Croquis: Nagi is gay and thinks the only way he can be with a guy is by transitioning into a girl. He works at a gay bar to pay for the surgery, where most if not all the girls are in the middle of transitioning.
Nagi's experience is that all the guys he's liked are straight. One of the girls at the bar told her lover she was transsexual but when they went to have sex, he was shocked she had a penis. The place these women work at is called a gay bar even though they're women by all appearances. If you look at more works around this time you can see labels that were placed on gay men that would confuse modern US greatly. Croquis is the first manga I saw where transitioning was shown to be the ultimate goal to be able to be with a man. I would've loved to have seen each person's story to see if they all felt like they had to transition to be with a man or if they were really affirming who they always felt like they were. But the story doesn't explore whether being a woman is what Nagi or the others really want or just acceptance. 7.5/10 stars
This is a personal pet peeve of mine but i hate reading about the bottom crying and whimpering from the pain of penetration, surely even back then there was information about how to safely have anal sex in Japanese? And rough sex to me isn't 'I like to leave hickeys' but I recognize that is rough to some.
I saw at least one typo, and I had to bend the spine quite to a bit to read one speech bubble.
On My First Love: Sad. Guy realizes he loves his friend he met through reading the same books only after said friend gets together with a girl. It's a healthy look at someone moving forward through the pain of first love but like, I also feel like they would absolutely have gotten together if someone had just said something. 6.5/10 stars
Wish Upon a Star: Two year age gap childhood friends, one is interested in stars and the other one hates them after finding out wishes don't come true when you wish on a falling star, but his friend never stopped believing. Then they have sex in a field?? Almost. 7/10
On My First Love II: Oh, Kamota's POV!! I knew he liked Torii back. >.> "Falling in love saved me" from your homosexual panic? 😂 Ended sadly. They both loved each other but never said anything and that's how it ended. Ugh. I wish there'd been a 3rd part that showed Kamoto seeing Torii with a man and realizing he could have been with him and maybe he says something and everything comes out. I think it should've stopped at the first story. CW: Stolen sleep kiss, rape fantasy 5/10
Some of the sound effects were translated, some not, sometimes they were right next to each other, not sure what was up there, and in one instance they left the kanji sfx in and just put the translation on top even though it was easily editable.
I think I'm ready to let go of this manga to a new home.
November 12, 2014
I noticed that many of the reviews on Goodreads for this manga take issue with the 'transgender' content turning out not to be quite accurate. They wanted it to be more about Nagi really wanting to be a girl than it being about a social acceptance issue. I can certainly understand that, but I think they fail to take into account that this story takes place in Japan, where gay bars are often places for drag queens to entertain and actually presenting as gay or male-to-female is not exactly as accepted as it is in Tumblr culture here.
So yeah, I went into it thinking it was going to be about a trans character, but it wasn't, and I was okay with that by the end because I thought it actually fit really well here even if we didn't get a fully-fleshed trans* story.
So enough about that spillage of meta. The art and characters were as fluffy as ever for this mangaka. I know it's a bit too sweet for some. But I liked how it seemed to subvert some tropes a bit here and there.
I found the story of Torii and Kamota to be very bittersweet, so much missed out on all because of a misunderstanding and (understandable, but regrettable) lack of courage. Yet I still liked it. Maybe they will get somewhere when they go out to eat and catch up.
Nitpick: Calling a sexless drawing of a model 'asexual'. Those are two very different things. Also, why were all the girls at Pink Cat so mean? Isn't there a mentor figure in there somewhere? ;A; 9/10 stars
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