#crystal agassineun namjada

[offbeat-manga-ships]

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! 🥳

for this end of the year i would like to do some reflections on the titles i've read in 2024. admittedly, there weren't all that many of them. if i were to say what was the star of my heart this year, it would be a show that was very important to me in my early teenagehood that i rewatched in its entirety and a particular ship that was one of the firsts i felt really strongly about completely consumed me once again. but still, in these final 2 or 2½ months, i sprinted through many manga with the same love i have for them as always and found a taste for doing caps again :D

for starters, i would like to look back just on a couple of manga that i wish had been better. of course, there were plenty of manga i read that didn't quite hit the spot, but for these ones, i had expectations. i had dreams and i wanted to see them soar. but in one way or another, they just let me down.

• onnanoko ga daicha dame desu ka? (ladies on top / is it wrong to get done by a girl?)

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we don't have to be that dramatic for this one, actually. it's not even that i disliked it, but with a subject such as this one, i was supposed to love it. hand to your heart, how many romantic leading ladies have you ever read that get absolutely turned tf OFF by the usual confident kabedon-like romantic advancements of their love interest? note that i'm not talking about a girl who is unaffected until she starts to have feelings towards that person, i'm talking about actual 'EW what are you DOING?' and genuine desert dry pussy at the thought of having to assume the usual position with someone she already likes/is in love with/is in a relationship with.

the starting point of this manga is really strong. of course, immersed in the culture they are, both mitsuki (our main girl) and shinomiya (our main guy) have self-image troubles to the point of working really extra hard to try to conform in relationships going against their natural inclinations of sexual and romantic roles. i read this way back when there were only a handful of chapters and decided to wait for everything to be out so i could read it all at once and this year was the time for it.

and it was... fine? it was all right. i think this manga, along with many others, got lost in the sauce of non-conventionality until it founds its way back to a safe, tamer version of it. not in an overt, unforgivable way. what i mean is that maybe this was a bit too much of a psa than actual character exploration of a woman getting off on dominating her guy in bed and the actual sexiness of it. i don't mean to just say that it was all a disappointment because this manga had good moments of discovery, but i don't think it came even close to nailing making a story to people that already like the concept, rather than trying to explain itself to the "normal" audience. and for a manga who came to have such a discussion about these topics, it did not go actually deep into dominance and submission itself in relation to the masculine and feminine roles, in relation to certain sexual acts nor did it challenge pre-conceived notions of an act being inherently one thing or the other.

this manga also didn't know what to do with most of its side characters and i will forever be salty that we didn't get a bit more in the alt culture and gave a bit more of a spotlight to the messy ex of the main guy with a bit of a mean streak finding love with the nonbinary bisexual bartender who is clearly in love with her but is a bit stuck on the 'giving advice' position (THIS is what i mean about compelling flawed characters who we'll want to see going at it because they're interesting and have plot around them rather than the perfectly fine couple giving us all a lesson).

one final complaint i just can't seem to shut up about: feminine faces and the lips are freaky as fuck in this manga 😭 (in a bad bad way) am i really the only one completely bothered by the way the faces are drawn? like tf is thissss

it's like her lips go inwards and not outwards 😭 and compared to his face hers is so small it's just weirdd

• ibeon saeng-do jal butakae (see you in my 19th life)

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i've already talked plenty about this one, but i really thought this was going to be a special one for me and it's painful when it isn't. as i said, i still really liked how jieum (our main girl) is this Being who has had many names and faces and genders which makes her approach things from romance to problem-solving in an unorthodox way. which makes it even sadder that the story didn't lean into her full potential to fit within the parameters of a heterosexual romance manwha. it's pretty much a waste of the charm of the character and their whole backstory (not to mention such refreshing character designs). seoha (our main guy) was done much better, but unfortunately, not enough to save this one from the weak writing. but i will still be grateful for the massive step forward we made in knowing how to write a female character simply longing and wanting to have someone and a male character letting himself be seduced. all of it without ever trying to point at it and "deconstruct back into normalcy". it's just the way they are :)

• watashitachi wa moto joshi desu (we are former girls)

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when i found this one i was really excited. making boys turn into girls and girls turn into boys is one of my favorite things ever in media. and i don't mean something very temporary or not tied to your own identity like a body swap. imagine one day you woke up in a genderswapped version of your own body? you would have no choice but to evaluate in some way the cross between the equipment you have and how you want to present. how strongly do you feel about it? how do you want to see yourself and be seen by others? plus: the issues of people whom an ordinary cis protagonist might think was so distant from their own reality suddenly have something to do with them. on the hands of the right writer, it's a goldmine.

because of all this complication and because the manga actually was doing good in how the character was adjusting (or not) to their new life, i was ok with overlooking the implication that, because our previous female protagonist woke up in the body of a boy, that they would inevitably be attracted to girls. taking things in my way, i was happy to see it a bit differently. everyone knows testosterone has a way of making you hornier and seeing a "former" girl suddenly facing the attraction she feels towards girls was too interesting of a plot point for me to hang up too much on the heterossexist lens. i've ALWAYS wanted to read the story of a girl turning into a boy (a feminine one at that 🥳) and falling for a GIRL and working out the queerness of it in this sense rather than falling for a guy who will be ok with being gay for her/him.

