NS: Introduction to otokonoko – part I: predecessors of the genre and not-quite otokonos

[leahandillyana]

Otokonoko is one of the manga genres most controversial among foreign audiences. The name itself is a pun - 男の子 is a common term for boy, usually used for babies and toddlers, and also a homophone of 男の娘, a neologism meaning literally ‘male daughter’. Fittingly, otokonoko is a genre centered on crossdressers presented as beautiful love interests. For a series to qualify as otokonoko, it needs to fit the following criteria:

1. It needs to be intended for primary male audience (seinen and sometimes shonen)

2. The main character needs to be an AMAB crossdresser - most series have him be a cisgender boy crossdressing for one reason or another, some have their gender identitity be ambiguous, and a few recent mangas portray transgender girls or nonbinary crossdressers.

3. The character and their crossdressing needs to be portrayed in positive manner.

4. The character needs to be streakingly beautiful and passing for a woman at least most of the time when crossdressing.

5. The character preferably should be involved into a romantic plot – though not all otokonoko media have romance as major element. Love interest can be a girl or a boy, with some works having romance between crossdressers – and in case of one series I’m describing here, we have both crossdressing boy/crossdressing girl and crossdressing boy/crossdressing boy.

Otokonoko genre doesn’t cover all the instances of crossdressing and gender atypical behaviour of male and presumed male characters being portrayed positively or as love interests. In fact, crossdressing has been one of popular themes in manga written for women before otokonoko was popularized as a separate subculture in the 00s. While in Japan, the genre seems to be viewed as one of many niche interests and the term is sometimes used by irl crossdressers, in Western fandom its often treated by mistrust due to combination of some unfortunate conventions:

-By its nature, the genre may seem to be fetishistic in nature, with the exoticness of the crossdresser being highlighted rather than acceptance of their behaviour as normal. Being ‘better’ can still be seen as a form of othering. I understand this concern, but I personally believe that the joy of being portrayed positively has greater impact than potential reasonings behind such positive portrayal. Again, your milleage may vary and I respect differing opinions.

-The portrayal of the crossdressers, especially in older works, often resembles more the experiences of transgender girls rather than cisgender boys who crossdress, with many characters crossdressing 24/7, yet still those characters tend to be treated as cisgender boys by their narratives. Furthermore, scenes of gender reveal are often played for laughs. (However, it’s important to remember that genre conventions dictate that a sympathetic love interest remains in love with the crossdresser after learning of their AGAP. What’s more, more recent works tend too feature transgender girls and nonbinary crossdressers alongside cisgender boys.)

In this post, I wanted to introduce you to some of the longer and more interesting series and present how some of the characteristics were developed. Also please note that I provide the titles and names according to how they were translated from Japanese to Polish, official English releases are likely to be published under different names. I have also read some of the stories in Japanese, and as I am not fluent in the language, I might have misunderstood some details. I will try to write the second part, featuring works published under the otokonoko label, in the upcoming days.

 

Title: Stop, Hibari-kun!

Author: Hisaki Eguchi

Medium: manga (4 volumes), anime (35 episodes)

Audience: shonen

Genre: slice of life romantic comedy

Year: 1981-1983

This series was incredibly popular during its original publication and set up tropes that were later followed by many series of various genres. It follows Kosaku Sakamoto, a high schooler who moves in with her mother’s friend’s family after she dies. Said family has four strong willed, attractive and fashionable daughters, one of whom, titular Hibari Ozora, develops mutual attraction towards Kosaku. However, unlike protagonists of every otokonoko series ever, Kosaku is horrified when he learns Hibari was assigned male at birth (from the modern point of view, Hibari would be a transgender girl, but the author refers to them as a crossdressing boy). Hibari continues to pursue Kosaku nonetheless. One of the series minor characters is a transgender man, too. It is very dated when read forty years after the original publication, but nonetheless it’s worth reading for its historical importance. Also, can you imagine such a series running in the West at that time?

