Boku Girl review

lem0906191
Apr 04, 2021
Dropped.

Was actually a good story for the first 30 or so chapters (if you ignore the downright awful portrayals of homosexuals and crossdressers), progressively became more ecchi than plot, and then went rapidly downhill roughly at the 50 chapter mark. Final straw for me was when the protagonist's dad was revealed to have wanted to fuck his son since he was a toddler and it's played exclusively for laughs.

This story is hard to rate, considering just how massive the quality gap between the beginning and up to where I read is. However, I will try my best.

Story: 4 out of 10
Starts off on a decent note, albeit a little tropey. The main character, Mizuki, is a boy with feminine looks and a desire to be more manly. Unfortunately for him, he soon becomes a Norse god's plaything. He wakes up one day only to find that, oh no, his willy's gone, and he started growing boobs! The next 30 chapters focus on him - with the help of his childhood best friend - trying to hide his sex change and find a way to turn back into a man so that he can confess his feelings to his crush. Near the 30 chapter mark, he finally decides to tell his crush about his sex change. A few chapters after that focus more on the relationships between the characters.
This manga has a love dodecahedron. Mizuki has two pursuers - one of whom has a fiancee - and has two main love interests: Yumeko - a cute girl Mizuki has liked since he was male, and Takeru - Mizuki's childhood best friend, whom he gradually started developing feelings for only after the sex change. Yumeko has a crush on Takeru. Takeru has a crush on Mizuki. Mizuki has a crush on Yumeko, and later Takeru. Mizuki is convinced, however, that he should help Yumeko and Takeru get together. From my understanding, an another character later joins in on the fun; it's after the part where I dropped the manga, so I can't comment on that.
[SPOILER WARNING!!!!! I feel like I have to mention this, since it's my primary reason for dropping]
Chapter 50. It's time to meet Mizuki's dad. So far, the story has been setting him up as this emotionally distant, intimidating, and arguably abusive figure; to get a sense of how bad it is, Mizuki is shown to be genuinely afraid that his dad will get angry at him for the sex change, despite it not being his fault in any sense of the word. At this point, I was genuinely expecting this manga to try its best to tackle the subject of parental abuse, and how forcing a child into strict gender roles may harm their psyche. Unfortunately, this isn't a good manga; would you like to know what I got instead? Apparently, Mizuki's father was so bent on making him as masculine as possible because he got a boner from how closely Mizuki resembles his dead wife! Just to give context, this has been going on since Mizuki was a very, very, young child. Mizuki's dad is confirmed to be a pedophile with incestuous tendencies, and it's treated with about as much nuance as you'd expect from an ecchi manga; it seems that he was only written as a pedophile so that there could be jokes about how overprotective and overly concerned with his child's sex live he is.
[SPOILER WARNING: END.]
After the introduction of Mizuki's father, the manga loses its focus, and is overly padded out with ecchi for the sake of ecchi.

Art: 8 out of 10
The art is very good. I particularly like how the author draws faces. The backgrounds could use a little more work.

Characters: 3 out of 10
Mizuki, Yumeko, and Takeru are good characters in the beginning of the manga; unfortunately, as the manga goes on, Mizuki and Yumeko seem to lose their individual personality traits, becoming blander than flour. Takeru gets to keep his personality, but, and some other reviewers have pointed out, is treated as unquestionably good despite having attempted to rape Mizuki multiple times; although the manga itself does not call it rape, there are quite a few situations in which Takeru tries to do things to Mizuki while Mizuki either hasn't given consent or is clearly in no state to give consent (for example, while Mizuki is drunk).
Loki, with her "I am going to cause problems on purpose" personality, is a bit of a hit or miss; personally, I wasn't a fan. I liked Mei's upbeat, carefree, and blunt attitude.
The other side characters, however, are just awful. Ide is the "buff gay pervert" stereotype; still have no idea why the author decided to make him a reoccurring character. Yamada's whole shtick is that he hopes to become a lingerie designer just like his father, so he really likes female lingerie and wears it everywhere. His two other personality traits include not understanding that "no" means "no" and misgendering Mizuki. Mizuki's father should be locked away in a jail cell. All three have their creepy, pushy behavior played for laughs.

Enjoyment: 3 out of 10
7 or 8 for the first 30 chapters; a solid 1 for chapters 50-58. This manga was genuinely fun to read at the beginning, but I had to force myself to read chapters 50-58 until, ultimately, I decided to drop it.

Overall, a 3 out of 10.
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Boku Girl
Boku Girl
Auteur Sugito, Akira
Artiste