Boku Girl

I really do like this manga. It's sexual tension is done really well, (although I can't really say much about anything else) and its premise is pretty interesting.

Story (5/10)
Definitely drops off after I'd say chapter 55. It doesn't become unbearable, but the sexual tension never reaches the same point after that. I think after that they shifted the focus on the female romantic lead to please the people that may have been routing for that, but ultimately it was poorly done, and the entire time I just wanted the mc to go back to the romantic male lead. I think it was important for the author to distinguish that both leads wouldn't care if mc was a boy or a girl, but I feel like there really wasn't any point in making the last chapters fluff for this purpose.

Art(9/10)
Big fan of the artstyle. Takeru and Mizuki's character designs were right up my alley, and it kind of made me start hating basic bishounen boys.

Character (4/10)
Author brings in shitty side characters that don't really get any development or likeable qualities. Characters are added purely for story purposes, and after that author pretty much forgets about them until the end, where he's obligated to give these character some type of ending. I didn't care about Loki, I didn't care about pantsu boi, didn't care about his fiance, didn't care about that guy that started liking Mizuki near the end, and I didn't even care about Fujiwara. Literally the only characters I cared about were Mizuki and Takeru, and I really think that the author should've considered giving me something more to care about with these characters.

Enjoyment(9/10)
Basically everything said above

Overall(9/10)
Basically everything said above

Boku girl is a manga series that reminds me of Ranma 1/2. If you know ranma 1/2 then you know that this story fits in the "gender bender" category. The similarities between Ranma 1/2 and Boku girl are uncanny but there are certain things that really make Boku Girl its own thing.

Mizuki and Ranma were raised to be fighters. (this is downplayed in Boku Girl). They both can disguise as a boy or girl when necessary. (ranma can do this cause he can physically switch back and forth while Mizuki can do this cause he was androgynous to begin with.) Both of them identify as male even in female forms and both of them are trying to get this whole thing that happend to them "undone" (They more or less forget about it for dumb reasons. Eh, we'll figure that out later... its not important ).

And to top all of this the formula for Ranma 1/2 is seemingly cloned here as well. Mizuki is turned into a girl. There is a very select crowd that knows about his secret. Mizuki is placed in some position (often very hilarious) where his issue might be revealed and finds some way to get out of trouble. The fighting aspect from Ranma was removed but the rest of the elements are still there.

But what sets Boku Girl apart from a direct rip-off (like the likes of Kampfer) to Ranma 1/2 is how deep they go into the characters of our protagonist and his friends also how Boku Girl can seemingly turn the formula on its head.

[this next parts may contain light character spoilers if you want to call them that tons of them can be pulled from the first two volumes its mostly just expounded on through out the story]

Mizuki has always been androgynous and has always been into "girly" things even from a young age. He was raised under strict guidance to always be manly. All of this stems from his father who is trying to raise him to be a true man. (i won't spoil too much about the father.) But he's always had an affinity towards feminine things despite how he was raised. He denies this. He fights against this. but in the end when he's now a girl he more or less finds himself more comfortable expressing a more feminine attitude and starts dressing up like a girl more often. The best equivalent i could think of he's tsundere to the idea of being a girl. Which is an accurate depiction to those who have not come to terms with their gender identity. (i should know wink wink)

On the other hand Mizuki has not come to terms with his sexuality as well. This may have been there as part of the magic aspect of the story because Mizuki has shown no signs of liking the male gender before his switch to female. The only reason Mizuki likes boys now is the fact that he's a girl now. "so its okay. Right?" This may have been expounded on in some part of his past when expounding on his friendship with his best friend Takeru. My guess its mostly just fan service but i'm glad they didn't rule it out like it was in Ranma 1/2. Well even though it may never be expounded on, its a nice aspect to the character and to his friend (Takeru) as well who also has conflicting feelings about the whole thing. this creates a little love triangle or love octagon or what ever. because there are a tone of characters thrown into the mix but don't worry the three main get most of the attention.

final note while Boku Girl pulls a lot of Ranma's formula it also plays on the formula and kind of turns it on its head at some points i don't want to go into too much detail on what i mean by that because you know actual spoilers. but the plot seems centered mostly around its 3 main characters and other characters don't get caught up into the mix that often but often will have their own subplots. so we have a story about 3 characters. Mizuki Takeru and Fujiwara. Fujiwara is best girl and that's all you need to know going into this one.

Methodology:
I'm am going to write a mostly spoiler free review of this series as most of its faults can be detailed without given away any plot specifics (nothing you can't guess without having ever cracked the cover) aside from character names. Warning, this series is ecchi and carries all such related warnings. All of pronouns referring to Mizuki will be male because I'm lazy and don't feel like writing his/her and he/she etc. and I have no clue how the author intended for us to see the character.

Summary 3/10 :
In certain sporting communities the word potential is used as an insult. With that in mind, I can only say that Boku Girl had potential. It had the foundations of a generally good gender bent series; but due to a phenomenal lack of a structured story, character development, sense of urgency, and consequences for actions taken, it failed to leave any positive lasting impression and left me asking what the purpose of the manga was by the end.

Story 2/10:
This is the most baffling part of the series. Boku Girl by all measures appears to be a tale of ecchi romance, and perhaps part harem; but, it fails to develop believable organic romantic relationships between Mizuki and any of his love interests.

