Shishunki Bitter Change

[lennuh]

a genderbender without ecchi or fanservice?!
was an amazing read

 

[DarkXypher]

I read this like a year ago. I'll write a review for it now so I can come back in the future.
(Review inspiration from u/rmaca. Their review on reddit is simply outstanding. I agree with mostly everything they said.)


Heavy Spoilers ahead:

Amazing read, really it was.
The characters were great.
Everything was amazing.

...Except it wasn't. Yuuta's and Tachibana's character were the ones that really stood out to me. I still remember them to this day. Both were pretty much perfect.

But the rest weren't so amazing. Yui felt so lackluster and rushed. So much character development was needed for her.
Then there's Kazuma. He was there for support yet he really did not provide enough support for the two.
They forced their ideals on Yuuta and forced him to act more like a girl, and basically took away most of his freedom. While they themselves didn't attend to that much at all. Yui continued to be wanting to be a girl instead of a boy and everyone just accepted it. But if Yuuta did it, it was wrong? Yuuta was mostly always there for Yui but Yui was barely ever there for Yuuta. This clears the difference in their character growth.
Most other side characters were also became irrelevant as time went on.

Yuuta could be himself around Tachibana and everything in the Tachibana-Yuuta arc was flawless. It was the peak of the series and I will never stop glazing it.


Let's move on to the ending.
"The ending is better than the webcomic one" Okay? That doesn't justify anything.
The series was entirely set up for them to go back in their own bodies. If you want to make them stay, you have to actively develop character around them to make them stay.

I hated how Yuuta's dream was crushed. It was his dream after all. Couldnt they have had some way to implement it? Maybe if they swapped back he went into it as an adult. Or if they didn't swap back(as in the story), he could've played it as a girl. Being a girl doesn't stop him from playing. Even if he is weaker that doesn't mean anything. Strong girls exist too.

And about the swap mechanic. They swapped due to dying/near death experience when being near each other. The last swap happened due to a wish??? That completely kills the consistency.
In addition, the last swap made the truck swap completely meaningless. What was the point anymore?
If you wanted them to stay, you couldve cooked a backstory on how they both wished for it or something and just make them not swap back.
If you wanted them to swap back, they couldve swapped back and then yuuta could've recovered.

Wait a minute..recovered? Lets talk about this plot hole too. When yuuta and yui first swapped by falling and effectively dying from the treefall, it was explicitly stated that they felt no pain. Why would they feel pain or be in near death condition this time??? That makes no sense.

Also uh...what happened to the other characters after?? ..like my glorious king Tachibana..
Nobody even ever found out that they swapped.

The ending was simply a massacre. As from what I've said, it's pretty clear that the ending was rushed.

I loved the series so much man.
If only it was not ruined by the ending. A proper ending could've made it so much better. I'm not a writer on this man's level but something surrounding around Yui's final character development, everyone else finally realizing, Kazuma's last help out. And a proper ending where they either swap back or don't. (I won't argue about that as both sound good.) THAT..That could've saved the series.

To say I'm dissapointed is an understatement. But that's the review. Was it really a review or a crashout? Idk but those are my thoughts.

Still remains my favourite manga though! Cheers.

 

[NEN_POL]

Hmmm overall rate ill give 8/10. So the reason is I love the story and the ending but there's also a lot of things that annoyed me and yeah I think that's it. Also could someone tell me are they in the original body on the end or are they swap again, oh also one thing the ending seem kinda rushed to me..? Like it just end


Anyway probably in top 10 fav romance manga

 

[Fezcool]

No kiss so 9/10

 

[sigridvjeol]

Hmmm overall rate ill give 8/10. So the reason is I love the story and the ending but there's also a lot of things that annoyed me and yeah I think that's it. Also could someone tell me are they in the original body on the end or are they swap again, oh also one thing the ending seem kinda rushed to me..? Like it just end


Anyway probably in top 10 fav romance manga

To answer your question

Spoiler

they swap again, or at the least the translation implies that heavy handedly

I do agree though that there were a lot of loose ends.

Spoiler

Whilst not the most traumatising depictions of such, the dysphoria both characters felt throughout the story seemed very real (though in hindsight, the author could have been using 'I want to x gender again' as a poor shorthand for 'I want to return to how I was before I cared about this person') and whilst I'm biased as a TW, it felt kinda wrong for the story to forget about that and end with them being denied their preferred genders as though that's a happy conclusion....like it would have been so easy to have them skip ahead and have some degree of hormone based transition occur to signify their changes, commitments and ownership of their swapped bodies

.

I also swear there was some kinda plotline early on about an implied future teen pregnancy that was dropped, was a bit confused about that

 

[montpelier]

Great start, mid last several chapters.

The fumbled plot thread I thought was most glaring was the multiple panels where Hikaru seems to be realizing something is up with Yui-in-Yuuta, foreshadowing him finding out or being confided in about the swap, but then after he has his emotional problem questline is finished in the park, he just... disappears from the plot except to get paired off with Noizomi. Who ALSO stoos being relevant to the plot or Yuuta-in-Yui's character development pretty quickly.

