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Description
Contains 3 oneshots:
1. Mascara Blues Mugino falls in love with any boy who "sparkles" in front of her eyes! But after they accept her confession, the "sparkle" dies. She talks about her problems to her friend, Shuuya. After seeing another guy lose his "sparkle", Mugino goes to talk to Shuuya but finds that he has a "sparkle" too! She doesn't want to date him because she has a feeling that if his sparkle dies, then she'll have to dump him and their friendship may never be the same again.
2. Draft of Romance Tsuda always stares at Takasuga. But when their eyes meet, Takasuga glares at her with scary eyes. She only stares at him because she remembers a day when she was going on the bus and dropped her bag. She quickly tried to pick it up and found a guy who helped her. When she got on the bus she said "Thank You" but the doors were already closed. She was determined that Takasuga was the guy, but if he isn't...
3. So I Can Be Myself - A Long Dream Hikaru wakes up every morning and feels that every day's going to be a long dream. This is because, though she has the heart of a woman, she was born as and has the body of a man. She soon meets a hairstylist, Mashima Eiji, who asks her to be his hair model. When she tells her friends this, they warn her not to fall in love with him because hairstylists are known to "play" with their clients. But she can't stop thinking about him! Is he just going to play around with her, or will he take her seriously if she confesses her secret?
Type
Manga
Related Series
N/A
Associated Names
マスカラブルース Draft of Romance Masukara Burūsu So I Can Be Myself - A Long Dream
The third story is just amazing. So freaking sweet. I love that this mangaka actually addresses with maturity such a difficult subject as a transgender person. And I think it's realistic that the ending doesn't show the couple necessarily together, but more that they have come to an understanding. Just b/c the girl this guy likes doesn't have the same parts down there as he thought, he doesn't completely leave and freak out. This is handled very maturely. I'll reread for sure. People who are freaking out about this story, take a chill pill. Also, educate yourself, maybe take a psychology class. This isn't really anything that rare in reality, and society as a whole mainly chooses to ignore it. Props to this mangaka for addressing such a difficult topic with such tenderness/gentleness.
The first two were okay, but the one I enjoyed the most was the third. At first I assumed Hikaru was just a normal girl, so I was confused for a bit there (that's why I changed part of the description to fit the fact that she's transgender, and actually gives people insight so the people that get "freaked out" avoid reading it). I have a friend who wants to be a girl, though they were born male, so I can understand this story more than the people who "freak out" when the character turns out to be different than they assumed. Most transgenders think along the lines of their being born in the wrong body, and I believe they're right since they honestly feel that way.
There isn't any need to feel freaked out about the third story. Its an actual issue that people deal with and I found it extremely touching for such a oneshot. Especially since the other two stories were mediocre at best. Even so, I liked all the stories (I just enjoy reading diverse oneshots).... but my favorite is def. the third.
I didn't particularly enjoy the first two stories as the heroines of both were plagued by angst and complications where there really didn't need to be any. In the first story, the heroine falls for her best friend, as it states in the summary, and goes through some rather convoluted logic in order to avoid confessing to him
Spoiler (highlight to view)
even after he reveals that he likes her too! So in order to avoid hurting him with her requited love, she decides to break off their friendship--because that wouldn't hurt him at all, right?
This struck me as angst designed to keep them apart and prologue the oneshot, rather than a natural response most people would have.
Then in the second story, we have some angst over ...an eraser. Yes, a regular old pencil eraser. The male lead gives the female lead half of his eraser because nerves cause hers to go flying off into the other side of the classroom, but alas! She just can't bring herself to thank him for this kind gesture! And then when the male lead and his friend catch her buying TWO erasers, she gets teased about the incident, but alas! She can't bring herself to admit one of the erasers was supposed to be for him as a show of gratitude! You might think I'm going off on a minor point here, but I'm really not as these were two of the major dramatic episodes of the chapter. It's not me making a big deal out of trivialities, but rather the mangaka. Sure, I know when you're a teenager in love, even the littlest things can get blown way out of proportion, but just because that's reality, doesn't mean I can't roll my eyes at it.
However! I did enjoy the third story. Not to give too much away (even though the categories pretty much do), the girl in that story had real problems--no futzing around with erasers here. I thought the story was a sensitive and realistic look at what life might be like for someone with that kind of issue. The story doesn't flinch away from the fact that a girl in this situation would have peers who would treat her with cruelty, both intentionally and unintentionally, and that falling in love would be a complicated thing. I thought it was pretty interesting how at the beginning of the story when the girl tells her friends that she's met a hairstylist, her friends warn her off because stylists are known to be players. When I read that, both in the story and in the summary, my response was "stylists are players?!" but looking back on it, the friends probably weren't warning her off about the boy, but probably worried about her issue, but unable to broach the topic. It was nice to see shoujo manga having the guts to seriously engaging with this subject, rather than treating it like a joke. Usually I'd have to pick up a josei or seinen manga for something like that. So all in all, these onseshots were a mixed bag for me.
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