomes a slow sloooowww character crawl over 6 volumes to the point where he inexplicably gains confidence and they smooch.

I mean Mindori no Hibi had cliches aplenty, but at least it was always moving forward.

Maybe it’s the supernatural quirk that’s throwing me, since it seems like it sounds promise more of a story, and turns out to just be “wouldn’t it be cool to fuck a vampire schoolgirl??”

[GlamGrimfire]

wouldn’t it though

[Mothra]

YEAH BUT HE’S NEVER GONNA FUCK THAT VAMPIRE HE’S NOT COOL ENOUGH BY DESIGN

[Mothra]

You know every day I mourn the fact that Boukon Tyranno-San was never picked up for a full series, but maybe… maybe that was for the best. Maybe it had gone as far as it was going to go.

[GlamGrimfire]

I mean I guess from what I know he’s dating her by chapter six so this may be the one harem series ends up with the woman he’s actually the best fit for

[Mikey]

I really loved this for a while but then once the main love triangle gets resolved it just sort of starts going off on all these boring tangents.

It makes me long for more of this author’s art, though. They’re all so cute.

I’m just going to keep telling everyone to read Dungeon Meshi

[GlamGrimfire]

Boku Girl 1 - Read Boku Girl Chapter 1 Online

next update

[botagel]

Oh, Lord have mercy; you just hit the Trash motherlode

[GlamGrimfire]

that’s what you think and also it’s what i think and shit, after people read the next post here they’re gonna think it too fuck

[GlamGrimfire]

hoooooooooooo

Haha whoah hey there!! Welcome back - it’s me your very most Glam friend. If you think that the only Glimpse of Hell I was going to show you was in the pages of My Monster Secret you’re wrong. Dead wrong. This Week’s descent into darkness is called Boku Girl, a romance/ecchi manga by Sugito Akira.

Ok: i’m gonna be honest here and put it right up front. If you are a person concerned with politics or the discourse, large parts of this manga probably won't sit right with you - there’s a fair bit of nuance in this manga to be sure but it doesn’t come across in a way that’s as progressive as typically demanded from things with this subject matter.

But at the same time, what it misses in terms of having healthy language, well there’s worthwhile stuff in here for a romance story about some gender dysphoria and body dysmorphia.

Also i'm gonna additionally preface: I only started reading this because the author draws characters eyes the same way my favorite hentai artist does and (emoji)

Actually artistically there’s a lot to talk about Boku-Girl since i think the art here is legitimately great But First

Boku-Girl’s protagonist is Mizuki Suzushiro who’s this thin and short effeminate younger teen in highschool who’s pining after a girl they considers out of their league, Fujiwara. With respect, the girl herself is clearly more interested in Mizuki’s much more masculine best friend, Takeru.

Note: Mizuki is referred to as him and he throughout Boku Girl unless for occasional effect, and since as of writing this Mizuki has yet to figure out their own gender and refers to themselves as he, I’ll be using gender-neutral pronouns.

Being a gender-bender manga as well as a romance manga, it’s not long (within the first couple of volumes actually) that the protagonist runs afoul of the norse god Loki, who’s depicted as a kind of androgynous pettanko girl. They decide to play a trick on him, and our boy-of-view is stung by a strange bug that causes him to wake up the next day as a woman. Surprisingly throughout the first couple of storyarcs, there’s very little nudity and if there is it’s usually about [protagonist] being embarrassed by - and in equal terms learning to accept their new body. You’ve got Loki (the character) to thank for ramping up the ridiculous amounts of nudity and filth later on.

Actually the filth is sort of what I like about Boku Girl - there’s a strong love triangle built up over three characters that have pretty realistic desires. Fujiwara is attracted to stereotypical masculinity while being a bit of an inversion of traditional feminine roles, but Takeru is definitely a lot more than presented as at first and can only see her as a friend, while at the same time is having difficulty with how he feels about Mizuki.. All three of them are frequently unsure of their own sexualities and bodies as much as Mizuki themself. Despite being a weirdo gender-bender manga that’s vocabulary is way out of date, the way the main characters are presented is actually pretty thoughtful.

Boku girl could have easily been set up as some hell-of gross battle of the sexes. That it doesn’t, is the reason I stuck with it for so long.

Boku Girl has ridiculously strong characterization among the trio of characters the story follows the most. Takeru and Fujiwara around the middle point of the story become as prominent as Mizuki is.

Boku Girl is a sex comedy that definitely takes refuge in devices that other Ecchi manga and even straight up Hentai do pretty often, but as a rarity for the genre much more time is spent developing the characters and the love triangle they inhabit.

Mizuki’s sexuality is a big part of Boku Girl, because female-bodied Mizuki feels like their body prevents them from revealing the way they really feel to Fujiwara, yet at the same time definitely develops feelings for Takeru and doesn’t really know if those feelings are a side-effect of being female-bodied or if they truly feel for him.

