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Tags: LGBTQ, School Life, Romance/Love triangle
Summary: Protagonist Sakuma's childhood friend Ushio comes out as trans. Focuses mainly on Sakuma making a new friend Natsuki, Sakuma and Ushio mending their broken relationship, and the reaction that Ushio coming out gets at school.
Review (light to moderate spoilers throughout): I really wanted to like this, and I did enjoy some elements, but it felt overall lackluster. I'll start with the negatives: The transphobia is relentless and is pretty much the theme of the entire first volume (amazon reviews suggest that volume 2 is less about this), which makes it an unpleasant read in places if you're a queer person. Sakuma is pretty passive and doesn't stand up for Ushio until well over halfway into the book, which (while understandable - it's difficult and scary to stand up against bullies, and this bystander effect could've been interesting if it wasn't drawn out this much) gets really frustrating to read. The final 20% was just boring to me and felt comparatively difficult to read. In his narration, Sakuma says a lot of things that whilst aren't hatred, are still transphobic, and these viewpoints at least by the end of the first volume don't really change.
As for the positives, I expected that one side of the love triangle would get more attention than the other, but this wasn't the case. I enjoyed seeing different sides of Sakuma through his interactions with Natsuki and Ushio, although I think he was more interesting when interacting with Natsuki about books. I think Natsuki, who had a crush on Ushio before she came out and comes to realise that she might still have that crush and therefore that she might like girls too, is really interesting. The parts that focused on Ushio's identity without the bullying were interesting, exploring first-person pronouns and honorifics.
The everyday life parts were cute enough that I'll consider picking up the second volume, which seems to be about their summer break, so I'd imagine it has a lot of the bits I enjoyed.