The story begins with the expected gender transformation in our protagonist and the author writes a good twenty or so genuinely enjoyable chapters that deal with how Mizuki must proceed if he wishes to hide it from the girl he's interested in and the school at large. Unfortunately, once his secret is revealed the plot becomes muddled and rapidly devolves into a standard American romantic comedy filled with misunderstandings and a general lack of honesty between the characters. This causes the story to stall out and prevents the characters from developing proper relationship with each other.

This is because there is almost no causality in the story. Various characters will make attempts to court Mizuki but their actions don't result in any consequences. For example, a great number of characters try to rape him but it never changes the way Mizuki feels about them. If they were creepy before hand, they still are, but if they were a close friend Mizuki doesn't show any signs of emotional turmoil that his trust has been betrayed. This may be written off as generally ecchi behavior because the story never recognizes it as anything other than normal, but this would have been a strong opportunity to force much needed character development and offered a chance to escape the character and plot stagnation that was occurring.

Art 6/10:
Credit is due for the art. I'll quickly let it be known that the scenery and the general quality of the art work was slightly above average and never left me wanting or confused. Furthermore, some of the characters like Mei and Mizuki has designs which fit the characters well.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Yumeko, the female love interest. Her design was bland. It had no distinctive characteristics and made it very hard to see her as anything other than another pointless harem shipping.

While I can't complain about this specifically from a critical perspective, I thought the author should not have allowed the characters' designs to to so obviously explain their role in the story. E.g. random high school male is drawn like a creep so naturally he's going to hit on Mizuki and be a pest. Variety is the spice of life and although the author has plenty here, he isn't willing to break out of the mold and try anything daring and new. (Also, is it too much to ask that Thor be drawn with a bit more maturity?)

Characters 2/10:
Show don't tell: that's the best bit of advice for any character development that I can give. Boku Girl puts forth a rather impressive amount of effort to explain how the characters feel about each other. Unfortunately it never goes anywhere thanks to this series utter lack of causality. The author mainly develops the characters through introspection and acts of physical contact that will not be expounded upon properly.

I touched on this a bit in the story section, but the development of Mizuki and Takeru does progress nicely for the first twenty or so chapters. Unfortunately, across the board the author leaves the character arcs unfinished for essentially all of the characters. Minor characters get undue time in the spotlight for character development but then they turn out to be tertiary to the main plot and only distract from cementing the primary characters as their own discrete entities. In general, all of the characters are too passive and unwilling to express themselves constructively to the ones they love.

Mizuki: While initially his struggles to pass himself off as a boy define him as a character; once his secret is revealed, his defining characteristics become so difficult to see that you could say that the character by the end is a totally different character. This is very problematic because there is no natural progression from point A to B that you might expect from a gender bender. The character is so passive in accepting roles from others, that I'm not quite sure how the character will behave on his own. I would preferred to see Mizuki take a dominant role in relationships so that we could better have seen how his behavior changed due to his transformation and societal influences. Also, Mizuki's passivity is one of the main causes of roughly fourty chapters of filler material that leads nowhere. I suppose as a study for how social pressures affects humans it's not the worst effort I've seen, but I'm here to watch a story about how a kid deals with a gender transformation and how that affects his love life and not about how wearing a dress prevents a person from behaving assertively.

Yumeko: Honestly, I can't say very much about this character beyond that she's a generic female love interest. She's in enough of the story to develop her own character but the author didn't seem to want her to be anything else. (He even has another character make fun of how stereotypical she is)

Takeru: In general I'd say he was the most believable character. His initial relationship with Mizuki makes sense, but as the story progresses he begins to behave erratically. I can only presume that he was the intended romantic partner for Mizuki, but his relationship with him bizarrely flip flops between best friends and love interests in a manner that I can only describe as manic.

Loki: A generally fun character that sets the plot into action. Unfortunately, her antics, past the initial transformation, don't really contribute to the story and it feels weaker as a result of all of the page time she receives in the final 60 chapters.

Depiction of Men 3/10 | Women 3/10 :
Unpopular opinion, but I feel that it is necessary to look at how a gender bender portrays the difference between the sexes.

Men: Simply put, just because a man likes a women doesn't mean that he's going to violate her personal space and take any opportunity presented to molest her. Numerous times throughout this manga we see various men plan to and actively molest Mizuki for no other reason than he's cute and available. I understand that this is an ecchi piece but rape/incest leaves a bad taste in my mouth and it wasn't called for in this series. How is it that the specifically creepy character Yamada is more respectful of Mizuki than his childhood friend?

Women: Honestly speaking, it's a mixed bag. Some individuals like Loki and Mei stand on their own and I have no complaints about them. But for crying out loud, Yumeko is nothing more than a cardboard cutout that I've seen many times before whenever someone needs a generic female love interest for the man to fall for. Mizuki's female form is even worse. From the start of the manga Mizuki is objectified by BOTH genders as an object of attraction. Only Yumeko and Loki have an explicit interest in Mizuki for a reason other than his appearance.

Overall 3/10:
I can't say I would ever recommend this series to anyone as anything other than a textbook on how not to write a romance. I can't say that I wasn't enjoying the series while I was reading it. It presented enough comedy to keep me going, but that's probably the only major draw the manga has. To say I was disappointed by the ending is needless, because no ending presented would have satisfied me. The characters were simply too flat and dull to become invested in. That is quite the marvel in fact when you consider the length of the series. Manga such as Pluto have made me care for characters more in the course of two chapters than this manga did in the course of its entire length.