but maybe that little problem was a warning for things to come. when the manga brings actual medical transition to the table it just did it horribly and in such a callous manner. something to understand about me is that i'm the chillest person in the world towards some queer concepts being done in manga without touching on the queer subtext of it. like oh you want to bring cross-dressing or body swapping, or disguised gender, or plain non-conforming girls and guys without really touching on the queerness or genderqueerness of it? sure, fine by me! i can and have enjoyed plenty of stories that do that.

but the moment you choose to start a conversation about topics explicitly pertaining to us you have started to play ball in our court and we expect you to do the bare minimum. do authors really think they can just take our struggles and our culture and our conversations and dilemmas and try to do some lame "commentary" on it completely out of their ass?? oh you want to use the big boy words and portray the big boy situations? great. but now you've actually gotta know what you're talking about. because this is not just a little detail or a little character quirk, you literally chose to make this a theme of your work. and i'm sorry, but if you're stupid about it, my patience has very hard limits. we have been misrepresented and looked at as freaks long enough for us to be still tolerating this in 2024.

now, to be fair to this manga, i think they try to make some amends in subsequent chapters. but the harm had already been done and they already proved to me they are dumb about it. so i basically gave this one a rest and will pick up again later.

obs: one more manga i read this year that made this same mistake -> seibetsu 'mona lisa' no kimi he. (the gender of mona lisa). have already said a lot about it.

obs2: one manga i read this year who managed to do the concept of genderbodyswapping in the most boring normative way possible -> jun to kaoru (jun and kaoru)

obs3: manga i read this year that felt borderline transphobic at times with their fantasy world puberty blockers that are so so bad for you and dragging the character into what their body is "actually supposed to be like" that just left me kinda uncomfortable -> crystal agassineun namjada (lady crystal is a man)

manga that did the same commentary on puberty blockers but didn't commit the grave sin of being boring so i like it better even though we lost our cute androgynous male character who grew up as a girl as was happy with his female identity -> useon namdongsaengbuteo sumgija (let's hide my little brother)

(going with the promo entry because it has a better synopsis. it's not an oneshot. and you can clearly see how the ML looks as a girl and of coooourse the author couldn't give us a short guy with androgynous traits even if he decided to live as man. nooo he has to be tall and broad shouldered and short haired and boring.

• saraba, yoki hi (farewell, happy days)

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i had even forgotten i actually read this one earlier this year haha. it's really unfortunate because it has everything in its favour. it's a nicely drawn contemplative story that explores various moments of our characters lives so we can hopefully understand why these siblings are in love with each other. and unfortunately... it just didn't land for me. i mentioned somewhere that while i could see the codependency, nothing was good enough for me to explain why these characters want and need each other romantically or sexually. in a manga where a scene like this exists, i find myself without the right words to explain exactly why because it should be there. clinging to childhood roles and the comfort they provide for each other being so close and with absent parents is a start, but it shouldn't be all there is to it.

i couldn't shake the feeling that these characters are only portrayed as the roles they play - the sister who's got it together and the brother who can't do anything right - rather than any actual peek into their inner lives that rings true and shows true desire and vulnerability. they tell each other at one point or another during their childhood that they like the other and it is basically that and the angst of not knowing how to be together. i can see that she wants to be with him and he wants to be with her, but why? some love stories may not need an exploration of that question, but this one, i mean. come on.

i wish i remembered more to explain better, but i don't ever plan on coming back to it because just remembering how bored i was completely discourages me. (by the way i remember i made a comment about how a friend of the characters and her dad make a better unintentional incest story than the own protagonists of this manga lol)

• gokurakugai

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i won't say too much here because i didn't read all that much. clearly and obviously, i started reading this manga for this character:

like bro look at her! but unfortunately just what i read was so derivative and cliché i guess. some chainsaw man jujutsu kaisen early bleach and naruto amalgamation that just came across a bit too much like generic shounen to me and i guess this really isn't my genre. i thought i would at least get an interesting partnership between what seemed to be the two main characters, but so far nothing scratched the itch. it's like it's all style, no substance. again, though: as far as i read.

and can i just say. i'm a boob guy, but even i think this was a character design mistake

maybe because i'm a boob person, i like to appreciate a well done instance of bringing out a character's appeal and sexiness by knowing how to draw big boobs, but just putting this on a character with this character design just smells like desperation to put ANY traditionally feminine sex appeal to be ogled at because they just couldn't let her be that cool with her androgynous-inclined fashion style and need to have an obvious "for the boys" trait. you can clearly see when she is drawn with more "usual" sized boobs for a character with her frame that it just fits her better.

honestly, it seems like it's nearly a lost art knowing how to draw big boobs that are actually appealing to anyone who knows a human woman and has lusted after real boobs. you do NOT have to go that far. with the right clothing, you can make boobs of any size look appealing. please stop thinking about character designs of female characters in terms of these obvious easy "appeals" and just do what looks right.

anyway. coming next, the highlights of the year for me!