Yes, Boku-Girl has a pretty reductive way of looking at sexuality like that, and I’m not saying it’s something that should be looked past - the way Mizuki feels about the female-bodied/male-bodied aspect affecting their sexuality is definitely harmful in several lights, but the fact is Boku Girl actually explores Mizuki’s feelings in that regard, rather than just having them be stated.

There’s a point in the story that I don’t want to reveal, but there’s a larger amount of nuance than you would ever expect from a story like this involved.

As far as exploring emotions and relationships, I would say that the manga leans heavily into it - Takeru, Fujiwara and Mizuki’s relationships are egged on a great deal by the antagonist, but y’know there’s still great amounts of room given for them to have relationships that unfold kind of naturally.Loki, who’s curses Mizuki in the beginning as a prank actually serves as more than just a kickstart to the core plot - a few volumes in they add themselves to the storymasquerading as a new girl joining school. Basically every interaction they have with the rest of the cast is super devious and shitty but it’s actually kind of funny - at no point is there any effort to humanize them beyond the status of Being A Literal God. The author even draws them in every panel they’re in the background of like they’re in on a joke that nobody else is which - damn that’s such a good touch it makes me love the character and hate them all at the same time.

Unfortunately there’s a some pretty gross non-consensual stuff in the middle of the dang manga but it’s nothing that ever goes super far thank god but it’s not something very easy to talk about with how it is actually handled anyway. At multiple points a bunch of different characters explore each other pretty uhh thoroughly for me to have read most of this at work and in public BUT  It’s an Ecchi Manga so there’s troublesome stuff all around - tho Boku Girl is hella in the way it explores some relationships it’s still 99% about Mizuki’s body and seeing them in various states of undress. Usually it’s played for laughs but the art is still there. Earlier I point out that there’s not much of it at the beginning, and too there’s not a whole lot near the end either. Boku Girl is still anime trash though - the manga is gonna end on a hell of a weird note because there’s never a clear answer painted for Mizuki’s feelings for Takeru.

If you wanna read a goofy gender-bending romance go ahead! There’s good stuff in there but you still gotta wade through some pretty thick filth and a couple of bad characters that (thankfully) don’t stick around for very long in the middle.

I aint gonna talk about the art but I will say it’s 10/10 Glam and Soft and thankfully not terrible moe garbage and I saved several uhhhh pages of...stuff….to my hard drive.  To read later!!

Boku Girl has more nuance than you would definitely expect reading something like this. It is very glam, but there are grim parts too. Goodbye, bubba.

[GlamGrimfire]

also i’ve started to put all of these up on my tumblr

[GlamGrimfire]

tfw u thought glam could ever be done with garbage

someone asked me at a party last night "hey man are you a weeb? after seeing what i was reading

i literally pulled this out of my back pocket

[Mothra]

I have to know is Boku Girl ended up being good

It looks adorable

Also: I read a whole bunch of My Monster Secret recently and mannnnnnnnn that one had so much potential before it nosedived. I think the best chapter was the one where the alien girl got separated from her body and had to survive a day in the school.

The whole vampire dad thing was beyond mind-boggling btw

[GlamGrimfire]

boku girl ends up being pretty good at the end! i liked the ending a lot.

yeah my Monster Secret takes an absolute nosedive a few chapters in, which sucks. the art stays hella cute though which is really the only important thing if you read manga to develop crushes like me

[GlamGrimfire]

NEXT: https://myanimelist.net/manga/54817/Kanojo_ni_Naru_Hi

I know what you’re thinking! how can I read all of these animes about teens what get horny for eachother. I got an answer: this one is only marginally about The Teen Crisis and instead flashes forward to adulthood before the climax! I bet you’re all excited as we go on this journey here.

The review is forthcoming, and then afterwards we’re gonna be reading https://myanimelist.net/manga/80539/Boku_wa_Ohimesama_ni_Narenai

which you can hold me directly responsible. maybe afterwards I’ll compare them all to eachother and we’ll talk about Queer Japanese Comics. maybe not. If you try and hold me to any standard I will always let you down.

Remember: it’s not Anime Club! nowhere near as good. It’s not the Manga Adventure League, cuz I read em so you don’t have to. nonstop filth here and I’ll never stop.

[GlamGrimfire]

i may have sinned greviously. I would like to go on record that it is the first time I have done so. you could say the act of writing it down makes me the Scholar of the First Sin.

i promised to bring you trash but i may have actually found a semi decent if overly sweet love story romance manga that fills your mouth with cotton candy and giant ánime hearts.

i guess we gotta get this trainwreck a-roling though, so here we go:

Kanojo Ni Haru Ni (translated as “Becoming a Girl Day”)
(editors note: there’s no maid-play in this comic. sorry!)