CONTENT WARNING: This manga, first off, portrays the LGBTQ community in a controversial light, and thus I do not recommend reading this title if you are prone to these kinds of opinions. There are already so many posts calling Boku Girl "transphobic", "homophobic" and "bigoted" and this needs to stop being the basis of the series. While people are allowed to have their own tastes the toxicity I've seen in these reviews is in a league of its own. I'm not going to talk about any of that stuff in my review, because honestly I don't really care and like to enjoy things without involving about my political agenda, and I ask you to do the same if you can.

Story: 9/10
Boku Girl starts out as a seemingly cliché genderbender, but soon proves to be anything but. The story emphasizes the psychological aftereffects of having your Y chromosome replaced with an X very convincingly from the perspectives of Mizuki, the supposed "victim" whose fundamental values make the gender change ever more uncomfortable, and Takeru, the childhood friend who undergoes a constant struggle, attempting to decide whether to respect his friend's wish to be viewed as masculine or trust in his newfound feelings for Mizuki. In my opinion, the story of Boku Girl is incredibly well-thought-out, with its only weakness being its emphasis on the main four characters, with little development for the side characters who often serve as no more than "observers" to the events in the main plot, becoming plot devices when needed. I'll continue on this point in the Character section.

Art: 10/10
Akira Sugito's artwork is incredibly refined and clean. Again, the emphasis here is on the characters, so it's made pretty clear that a lot more effort was put into them compared to the backdrops, although Sugito manages to create vivid environments when they're needed. Good examples of this are seen mostly when plot is taking center stage, almost to tell you that what happens next is important. The thing that I admire most about Sugito's art, though, is the choice he made with Mizuki's character design. In most genderbend fantasies, the main character is obviously male, and when he becomes a woman you can easily tell, as the character spontaneously grows giant breasts, shrinks at least half a foot and sometimes even grows long hair. With Mizuki, though, his design at the start was androgynous, leaning towards female, and there is no actually visible change when he becomes female, besides the fact that his "willy" disappears. This is an extremely daring move, as later in the series when he begins to switch back and forth more erratically the only way you can tell what gender Mizuki is at the moment is through implication and/or internal monologue. This attribute, though, works in the series' favor, as it shows that the mere implication of Mizuki being male or female can change the reader's perception; when Mizuki is male, your brain somehow perceives him as more male, and the same tends to happen the other way around, even though there are no changes to the actual base design. This decision on the author's part really brings Mizuki as a character to another level, as implication and speech patterns are the only way to discern one gender from another.

Character: 10/10
As I was saying earlier, the characters are really the selling point of the series, and this is made clear time and time again across all 107 chapters. But this isn't necessarily a bad thing. While the side characters do only serve as observers to the main story, this can actually serve to the benefit of the series, adding more viewpoints to the events transpiring in Mizuki's life. The best-written character in the series, though, actually isn't Mizuki; it's Takeru by a long shot. The struggle he undergoes over the course of Boku Girl takes center stage at some points, and this struggle is about as realistic as you can get in a gender-bender fantasy like this one.

Enjoyment: 10/10
When it comes to enjoyability, it should have been made clear by now that I very much enjoy this series. Out of the almost 100 anime or manga I've watched or read, Boku Girl would be somewhere in my top 20. One of the biggest factors of enjoyability that has given the series many controversial opinions is the ending of the series. This ending has been shown to be extremely hit or miss, with some saying it was excellent and others saying it was abysmal. While I won't delve into the specifics about the ending for spoiler reasons I will say I loved the ending. It was exactly what I was looking for and hoping for, and it did what similar series like Idol Pretender could not. While I know I don't speak for everyone in the community, this is simply my take so you may read the series and hate the ending yourself. It is completely based on your personal interests and as much as I'd like to try to sway everyone into loving every part of this series I am incapable of doing that. I can encourage you, though, to try the series out for everything it's worth and form your own opinions of the show, and I also ask you to please put your political opinions aside while reading for the reasons I discussed in the disclaimer.

Overall Score: 10/10

If you have any questions or concerns about this review, want to recommend a fringe manga to me, or even simply want to chat about this title, please contact me at [email protected] for any and all inquiries. My door is always open.

i really enjoyed reading this manga, and it left a hole when i had finished.
the main characters are easy to like, especially Mizuke who gets more developed as the story progresses.
there were some good comedy moments, where i laughed out loud and some feel good moments.
In reality this is an ecchi comedy romance, with quite a few lewd scenes. Although there wasnt so many lewd scenes that it becomes unreadable in public.
The depictions of Mizuke in outfits etc are really nice, and even make me like her character more.

My only real criticism of this manga would be the quick ending. It took over 100 chapters to flesh out the story, but it was ended very quickly. I was left wondering what would happen to their future, and there was no ending for most of the other characters. They showed a term into the future, which wasnt really enough. Also what happened when Mizuke's dad found out about the relationship? there were no reactions from classmates about the couples relationship.
just a few untied strings at the end.

But apart from that, a solid read well worth it.

this manga is great. heres the reason its great

- its fun
- its adorable
- the characters are good
- the story is fun
- it triggers normalfags that should get out of my hobby and kys
- i enjoyed it
- i really enjoyed it
- its a good manga

heres the reasons its not great

- needs more volumes.

why do you need to write a 50 million page thesis for reviewing work. its stupid. who reads this shit past the 30th line. not me. thats for sure. here's a short story, the review is over because I'm not a pretentious retard with a thesaurus fetish:

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.