 

Title: Princess Princess (and other related works)

Author: Mikiyo Tsuda

Medium: manga (9 volumes across 4 titles) and anime (12 episodes)

Audience: shojo

Genre: school life comedy

Year: 1999-2007

Princess Princess is the informal name of a shared universe of light-hearted stories dealing mostly with gender stuff:

-In The Day Of Revolution (2 volumes), Kei Yoshikawa learns that he has female genotype despite appearing male and starts living as girl, attracting a large number of fellow students in her new look. (The manga doesn’t dwelve into the medical condition, but Kei likely has a form of CAH.)

-Family Complex is a single volume manga about an ordinary boy Akira Sakamoto feeling inadequate around his extraordinary family. It’s the most stand-alone position in the shared universe.

-Princess Princess (5 volumes) is a series about a private all-boys school that chooses (forces) one boy each year to become a ‘princess’ – a crossdresser wearing elaborate lolita get ups to serve as inspiration for the other boys. The protagonist Toru Kono is quickly chosen to be a princess and befriends two other princesses, Yujiro Shihodani and Mikoto Yutaka. The series is remembered for a quirky love triangle (both Toru’s sister Sayaka and Yujiro are in love with him, while he himself seems to be attracted to fellow student Akira). The series has a one volume direct sequel titled Princess Princess Plus, in which two new princesses join the cast.

If you liked the concepts presented in the series, I also recommend two works by Shirase Shu:

-Otomaho (4 volumes) is a series about a boy who transforms into a magical girl to perform typical magical duties. While obscure, it was the series that pioneered the magical boy genre which nowadays enjoys great success with anime such as Earth Defense Club, Is This a Zombie?, or I am a Magical Girl. It ran in Waai, a magazine for crossdressers that is sadly no longer in publication.

-Reversible School Life (3 volumes) is a story about an all-boys private school that randomly selects half of its population each semester to live as girls in order to better understand women in their absence. It doesn’t make sense, but neither did the princess system, and it’s pretty and funny.

 

Title: W Juliet

Author: Emura

Medium: manga (29 volumes and ongoing)

Audience: shojo

Genre: school life romance

Year: 1997-

W Juliet is a story of two gender noncomforming teenagers who both dream of becoming actors: tomboyish Ito Miura and otokonoko Makoto Amano, forced by his father to pretend to be a girl if he wants to be allowed to pursue acting career, who get cast as Romeo and Juliet respectively in a school production of the tragedy. The two develop a secret relationship, fight various unpleasant competitors in both acting and love, and take part in various plays. The series was my first encounter with the very concept of crossdressing and as such holds a special place in my heart.

 

Title: Mariaholic

Author: Minari Endo

Medium: manga (14 volumes) and anime (24 episodes)

Audience: seinen

Genre: school life (dubiously romantic) comedy

Year: 2006-2014

This series is a parody of Maria’s Watching, a novel series with lesbian plots and subtext that was popular in yuri circles at the time Mariaholic started. Its protagonist is Kanoko Miyamae, a young lesbian afraid of men and boys who enrolls into an all-girls catholic school hoping to find a girlfriend. On her first day she gets seduced by a beautiful girl named Mariya Shido, whom she however quickly discovers is a) a crossdressing boy, b) grandson of the school’s director, thus having vast priviledges over other students, c) very sadistic and at least somewhat homophobic, d) her new roommate. Blackmailing Kanoko with the knowledge of her sexual orientation and naive attitude to love, Mariya forces her to do his bidding to cause chaos at school, and a lot of violence and punishments for Kanoko she receives as a result are played for laughs, like her being sentenced to a week of solitary confiment in darkness for something another student did to bully her, and motifs such as arranged marriage between a tomboy implied to be a lesbian and a little boy or a pedophile teacher are portrayed humorously. The story’s not as problematic as it sounds, I swear, though from modern and especially Western perspective the series is very dated.
If you are interested in the premise but put off by the sheer mean spiritedness of the series, I’d suggest you check out The Maidens are Falling in Love with Me, a series that shares the premise of a crossdressing boy attending an all-girls private catholic school, but with the main character being a genuinely nice person and the story treating itself and its characters seriously. It originated as a visual novel game and has thus far obtained a 17 episodes long anime adaptation, a two volume manga by Kanao Araki, and a three volume long sequel manga by Akuru Uira, subtitled Our Elder.