Is another Gender-Bend manga, which is oddly a genre I see a lot of manga fans cling to despite their generally poor understanding of gender politics. Oddly enough, just like Boku Girl there’s a lot of really good bits in Kanojo Ni Haru Ni but they don’t come near the middle or the end.

Look - the art in this series is pretty sub par and in a lot of bits it almost reeks of the artist having done a bunch of hentai before. I wanna verify that later, but I didn’t go into this series expecting anything at all.

Genderbending series have a really simple setup that’s the same across the whole board - a character (so far almost always introduced as male) is turned into a woman either immediately or slowly transitions.

The general disclaimer on these series I give people is that you can’t go into them expecting a fully progressive take on gender and gender roles in society and especially not in comparison to where the dialogue on gender is in most trans friendly circles now.

The general trash disclaimer applies: Is there something worthwhile in this series worth engaging with - is this a book you can take home to mom and dad!?

Out of everything I’ve read, honestly you could probably get just about anyone to read Kanojo Ni Haru Ni. It is a soft romance story that is remarkably vanilla that will still get you to stop every once in awhile and worry about the fate of the relationship at the core of the story.

As these things usually go the premise of Kanojo Ni Haru Ni has less roots in any realistic sort of gender dysphoria but instead is about an alternate earth where there’s only ever a set ratio of women and men - and if this ratio goes out of balance either way a young woman or young man is randomly chosen to “emerge” after a coma in a body transitioning to the opposite sex.

https://selectbutton.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/original/3X/0/8/08309998d1cd274041c9785a9bf774595e3be8e7.jpg

Kanojo Ni Haru Ni is about the journey two high school friends go on when one of them emerges as a woman after going into a coma in their senior year in high school - and both characters realize they’re in love with each other.

The “hook” at the beginning of the story is that the protagonist (in this case it’s the dude whereas in boku girl it’s the person transitioning) has gynephobia and can’t touch or be around women and suddenly has to deal with his absolute best friend becoming one.

This is kind of more of a non-issue than you’d think. This must have started as a weekly serial with no clear direction, and I’ll put that out there right now cuz the beginning of this manga makes it seem like it’s gonna go in a completely weird direction.

The strongest suite of this comic is when it gives time to focus on the relationship between the two protagonists and of course - Nao Mamiya’s transition process. It’s maybe the only one of these gender comics I’ve also read that deals with people who are transgender not being accepted by society.

There’s some pretty high concept stuff for an ecchi gender manga - Noe Mamiya actually gets to have elements of her character defined by her womanhood as time goes on. Whereas Boku Girl was still about the character being born one gender even near the climax, this manga definitely settles into being a romance and primarily around Noe settling into her womanhood.

I gotta avoid spoiling comics like these cuz it’s not a comedy so there’s little payoff from individual gags or scenes like in Boku Girl. Definitely gotta make it through the first half of this - when it goes all Manga for a chapter its definitely its weakest but you should stick with it as these characters pass into adulthood.

I had the realization while reading this manga that in the absence of being fully horny like the last few ecchi series I read were - the plot beats of this story had more in common with yaoi manga than any hetero-bore-native romance comics that I remember.

Probably more similar to shoujo comics or yaoi comics in terms of art. its definitely got less cute art per panel than Boku Girl does - the art style reminds me a lot of the gal who did Princess Jellyfish but with cleaner lines and less young-looking characters.

Can you get hrony to this manga? probably you’ll more likely find yourself falling deep in love with one of the two main characters and wanting to see things work out well for them. even though this is an ecchi series there’s a lot less purposeless nudity than I’m used to seeing.

Most of the nudity only really comes in the bonin scenes between our two characters but a lot of noise is made constantly about how attractive Noe Mamiya is which is honestly kind of weird and fetish at first but then the series actually starts to make a big deal out of what a complete dreamboat her boyfriend is to basically everyone he meets. Wish we got to see more of his shirtless bod like the dude in boku girls but it’s kind of enough that he’s relatively beefy and still presented as competent emotionally in the relationship.

The author behind this has some ideas on being transgender that almost hit too close to home for a lot of reasons but it’s still not perfect (it’s never gonna be) about how Noe is represented. There’s a lot of stuff that will probably irritate most queer people about pronouns in this book, but I’m telling you to try and look passed it because there’s a pretty neat (and very cotton-candy) love story here.

also the only story with an accurate depiction of birthday sex. can we please copyright Gurugle search I just love saying that outloud.

misc things I love: I love how Noe Mamiya is depicted as hyper competent especially still being so after transitioning.

how soft this series is, jeez. though ill want Loki from Boku Girls mischievousness in basically every series I read forever it’s nice to read a series that has a fairly grounded take on romance and relationships.

That’s all, bye.