A sound premise and well done for the early chapters. But becomes swamped with needless angst and melodrama once you start to reach a certain point. Most of which is based around the two main characters who quite obviously like eachother romantically, have made it basically 100% undeniable to eachother through body language and their actions, but refuse to say anything about it.

It becomes so riddle with fallacies and senseless drama that in the later chapters the author took the cheapest and dirtiest possible route to making EVEN MORE NEEDLESS DRAMA... By having Average McCoolguy forcefully inserted so he can flirt and try to get with the gender-swapped protagonist which turns this Manga into a complete Trainwreck of confusion on the characters behalf.

Story 4/10: It starts out with a solid premise, annoying but mostly funny gags, interesting side stories for some minor characters that have meaningful impact, and smooth flow with continuity.

I suppose the only notable thing is that it focuses more on important instances that happened in their daily lives, instead of just choosing to follow them everyday or randomly follow them an entire day because this one thing happens at some point.

Then it turns into the aforementioned melodrama overdose with stupid and predictable gags in contrary to the early-on relative comedy and fluidity. The characters were believable early on, they started to realize their feelings at some point, then derailed themselves with complete flips in personality and story tone.

Art 7/10: Good, to the point, and better than some other questionable quality mangas out there.

Characters 5/10: Started out well-rounded and believable. Turned into a complete mess when they reached the apex of their character development, of which it went from it's height to a straightforward 90 degree fall.

Mizuki - Protagonist that gets gender swapped. Has feelings for Takeru, but won't admit it because her friend Yumeko has a crush on Takeru and is aiding her advances. Had feelings for Yumeko as well, which leads to the two of them realizing how they properly feel about one-another.

Takeru - Second protagonist which the series frequently follows to understand him and his point of view. Likes Mizuki and has made it blatantly obvious(no spoilers), but they both refuse to see each other romantically despite well-knowing how they feel... Has no feelings towards Yumeko whatsoever.

Yumeko - Typical good at everything and has large breasts female who has feelings for Takeru and confusing friend feelings towards Mizuki.

Loki - Supposed to be a son of Odin and younger brother of Thor, but they decided to portay this god as a Generic Blond Loli a la Shinobu from Bakemonogatari.

One has to wonder how the Norse gods haven't noticed Loki missing, local gods haven't noticed Loki in their influential area, have no idea what he's doing, and haven't done anything to rectify these problems. Also why is there a Norse God sociopathically tormenting random Japanese highschool students?

Yamada - Legitimately scary, albeit funny comic relief. Has a good sidestory and reasonable influence on the story for being just a side character. It might as well follow him, or hell make a spin-off comic, and it would be an 8/10 comedy series.

Asou - Average McCoolguy that has upstanding morals, is good at everything, and of course was forced into the story so he can flirt with Mizuki. He also hates to lie which leads to unfunny. Loki of course capitalizes on this and becomes recklessly unfunny and predictable as it sets up what Loki is going to do literally pages or entire chapters ahead of time.

Every character except Asou has good potential for a good story. Once Asou came into play it just derailed every other character except Yamada, of which took a sad backseat.

Enjoyment 5/10: It would be rated lower if it were not for the early-mid chapters being actually enjoyable and well paced. Easily an 8/10. A 5/10 is being generous as it is.

Overall 5/10: Until the full story is done and released, aka undetermined, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone at all. Wait a few years to see if it's done by then or discontinued, the release schedule is awkward and slow like that. Provided it finishes you can probably wade through the needless drama with balls of steel to get to the happy ending that is pretty easy to see from the very beginning onward.

If this gets discontinued it won't be that much of a loss either way since the story has introduced the "We're out of ideas" plot device and it doesn't know how to go onward without reaching the end too suddenly.

TL;DR - Do not recommend until it is completely finished so the end is actually in sight, rather than wading through trash and being stuck at where the author stopped. Would not recommend at all if it gets cancelled as it will just leave you standing there in bad plot devices and character derailment incapable of moving forward.

Boku Girl 6/7/7/6/7

First things first. My "reviews" system is explained on a blog entry. Which can be found through my profile.
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✦Story
First things first. I define "gender benders" in two ways. One would be where a guy get's a females body, but soul/heart/mind/personality stays male. And other kind I would kind a full conversion. Where a man gets females body and as well instantly or slowly has/will have also a females mind/soul/heart and eventually personality and way of thinking and feeling.

This manga, though. Is essentially a gender tweak. A very feminine boy with girlish looks and girlish personality happens to get females body. Which doesn't change much aside giving a very weak moral barrier. So for me to categorize it as "gender bender" is incorrect. Whilst technically it is obviously. But as whole I wouldn't say so.

Nevertheless, if ignoring that little part. We essentially get a cute little romance story with some triangles, one sided feelings and rather self-aware progression and final pairing. For the most part I enjoyed it, found it cute with some added lewdness to it. So our MC got somewhat sexually harassed no matter what gender he/she would be. We also get few bits and bobs of drama, while getting rather good enough progression of romance. As well few quirks and turns, make the story as well fairly enjoyable.

So it's definitely not a bad premise and story/setting. But it didn't really impress me that much. I did like the very cute and girlish main character, setting sounds like tomboy, but it obviously isn't. Thus fair enough.

