I've been enjoying Mizuho Kusanagi's current work, Yona of the Dawn, so I thought I would try one of her earlier works. The basic plot idea had some potential to it; meeting your reincarnated lover and best friend and discovering they are each now a different gender could have been done in a way that humorously turned gender and sexual expectations on their head in a fun and interesting way. Instead of doing that, it turned into a story that was blatantly homophobic, where the main character constantly worries that he might still be attracted to his former lover despite the fact that she is now a man, and everyone around him also reminds him that it's wrong. The villain(ish) character is revealed to be an 'evil lesbian' who tormented him in his past life, and who is now a male school teacher who tries to seduce his female students, along with being physically and emotionally abusive to the main character (who is also his student). It's hard to imagine how this could have gone even further off the rails. If anything, it's made me reflect on how incredibly heteronormative Yona is and how Kusanagi would treat a queer character in her current work (if there were any).

Some of the problematic aspects get dropped with time, such as the abusive lecherous teacher becoming more of a cranky character, and the ending does tie things up reasonably well, but this unfortunately isn't a manga that I would really recommend.