Character development... Who'da thunk it?
Kashimashi ~Girl Meets Girl~ volume 3, chapter 1 - "Secret"
Girl Meets Girl started out an alright series. Granted, the premise (boy gets turned into girl, has to adjust to life as such) had already been done to death and the character designs weren't really anything special, but it was cute fluff and I actually genuinely liked one character. But, sure enough, by volume 2 the series had devolved into a mess of harem manga clichés, the previously likable Asuta was reduced to yet another horny male fixated on the hero-turned-heroine and nothing else and I was beginning to think that Hazumu's brain was replaced with a sack of dung when he changed sexes.
However, there's one moment in the first chapter of volume 3 that makes me think that perhaps I was wrong about the direction that Girl Meets Girl is going in. While being excluded from the other girls' activities (because they were planning for a surprise party, we find out in the end), Hazumu shows an uncharacteristic amount of depth when she wonders if she'll ever really fit in, because she knows she isn't a real girl and never will be, yet she could also never be accepted as a male in society for fairly obvious reasons. It's the most realistic moment in the series so far, and the fact that the writer is actually capable of having characters not act like ridiculous manga caricatures all the time fills me with high hopes for the rest of volume 3, as well as the rest of the series so long as they don't fuck it up by turning Hazumu back into a guy.
Girl Meets Girl started out an alright series. Granted, the premise (boy gets turned into girl, has to adjust to life as such) had already been done to death and the character designs weren't really anything special, but it was cute fluff and I actually genuinely liked one character. But, sure enough, by volume 2 the series had devolved into a mess of harem manga clichés, the previously likable Asuta was reduced to yet another horny male fixated on the hero-turned-heroine and nothing else and I was beginning to think that Hazumu's brain was replaced with a sack of dung when he changed sexes.
However, there's one moment in the first chapter of volume 3 that makes me think that perhaps I was wrong about the direction that Girl Meets Girl is going in. While being excluded from the other girls' activities (because they were planning for a surprise party, we find out in the end), Hazumu shows an uncharacteristic amount of depth when she wonders if she'll ever really fit in, because she knows she isn't a real girl and never will be, yet she could also never be accepted as a male in society for fairly obvious reasons. It's the most realistic moment in the series so far, and the fact that the writer is actually capable of having characters not act like ridiculous manga caricatures all the time fills me with high hopes for the rest of volume 3, as well as the rest of the series so long as they don't fuck it up by turning Hazumu back into a guy.