I feel like the author might have started with the intention of writing a story about how spontaneous gender change would be a very negstive life-challenging event but they got cold feet because they though (correctly, at the time, in my opinion): "If I write negative things about this, I might end up cancelled or too radioactive for companies to hire me again." So they immediately dropped the bulk of the story.
Like imagine that we got a story where Haruka is a top athlete in school and his dream is to one day join the Olympics. Then he contracted this affliction that switched his gender around. Suddenly he can't do as good as the other boys and even though he can go better then all the girls, it is decided that Transgirls can't play in biological girl sports because their bodies are stronger.
Haruka's life would be flipped around.
Let's show best friends and relationships: Say Haruka got another best friend and he had a girlfriend in a serious relationship. They were friends together. Suddenly this gender change happened to Haruka and she wants to just ignore the problem and go back to doing things she did before but society doesn't welcome a boy and a girl acting as familiar as two boys; rumors start to spread that they are both gay and the girlfriend is pressured by her friends to give the guy caught in the middle an ultimatum: Choose between me and Haruka.
Right? OKAY let's change it: imagine Haruka trying to find a job. At first he had more options as a delivery worker or a mail man but he finds that these are male dominated work places and he start getting hit on by people he doesn't know. Eventually it gets out of hand and he ha to quit and basically find a more female related job as a maid 8or in a caffee. Haruka has to learn how to walk in heels and dresses, even put in makeup and talk to people on a unrealistic customer service tone.
All these challenging episodes would have been a much more interesting buildup
I don't agree with all your interpretations of this series but your venting was comforting to read.
The issues in this series, whether the author getting cold feet for going deeper on trans-related issues or poor planning, made Haruka's development sometimes awkward or out of focus. Caring for a runaway friend getting their shit together is downright relatable, even nixing romantic speculation right there. The other characters aren't boring, but they're not presented vividly by the end. The workplace outro felt banally fitting to me; the cast is acting as flatly as typical human casual interactions look on camera, they're less theatrical than what I'd see at past classes and workplaces. Cutting out the dramatic exaggeration made the plot skeleton further apparent to me because I was only reading intermittently and had to rebuild a sense of who people were sometimes. Like, this was already drawn with subtler expressions so a streamlined plot removed the fragile complexity it rested on. What works for realism wasn't used or arranged well for storytelling.
By often decentering Haruka too much, this fell into an annoying hole of series that highlight a girl but aren't really about the woman. She's not the overall main character. Not that this is a severe case, but I want to emphasize how common and trending it is that the main girl or woman becomes a
concept more than a character. Having Haruka have a life path that touches on trans issues while
avoiding details or the obvious life overlap is bizarre to me. Trans people, and young queer people in general, have much higher rates of homelessness (everywhere) and
Haruka-like situations are deeply realistic. The cohorts of trans and magic-sex-change are going to be similar, especially with people transitioning back to their original assigned gender. So even the logic of this series is slightly inconsistent about the situation, to give a palatable and polite ending. With Haruka as a concept of gender change, helping a vaguely defined cohort of other people struck with magic morphing, the end is easy and sadly a bit impersonal.
I don't think it's suicide in a near-modern series to give detail that may not be trans rights but is the blunt social adaptation issues of sudden gender changes. Outright mentions may be niche, screw editor culture, but we deserved more meat. If the ending is going to be about how people act straightening out their life and slotting into unforgiving society, honestly the implicit critiques of writing about world-renowned hardass work culture is a bigger trigger than implicit critiques of queer rights barriers. Haruka's NPO isn't presented with heart, but neither did the author want to dig into corporate culture to the degree of workplace culture in Haruka's hometown.
So while the ending was bland, I think that's more the author's avoidance of the workplace issues development would require than gender issues. On both counts their limitations hurt the story. They have and hopefully will continue to write gender bender stuff. I'm not upset, I don't think the author harmed people, the end merely weaksauce.
The workplace gender issues you mentioned are honestly hard-hitting enough in Japan that it can be a different reader demographic. Teenage protagonists sell despite older reader demographics, at least for the easy-read expectations of manga. Depicting an office lady setting realistically hits sexism often, and not invisibly; it's sexism in a long drawn-out culture-shift as the audience can't take it in stride. Going from college to workplace in a realistic series with a female protagonist either needs light convenient worldbuilding or to inch us into the narratively-self-aware sexism as a buzzing inconvenience at least. And that can't be center, it's not fun, so series with office lady protagonists have to consider an un-fun realistic element alongside the more interesting conflict the story is actually about.
Usually most of those paragraphs would arguably be forgivable... but it's so discordant for Haruka to go into non-profits while the story shies away from the guts actual non-profits need to show. I know the author is trying to show Haruka's bravery and empathy, but she's braver than the author! It's downright silly.
Ironically, despite the ambition of this manga it's less revolutionary about what to actually
do in realistic gendered turmoil than
She Likes to Cook, She Likes to Eat (manga, can't vouch for the TV adaptation).
