Rating: 
Summary: For You In Full Gender-Bending Mayhem
Review: What is the concept behind Hana-Kimi? Let's see:- Girl sees boy
- Girl adores boy
- Girl becomes boy And for that, the manga becomes a huge success with over 20 volumes and counting. [IMPRESSIONS] Japan has pulled a "Yentl" in the world of manga, and that "Yentl" is Hana-Kimi, or Hanazakari no Kimitachi E(as if anyone's gonna remember that whole name, which is good for Viz to shorten it). Shoujo has become more of an acceptable genre for me. I got up with the slice-of-life, character-driven depth that is "MARS", and now I'm getting' down with this cross-dressing pleasantry. Is the Shoujo genre really that desperate to up the ante from the monotonous boy-meet-girl idea by depending on gender-bending? Well, it worked, or else this manga wouldn't have been a success, now would it? Mizuki Ashiya is a typical American teen girl who travels to Japan as a exchange student for an all-boys school. Why: to get close to her track-and-field idol Izumi Sano she admire since her adolescence. How: by putting on a boy's uniform and pretend to be one. The result: one oxymoron of a biased school year. Fortunately for her, her incognito worked and fooled everyone in this school, almost even a reader like myself. Without much on the T & A, she can downright pull it off for being a man(Eat your heart out, Barbara Streisand). It's too bad that the "Yentl" thing didn't last for long, as later on in the chapter, a wayward homosexual doctor knew that she was a chick when she was knocked down and was sent to the nurse's office, but he was kind enough to keep this a secret. Sadly, another person knew about her gend-bend disguise, and it was the one she idolize, Izumi, but he didn't tell her about him knowing. Great, he knows about her manly disguise, but she doesn't realize that he knows that, so he knows that she doesn't know that he knows that she's pretending to be a he...where was I? Oh yeah, then there's the bleached haired Shoichi Nakatsu. At first, he was cool with Mizuki, now he's at a "gay, not gay" situation whenever he feel aroused around Mizuki, and sometimes act goofy, and he doesn't know that guy a she(*sniff**sniff* I SMELL A LOVE TRIANGLE!). The cross-dressing concept may be somewhat of a gimmick, but with this manga, it comes off fresh. The idea mixed well with some above-par standards of a shoujo title: character development, back stories, exposed feelings, and a hint of gags. The story and humor drags down a little, and the characters are too similar by their facial structure, but other than that, the manga is solid and actually fun to read. Hana-Kimi has some nifty extras contained in this graphic novel. First off is the author's earlier work, "The Cage of Summer", which is about a girl who fell in love with her second cousin who is basically a ladies man, a nicotine addict, and a jerk, but the feelings around him couldn't be avoided. Weird incest material, and "MARS", it is not, but it's nostalgic at its best. Another extra is "The Osaka High School Dorms", which shows and informs the different dorms in this manga, plus a drawn blueprint of a room's interior. She may not be an architect, but she's good. There's also a short comic about the author working on a manga from her past, "Everyday Life", and her short discography. To be frank, I'm quite discomfort about Hana-Kimi. This is the first volume, and already, two people know about the main character's identity. If she was to be exposed in front of the whole crowd within a few volumes, and continues to story from then on, I would eventually see this as another tedious which-boy-gets-the-girl romancer. But I trust Hisaya Nakajo, and if she can continue with the whole gender-bending phase for the rest of this series, I would definitely enjoy reading her upcoming volumes.
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