 

Title: Princess Jellyfish

Author: Akiko Higashimura

Medium: manga (17 volumes), anime (11 eps), live action movie, live action tv series (10 eps)

Audience: josei

Genre: slice of life romantic comedy

Year: 2008-2017

Princess Jellyfish is a manga that was massively popular among female readers during its run but remains mostly unknown in the West. Its main character is Tsukimi Kurashita, a girl who loves jellyfish and wants to be a professional illustrator, but is extremely awkward in interpersonal relationships. She lives in a apartment she shares with similar girlfailures, who are delightfully ugly and awkward, yet are portrayed with a lot of sympathy. Her life changes when she meets the gorgeous Kuranosuke Koibuchi, a 24/7 crossdresser whose real identity as a politician’s son must be kept secret. Kuranosuke, Tsukimi and other tenants of her apartment team up to stop planned destruction of their building, and later a love triangle develops between Tsukimi, Kuran, and his older brother. Unfortunately, the anime only covers the beginning of the story and leaves the romantic plot unresolved.

 

Title: Lily the Liar (and related series)

Author: Ayumi Komura

Medium: manga (19 volumes across two – technically four - titles)

Audience: shojo

Genre: school life romantic comedy

Year: 2009-2014

The main character Hinata Saotome is an average girl who gets over the moon happy when handsome En Shinohara proposes to her. She becomes significantly less happy when she realizes that En crossdresses 24/7 because he hates men and the idea of himself being a man (which sounds like gender dysphoria but the character is portrayed as a cisgender boy with a quirk, and his motivations are explained in later chapters). The series also portrays a wider spectrum of crossdressing than typical in otokonoko: Hinata dresses up as a guy from time to time and during this a) develops a stronger more assertive personality and b) gets very popular with girls, and the pair’s younger brothers are also crossdressers and later a couple. The story canon consist of the following parts:

-Usotsuki Lily - Main story (17 volumes)

-Volume 0 detailing events from before the manga began

-Oneshot Regarding the Crossdressers (Otokonoko no koto), providing an epilogue to little brothers Ten and Taiyo’s storyline

-Single volume isekai series Komachi the Swordmaster (Kenjutsu Komachi) – yes, really.

 

That’s the end for today. Thank you for reading thus far and I hope we will see each other in the next part.

Comments

[mastermahan]

Hey, I remember W Juliet! It was one of first things I read when I discovered the world of online, scanlated manga, along with Flame of Recca and Ranma 1/2 (which obviously had its own gender-bending). It didn't introduce me to crossdressing, but I do recall when the guy showed in masc form as the female lead's "boyfriend from another school" and wowing his love rivals with his attractiveness. It was a good example of how much gender is based on presentation.

EDIT: And Angel Sanctuary, come to think of it, where the main character is the male reincarnation of a female angel.

[bolindbergh]

The Princess Jellyfish anime had some very silly bits in it, like the crossdresser using the pronoun "ore" and the princess desperately trying to cover it up by pretending he said "Olé!"

[iormungand]

I've seen the Princess Princess anime. It's got an appearance from Megumi, which is the name Kei takes (same kanji) after transitioning in The Day of Revolution. I don't remember much about it, but I'd like to watch it again.

Thanks for the post! Looking forward to the next part

[skjam]

I've seen the Princess Jellyfish anime and read a few of the volumes, those reviewed over at my blog.