✦Art
Pretty solid art. Fairly nice character design and some other stuff. Didn't impress me enough to considering that good. We got mostly fanservice lewds about the lead character to an more intimate extent than some other characters that did as well offer some of fanservice. But main character service was rather lewd, especially with blatant revealed upper body parts. Got a bit awkward to read it at work now and then. Since some chapters are rather borderline.

✦Character
Good enough. A very girlish lead character. A beautiful second female main character. And plenty of other type of characters. So for the most type stereotype and character variation was large enough.

Probably most noticeable parts are the character progression, relationship discovery development and rather pleasant outcome.

✦Enjoyment & Overall
This time around I somewhat explained enjoyment and whole picture on every paragraph. If there's anything to add. Then it would be that it simply wasn't my cup of tea. Good enough read, but not tailored to my tastes.

I somehow wish she would gotten a bit less harassed and that she would used her brain a bit more rather than forcing herself a moral barrier and ending up doing some rather stupid things.

Want a cute romance Manga with some lewd aspects and give it an excuse of being a "gender bender" somehow. Then sure, it's definitely a good read.

Boku Girl

Story (6): It's about a feminine boy who turned into a girl by the hands of the God, for some reason who is a ecchi loli, Loki. It was a good premise to start out with and it caught my attention on the very first chapter, but it slowly deteriorated into mediocre and should've ended ten to twenty chapters earlier. The only reason it got a 6 was because the first half of the story was hilarious but after that it was just too much and I didn't even read the final chapter (probably because I wanted a Yuri at the end... possible spoiler.)

Art (8): The art style is unique, it stays consistent to the beginning to end.

Character (6): Every character in this story is very unique... It's nice to be unique but most of them weren't very likable. A few of them started out very nice and promising but as soon as the next chapter passes by, they start to feel way too much and uncomfortable. Again, I gave this a 6 because they are a three good characters out of bad bunch, like Loki, Mitsuki, and Fujiwara, but rest started out with so much potential but ended up asking yourself to the author, why? If this three characters I've mentioned weren't in the manga the, it would've gotten a (2).

Enjoyment (6): My enjoyment in the beginning started out as a (10), but as soon as the manga progress, it's boring, tries too much, feels like it's being prolonged, and ended abruptly to really ruin it. I never once feel like Mitsuki was truly a girl, probably because he acted the same exact same girlish way when he was a boy. I didn't even read the final chapter because the shipping at the end just feels way too force, creepy, gross, and just too much once again. I would give it this, in the beginning it made me laugh so hard so many times, but I feel like the author tried too hard towards the end.

Overall (6): I'm sorry to anybody that likes this manga, but to me it's crap covered with sprinkles. It was so so so good at the beginning, and had so much potential to be a great manga, but it just keeps shooting itself on the foot. I read this manga because it was recommended it to me once I've finished Good Luck Girl, which is way beyond better and I recommend it. I don't wanna say don't read it but I'm not stopping anybody from doing so either, maybe you'll have a better time reading this golden covered garbage more than I had. One more before I end this off, I didn't read the final chapter because this manga pissed me off with the forced and creepy shipping I've mentioned above, but I do wanna mention that shipping didn't alter any of my scores for this manga, if the shipping were to go another way, it still would've been a 6.

Have fun reading or skipping this golden covered turd.

On the surface Boku Girl seems like your ordinary, generic, everyday genderbender manga and, well... That's kind of what it is. However, this is an extremely well written, fun to read and entertaining one at that. Apparently this is Sugito Akira's first manga, in which case I have to congratulate him on making something so fun on his first effort. Remember that word, "Fun", because that's what Boku Girl is about. It's not about a deep, intigruing story. It's not about heart-wrenching drama. It's not about shakespearean dialogue. It's about fun. In all it's simplicity, the manga delivers that fun incredibly well.

Story - 6
As I mentioned earlier, the story isn't anything out of the ordinary. Guy turns into girl and hijinx ensue. The story is very obviously not the focus and thus is incredibly simple, but it carries the manga fairly decently and gives way to what really matters -- the characters and the comedy.

Art - 9
The art in Boku Girl is consistent, detailed and well drawn. Just go to any thread on your local anime forum about Boku Girl (if there are any) and look around. You'll most likely find a few people talking about how cute and beautiful our protagonist, Mizuki, is. In almost every panel he is drawn in, he is drawn incredibly well and beautifully with juicy lips and a warm blush.

Character - 10
This is where Boku Girl truly shines -- the characters. Although all characters fall into some sort of manga archetype, be it friendly, innocent protagonist, reliable childhood friend or ditzy, cute airhead, all of the characters are written with care and it really shows. All characters are very likable and their interactions with eachother are an absolute blast, especially Takeru and Mizuki's and their relationship as best friends that has become awkward and unpredictable with Mizuki's transformation. There is not a single bad character in this manga or one that i dislike or hate, whereas there's always at least one character i dislike in most mangas.

Enjoyment - 10
If this scale could go any higher, I would without a doubt give enjoyment an 11. The comedy is wonderful, the characters lovable and the romance captivatingly interesting. It's an absolute blast to read and I can, without a shred of doubt, say that this is the most fun I've had reading a manga. Everything is just so fun.

Overall, I'm giving this manga a 10. It's far from perfect and mostly people would disagree with me on this rating, but it's just too damn entertaining that I can't give it anything less than a full 10. The story is generic, but it was never the focus in the first place, so it doesn't change the overall rating at all for me.