There's a part somewhere when I was binge-reading this where all the panel layout just became identical with four or five horizontal lines just splitting the page into equally-sized rectangles, and when I noticed that, I kinda got the feeling the author ran out of time to make a better plot. The Yui-Kazuma romance plot starts interesting and then just drags on until it's resolved with way less gravitas than it deserved considering the pages spent on it. While I would have loved Yuuta-in-Yui x Tachibana, I was fine with the endgame being Yui x Yuuta, but... it just got way less development.

But seriously, did everyone forget that Hikaru was onto something? Where did his suspicions go? Where did he go for half the story?

 

[taneu]

I feels like yuuta gets shafted by the plot, we get to see yui's terminology far better, but yuuta feels left out and ignored despite the sacrifices made. Aside form that the ending was mediocre at best; its of the most bogstandard endings to the gender bodyswap genre.

 

[lixxxx]

Honestly, I really liked this manga. Very enjoyable ending felt a little rushed, but overall I liked it. It's fun reading the past comments from people who read this as it dropped live. Seems to me the ending differed from the original web comic...?

 

[ArchivistAlex98]

Honestly the story genuinely did nothing to make me think they would actually be okay with continuing being in/going back into the bodies they've been stuck in for years since the initial swap but the Extra's are implying that after briefly getting their original bodies back they just swapped again and they're just fine with it now.

Despite the story spending it's entire run time making it clear that they hate being in the other's original bodies and haven't adapted to or accepted their post swap bodies at all they're just fine with it now.

Yeah that doesn't really check out at all as there was genuinely no development related to actually being comfortable in the bodies they've been stuck in since the swap.

 

[DarkXypher]

I agree with

Disappointing in numerous ways only because it had a lot of solid pieces to it.

The first qualm is the lack of development with their families. Realistically, they should have been a lot more anguished over being torn away from their homes, and this would have been accentuated during their infrequent visits. But the manga wanted to spend its focus elsewhere, and that's actually fine. Second, there probably could've been more focus on the physical/mental discomfort of the change, particularly into the titular adolescence period, but that's a hackneyed trope at this point and honestly can be a bit cringy, so largely skipping that was fine too.

Where the story excelled was in character development, showing them slowly adjust and rebuild their lives under new circumstances. Their personality changes felt natural and true to their cores, refreshingly eschewing the "body affects mind" trope (that can be fun, but can also give a bit of a shlocky feel).

The greatest and fatal failing of the manga was that the romance sucked. Throughout all of these nice character developments, Yuuta and Yui actually grew more distant, to the point that they hardly interacted (outside of story focus) once they were in high school. This was actually interesting and made sense - they'd always have the fundamental connection of the swap, but their interests and personalities were different to the point that growing apart was natural. They remained friends, but there was practically no romantic development aside from Yuuta's one-sided declaration. Then nothing happened for years as Yui and Kazuma had a lot of mutual screentime that progressed their relationship. Really, the momentum of the story was for those two to get together post unswap, and would have brought those two characters to a sensible resolution.

But such an ending would have been far too tragic for Yuuta, the more sympathetic and active of the two protagonists. Especially post unswap, he would've been unable to relate to the friends he'd made, forcibly estranged from his two closest friends in Kazuma and Yui due to the awkwardness of that situation, and set on an academic-type life path he was wholly unsuited for. The only good ending for him was to remain in Yui's body and end up with Tachibana. That would definitely require a whole lot of mental anguish on his part, but slowly accepting his lot in life would've also been thematically and emotionally satisfying. However, this is, of course, mutually incompatible with Kazuma and Yui getting together.

So it makes sense that the author went for the forced relationship between Yui and Yuuta. The characters are compatible so it's easy enough to imagine they could get together. But this really should've been done in the 50+ chapters before the ending, rather than making Yui suddenly attached to Yuuta in a way she'd never before demonstrated so that she'd reject Kazuma. It was perfectly fine to develop the romance between Yui and Kazuma and have this ending, but that romance was to the exclusion of any connection between Yui and Yuuta, rather than in parallel. Heck, even disguise it as protectiveness, something seemingly sibiling-like, or whatever. But the only attachment between them, aside from being normal (not especially close) friends, was their concern for how their (former) lives were being upkept. That is, Yui being romantically interested in Yuuta, especially without any physical basis, was wholly unconvincing. The explanation of how it all began with him being a "hero" for her was nice, but too late to make an impact without the necessary setup.

Despite expending a lot of text detailing my complaints, this was an enjoyable read. Again, seeing the characters grow was worth it despite the missteps and dissatisfactory resolution. It's nice to see the genderbend topic be treated seriously and have a real impact on the characters rather than be discardable clickbait, and, though some of them are undermined by the ending, the substories are still enjoyable.

I agree with you so much it's wild. There's so much that could've been better that just makes me so very upset especially because I love this manga.