Kare to Kanojo no Sentaku - Vol. 1 Ch. 2

[fox879]

The story continues! I'm looking forward to seeing how this develops.

I'm gonna speculate that there is a lab that doubles as a prison. This is without viewing chapter 3 or any further chapter.

 

[DatYuki]

@zips

No.

 

[RedOnYellow]

@zips
The best part of MtF genderbender is that the new guy-turned-girl can birth his new lover's children.
Trans people can't do that.

 

[icarushector]

@xironi eh, you can encounter people that have undergone major life altering events and never know. Especially if it wasn't while you knew them. What's more, just knowing that a thing exists doesn't mean you wouldn't have to look up more to actually understand it.

@Starbright the way they talked about living arrangements, it looked like the mc might be the last good thing in their life and just keeping their composure (in an attempt to keep things as normal/Sam as they used to be as possible) is not easy. What's worse is the implication that when the money runs out, they're gone.

 

[Xeli]

@xironi it's basically like 1000 people in a million people. Which is honestly a small amount. He honestly wouldn't have met anyone or at least noticed anyone that has. If he wasn't friends with her he wouldn't have noticed she changed or was his friend.

 

[GaikoTekina]

@zips

no

 

[ericagoldfarb]

Stop complaining that Haruka isn't trans, just be glad the series wasn't dropped... No need to be toxic. It is what it is.

 

[Xaelath]

@Kaiju
Then it went tragedy

 

[NinjaGoemon]

Oh no we can't find content relatable that's bad just eat your "ha ha he's a girl now let me lewd" food.

 

[BrunoVilla]

All hail the digital era!

 

[AAA1]

@xironi its pretty obvious depending on a person with little relationship and awkward-natured person. Especially in most school in tokyo (based on manga) where someone in their class can be a cast off (no one knows a thing about a certain person or someone that does know nothing about a person in near)

 

[Quelandoris]

@zips I dont think theyre going to confirm anything like Haruka being super explicitly trans, but i think the implication is there and like some other Gender-Bender series like The Witch's Servant, it is grappling with those ideas. Its important to remember that Japan's LGBTQ movement does not have a unified or readily agreeable vocabulary, especially not for trans people. The most politically correct word there is literally just a romanization of the english word "transgender," written in so many characters that it would take up an entire bubble of dialogue by itself, making it unwieldy for use in a manga like this, and even then it isn't a universally understood or agreed upon word. The two runners up, Otokonoko and New-half are also not great fits, as Otokonoko is most commonly used to describe wholeseome crossdresser characters, while new-half can refer to basically any trans or intersex person that presents as female. On top of that, both have some pretty complicated connotations in modern day Japan, kind of like the distinction between Transgender and Transsexual. (Source, a discord friend who lived in japan for 5 years and was very involved with other trans people there)

So all that as well as generally more conservative publishing companies make it pretty hard for a manga to talk candidly about trans people. Like, Witch's Servant being as straightforward as it is to have one trans and one genderfluid character in its main cast and to actually talk about those things to the full extent that its possible to using japanese, in Shonen Gangan especially, is pretty damn surprising. I dont think that this manga should be expected to be that clear in its messaging.

I do think that even if its not going to be so explicit, Haruka is clearly meant to read as trans. Struggling to come out to even close and trusted friends, unspecified home problems, the surprise from old friends at your new appearance, and the intrigue of a potential romance with someone who knew you before transitioning, hell the way the transformation here is described as taking months or even years much like a real transition... Even if the mechanism is different, the things that resulted from it all read as very trans experiences.

 

[blue6]

@Quelandoris
Preach.

 

[mase_aga]

@Xeli
Still that is pretty big number. The Greater Tokyo Area alone are the home for 36 millions people (wiki). We can assume in Tokyo alone there are 36000 people who got ASRS according this manga.

Maybe yes the MC ever meet that kind of people but he didn't know because this is pretty sensitive issue.

 

[RigobertoParedes]

Omg 2 months, I'm glad that this stills alive

 

[Neushaartje]

@NinjaGoemon
There's a difference between finding something relatable and doing any of the following:

- insisting that the story change, and the character be made transgender
- insisting that the character already is transgender and the auctor supposedly is dropping clues for that, which simply isn't the case
- insisting that others use specific language to refer to a character over a perceived gender identity that never was implied in the story
- singularly complaining about the medical in-feasibility of the plot device in a science fiction series full of infeasibilities

Like @Quelandoris this — trying really hard to justify that there is some hidden transgender meaning to a fun genderswap gag gets really annoying. Lately, with every single m.t.f. genderswap or crossdressing story, a bunch of comments appears like that, insisting that there is, or should be, some transgender message to it.

And it's only the m.t.f. stuff, never the f.t.m. stuff, apparently f.t.m.'s either just live their lives not bothering anyone, or they read less so-called “manga”, who knows.

 

[broadsword80]

I'm putting my money on family problems as the reason why Haruka decided to take a trip.

 

[002016]

.

 

[Quelandoris]

@trapsarebetter lmao I'm not even gonna humor a guy whose name is Traps Are Better. Trans people want good representation in cute manga, stay mad about it.

 

[Darklight99]

Making someone trans means that it was a conscious and intentional decision on the person's part while GB means that it wasn't in their control and now they have to deal with their newfound problem. It's not remotely the same thing.

As for Haruka, I feel like there could be some sexual assault in her past. Not sure what to make of the mirror scene.