This manga is definitely worth a look at for everyone even slightly interested.

Boku Girl is just another genderbend manga, with a lot of common tropes and cliche situations put inside, somehow still keeping the story decently fresh.

Story 5/10
Boku Girl's plot is basic with a premise that has very little logic, with Loki in form a of a cute little girl conveniently finding Mizuki's situation amusing, the god transforms this very feminine boy into an actual girl, the curse's rules will then be bend constantly for the story to continue and also be able to get in some more ecchi scenes.

Art 8/10
One of Boku girl's strenghts is it's art, while not a masterpiece, it captures perfectly the expressions of the characters, making the panels more vivid, it's bubbly nature luckily doesn't affect the male characters, which are very recognizible to be men and not female characters with less eyelashes and short hair, with the main lead radiating masculinity but not so much it would make him uncharming.

Character 4/10
There's a very noticeable decline in the quality of the characters after the introduction of the first 3, most of them being at the end just another chaotic pervert that's trying to get into Mizuki's pants, which seemed to be time aimed as "comedic relief" characters, but their action sended up being too bizarrre for it to be humorous.

Enjoyment 8/10
I've got to admit the first half of boku girl was really enjoyable, the chapters didn't drive too far away from the plot, the situations were mostly original and funny. Now,
the second half was were the manga started losing it's charm, for some reason they kept adding more useless arcs to annoying side-characters instead of advancing the plot, to the point where I recomend just skipping to the final arc.

Overall 7/10
How does Boku girl stand as a manga in general? pretty bad, but comparing a ecchi-genderbender with the rest of this medium would be pretty nonsensical, so for a genderbender, how does boku girl stand? I'd say quite good, the story is compelling if you enjoy genderbenders and the protagonist manages to be relatable.
The ending I do feel missed the point of the starting premise, there could've been many other results that would've made more sense with the character's goals and development, still it's not completely dealbreaking.

I wanted to right this review before I was able to finish the series. The reason for this is so that I don't have a biased opinion due to having an ending I liked or due to it having an ending I did not like so let me begin.

First I would like to state I absolutely LOVE this series. Although there are quite a few issues I see being the cynic I am. So when it comes to the story of Boku Girl there is a pureness to it with a VERY lovable cast that makes this manga exceeds others like it and with a the introduction of the Norse Gods into the story as the reason for Mizuki's change in gender adds a certain flare to the story for me.

When it comes to the characters of this series I must say that I love all of them like I stated before it's just a very lovable cast. There is still issues to be found though, when it comes to the development of any characters outside of the main cast which is maintained by a mere 3 characters really leaves a lot to be wanted for me. I would have loved to have seen more development in other characters and with this being said let me conclude this review.

I got a lot of enjoyment out of this series and hope it has a great ending (at least to me) and the art is phenomenal, well when I say phenomenal I just mean that it's a truly beautiful style. So overall I thought the story was very good. The characters that are developed being a good quality but leaving quite a bit to be wanted from other characters outside the main cast. An overall Enjoyable story and a truly magnificent art style, or at least one that caters to my taste. So if you like a good gender swap ecchi manga... well this is a great one.

[TW: Transphobia, gender dysphoria, sexual situations, and pedophilia/child sexual abuse (possibly) in this series]
I can't believe I read this manga but I did and I might as well write a review about it so here we go.

Boku Girl's protagonist is an effeminate first year high school student by the name of Suzushiro Mizuki, who is constantly at odds with his feminine appearance. His life has always been overshadowed by men confessing to him, others not taking him seriously as a boy, and even his crush confessing that she only sees him as a she. Matters are worsened when the trickster god Loki decides Mizuki to turn Mizuki's body into that of a girl's. Thus our protagonist sets off in an attempt to revert their body back to what it once was, while simultaneously traversing his personal relationships as a girl in hiding.

Story [6/10] I really can't decide if I liked the basic plot of this story or not. I am leaning toward the not end, mostly because I side-eye the author's constant writing in of needless sexual situations and boring filler that detracts from the main focus of the story, which is Mizuki's relationship with his crush and childhood friend. I think the manga would be a lot more tasteful as well if they removed even a smidgen of the needless fanservice. Which, is literally every chapter.


Art [4/10] This may not bothers as much as I but holy shit the anatomy in this series is somewhat frightening. This is most obvious with the female characters, as they are constantly depicted in spine breaking poses in order to show off their boobs and butt. It's one thing if it was the odd, silly cover art but it is so constant that it is honestly distracting from the plot of the story. These girls either need to join a professional aerobics team or go to the hospital immediately, I am very concerned for their health.
That aside the artist excels in expressions and faces, and the art style reminds me of the art in the World God Only Knows personally, though it's mostly in the eyes.

Character [3/10] I like Mizuki and his crush, they're pretty unique as characters and don't abide to boring anime archetypes that plague so many other series. Aside from them and Mizuki's childhood friend though, I find all of the other characters annoying and boring. I honestly have no idea why some of them are written in other than for poor comedic relief.

Enjoyment [4/10] As mentioned previously I found the characters that are intentionally written in for comedic relief to be bland and annoying, and as a result a lot of the humor isn't funny. That said there are a couple of interactions that did insight a chuckle from me, so it wasn't a completely laughless experience. The sexual situations that plague this series are gross male pandering and I really wish they would tone it down. I know it's an ecchi, I don't care. The point is the fanservice degrades the overall series in terms of quality and tastefulness. Are anime tiddies really that important.

