A girl who is uncomfortable around men discovers the girl she developed a deep friendship with years ago is actually a boy. Upon their reunion, he resolves to help protect her from any uncomfortable situations with other men.
Before we start the review…
What’s the Japanese level?
I rate this as an intermediate series. To see my reasonings for my rankings, please click here!
Who wrote this manga?
This manga was written by Hanada.
Info about the series
- This series has three volumes in Japanese.
- There is currently no English translation.
You can check out this series for yourself below.
What’s this series about?
Ever since she was young, Hijiri has had difficulties being near men. If one so much as touches her, her face turns bright red. Being overly conscious about this affliction, she quickly grew to be very uncomfortable if a man so much as comes near her.
During her high school years, she made a female friend who seemed to completely understand her problems. They quickly bonded, but that bond was torn apart when her friend mysteriously stopped attending school. As they never exchanged contact information, they never spoke again.
Years later, Hijiri is getting ready to attend one of her friend’s wedding ceremony. As this is a friend from high school, it’s also treated somewhat as a high school reunion. Just as Hijiri comes in and starts greeting people she hasn’t seen in years, a mysterious, very handsome man approaches her. He acts very familiar towards her, telling her he’s glad that she hasn’t changed since their high school days. He then introduces himself as “Ikumi”, the name of the girl Hijiri became fast friends with so many years ago. It’s quickly confirmed that he’s that Ikumi, but that he’s in fact a man.
He reminds her that he perfectly understands her affliction when it comes to being near men, and that he doesn’t mind her face getting red at all. He then also reminds her of what he told her in high school—he wants to protect her from other men finding out about her affliction. Can she be as comfortable with Ikumi as she once was now that she knows he’s a man?
My thoughts on this chapter
I am very interested in the character dynamics in this series. As Hijiri has difficulties being near men, I’m curious to see if that affects her relationship with Ikumi from here on out. As Ikumi was described as being the person that understood Hijiri the best, and being one of the people she was most comfortable with (though they only knew each other for a very short period), I’m curious to see where it goes from here.
Hijiri was very taken aback when she learnt Ikumi is a man, but she still was able to go through with exchanging contact information with him—a good sign, no?
I would like to learn to reasons as to why Ikumi dressed up as a female student during their short time at high school, and then why they suddenly stopped coming to school altogether. I’ll be happy if this series discusses some gender identity topics and doesn’t just skirt the fact that their relationship was able to be as good as it was, was because Hijiri thought he was a girl. I feel like this series can either be very interesting, or very disappointing, all depending on how this subject is discussed.
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