That said I do like the main plot, it reads kinda like a shoujo except less idealized and with less cliches. Which is the main reason I am sticking around to read it.

Overall [3/10] I really can't give this series anything higher than a 3 while still in good faith. I can't. There were too many distracting qualities that detracted from the overall work and it resulted in me enjoying one VERY SPECIFIC thing about the manga but not the manga itself. Would I recommend this series to a friend? Not unless I want to still look them in the eye. Will I read it again? Probably not. Overall kind of a let down, but I can't really expect something too great from an ecchi manga I guess.

THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SOME SPOILERS.
As of this review, I've only made it up to Chapter 38, so keep that in mind if you're reading in the far future.

Gender benders are a sub genre that I don't really care for. They all suffer predictable cliches such as the gender bent protagonist adjusts to their new gender, with unfunny comedy, ecchiness, lack of a proper ending etc.

That's where Boku Girl comes in. Never before since Ranma ½ had there been a gender bender as funny as this. I was pleasantly surprised how well written and funny the story and characters are.

Story-7: Boku Girl is a gender bender, guy turns into a girl story. It's simple, but its done so well because it's funny and interesting. Mizuki is a first year high school student. He trains in akido and wants to prove to his father that he is a strong man. Why does this matter? Mizuki may be a man, but looks very feminine. He wants to prove to others that he is a manly guy, but with such a feminine face and body... it's hard to pull off. In fact, he has been asked out by other men! One day, after failing to propose to his would be girlfriend, he ends up getting stung by a weird looking wasp! It turns out this wasp was sent out by the goddess Loki, who wants to pull a prank on Mizuki for fun. The next morning, after a weird nightmare, mizuki wakes up....as a girl.

The story may sound like another gender bender, but it's told in such a fun way its hard to put down! It maybe simple, but I've founded it harder to predict as the story goes on. It dodges the standard cliches of most gender benders or puts a better twist on them. The characters are relatable to anyone who has been in high school in one way or the other even Mizuki!


Characters-8: What Boku Girl excels in is how naturally characters react to the situation. When Mizuki turns into a girl, he doesn't like it and still pretends to be a boy at school, to the best of his ability. Takeru, obliviously doubts at first the girl Mizuki was originally boy mizuki.. I thought this was a very strong point because its how a real person would react.

There are four main characters for this series:

The main protagonist, Mizuki, is probably the most relatable main lead in a gender bender. He suffers from looking too feminine at the beginning of the story, and often gets asked out by other guys! Whats worse, the love of his life Fujiwara thinks of him as a girl as well! Mizuki wants to get closer to her, but is too shy to admit it. This is hard on him because he wants to prove to be manly for Fujiwara and be her boyfriend. If that’s not enough,when Mizuki turns into a girl, that’s when things get even more complicated!

Mizuki's best friend Takeru have been friends with each other since childhood. Takeru unlike mizuki, is strong, athletic, and actually looks like a guy. He cares for mizuki as a friend, and after the transformation, he helps anyway he can to help him/her out, even though he's starting to fall for mizukis feminine side....

Mizukis love interest Fujiwara is abit of an air head,who is class rep, and is assumed that she has a crush on takeru. She is somewhat of a secret tomboy despite her looks. When she was younger, she acted like a boy. Will Mizuki have courage to tell her his big secret?

The one who cursed mizuki into a girl is Loki. She is a mysterious goddess of tricks who used to play pranks on other gods, until she found Mizuki in the human world. Later, she disguises herself as a human and is now mizuki's classmate! Mizuki does not realize that loki turned him into a girl...yet.

Art/Design-9: Boku Girl is a very beautiful,soft drawn manga. The designs perfectly match the characters personalities. Mizuki as a boy looks feminine, but “boy” enough to look like a guy. His soft skin and face understandably is mistakable for a girls'. It fits that he likes soft things like stuff animals. Takeru may look a little mean at first, but he really is a nice guy and good friend to mizuki. Loki looks exactly like a prankster, with slanted yellow eyes and bizarre black clothing. Fujiwara looks like a curious airhead with her big wide open eyes, and innocent expressions. (Well, most of the time)

Enjoyment-8: Boku Girl when beyond my expectations as not only a gender bender but as a manga. If you don't like gender benders then this may change you're mind. Its so fun to read and well written that its hard not to enjoy it. If you do like gender benders then you'll go crazy over this one. This isn't some quick gags manga. It takes a tired concept and makes it seem new. Despite not having an official English release, I wouldn't mind owning a copy of each volume to support the author. I believe this series is great enough to deserve an anime adaption. There may be some censorship in an adaption, but I think many comedy anime fans will really enjoy this series if it had a wider release regardless.

In the end, I highly recommend Boku Girl! It's funny, has great characters, good plot twists, and most of all fun and entertaining. I hope you found this review helpful!

I started to read this manga out of curiosity without much further knowledge and finished it, because I learned that it is a significant piece for certain groups. I can see why some people see this as a significant part of representation for the minority groups of the LGBTQ community, but for me it is still not a good manga.

The concept is simple and nothing new, a God is bored and decides to prank a young Japanese androgynous boy by making him female. While the concept is nothing new in general, the focus on gender questions is more so.

Unfortunately the manga overplays the comedy to a hilarious degree, that makes it at times very hard to read. It is not just the comedy that is over the top, but at times it feels like the whole theme of gender swapping is just used as a vehicle for steamy ecchi scenes.
Somewhere around the half-way point the God is getting bored and mixes the mess up even more by introducing fluid gender swapping into the mix.
I'm not against the subject material, but let me show with this example why I think it is problematic how the manga handles the premise.
At some point Mizuki goes into a woman bath, because at this point she is a woman, but because of the fluidity Mizuki suddenly returns to being male and is now stuck in a woman bath as a man with women running all around him.
For me there is no deeper meaning in this, it is just a thing that is played for laughs to put the main character into compromising situations and put edge to some ecchi/erotic content. This clashes with the secondary and more serious aim, of touching on real world gender issues, and for the most part it fails completely handling those.
This especially hurts the moments, closer to the end, when it really tries to touch on those issues, but as a reader it gets very hard to take something so clownish serious at that point.

For me it fails the balancing act of comedy and seriousness. 95% of the time the situation is played for laughs and erotics and it comes of like a nervous person that makes excessive jokes to cover for this nervousness and forgets about the serious issue they really wanted to talk about.

The manga could be seen as positive, by shining a light on gender issues for a younger audience, but in the end it fails by overcompensating for the serious ideas with sad overdone comedy.

With that part out of the way let's briefly talk about the rest. Briefly, because there isn't much to talk about.
The characters are flat and cliché for the most part and most are just exaggerated comedy reliefs. From the eccentric male lingerie designer that runs around in his designed undergarments, to the senpai stalker with picture shrines in the bedroom, the manga has a good host of boring tropes.
The art is not much to write home about as well. The backgrounds are often simplistic and don't add much and the only good art are the characters themselves. With characters in focus they can look very good (often for the ecchi scenes), but the moment they are not the focus of a shot they are just mediocre.

Without the knowledge, that some people see some cultural significance in this work, I would have probably never fought through sludge and while the ending is decent, it is nothing to write home about. Even a manga like Kashimashi handled the subject better and was more enjoyable to read, because it put less obnoxious comedy/ecchi roadblocks in the way it handled the topic with more grace.

For me it was a shame to see something interesting handled so poorly and while I understand that some people are happy seeing this kind of conflict represented at all, I would hope that we get a better works about those themes.

For me, Boku Girl was the right story at the right time. It was a perfect fit for me because, in the time leading up to me stumbling across this manga, I myself had begun questioning my sexuality among other topics that made me susceptible to themes in this manga. but as I have reread the manga and with a more critical eye, I see and recognize the flaws especially in the pacing and the development of the characters. like for example in the latter half of the manga, I felt very little in terms of character development, especially with the male love interest. Although not the greatest manga, I found it at a very special time in my life and it managed to touch me on a personal level. Although I cannot say the same about other peoples enjoyment involving this story and whether or not these themes will apply to them. But I can say that this story managed to sell its themes well although not the best in the genre. Objectively it's not very amazing and nothing to call home about but that didn't stop me from enjoying every last page of it. 8/10 a perfect fit for me but not everyone's the same.

Two things first.
1: English is my second language
2: I see a lot more in things then most people(some would say I look into it to much haha) so you might just not see what made this great for me. (I think would still be just really fun for everyone though

Story:
This is the only meh part of all of it but it is not the point in anyway so I did not mind.

Art:
The art is beautiful and the mangaka love to play with our perspective.
Also there is a beautiful contrast between the three main character that I really like.

Character:
This is really THE important thing in this manga. The psychological aspect, the character development, and the relation evolving. I will talk more about this aspect later.

Enjoyment:
10/10 I had a blast

What does it bring:
Usually, I'm mostly challenge mentally by mystery or psychological (That is their point after all) but this manga is a romance/slice of life yet, I could not tell what was going to happen, and when face with a problem I did not have the solution after 1 second of thinking. It also tackle interesting gender and psychological subject. The thing though is that all of that is masterfully hidden behind comedy and even some echi trope (but people react more naturally though).

I was thinking of giving it a 10/10 but the story per time being hmm slow/repetitive kind of ish keep it from being a master piece in my book.

TLDR; Do you enjoy gender bender manga? yes? This is one of the best!

It was a fun read
I'd recommend it to other people but then they'd think I'm gay. MAL wants me to write longer reviews so I'm just gonna do the usual don't bother reading any further kk

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What a weird manga.

Here's the thing, if you wanna enjoy this manga to the fullest you have to be open-minded particularly about gender-benders. I couldnt see myself in million years that i ever enjoy this manga, but I did. Not because I hate/love trap, transsexual agenda etc. But rather just IDGAF, period, if it's good/ clicking with me then Im buying.

And this manga is REALLY GOOD IMO. It puts you in the weird position, as any of gender bender manga supposedly does, but in subtle and comedic way, with very,very beautiful artwork (Sugito Akira, dude..you can do manga, respect), and well made characters (each fairly contribute to the story), and elephant in the room, ecchi. Honestly, I'm not a fan of ecchi, but here it just work. I practically whispered out "WTF?! WTF is this shit??"-in a good way, because it just.. weirdly enjoyable. This is probably the only gender bender manga I'll enjoy, I try others but it just come out plain weird in a bad way to me. 9/10 on rating for me. 10/10 will recommend ;) Keep up the good work.