Sunday, May 17, 2020

REVIEW: My Androgynous Boyfriend (manga, vol. 1) by Tamekou, translated by Jocelyne Allen

My Androgynous Boyfriend is a "slice of life" manga. Maybe a "slice of life" romance? It's licensed by Seven Seas Entertainment.

Review:

Meguru is a gorgeous androgynous Instagram model who loves looking cute for his girlfriend. Wako is his girlfriend and generally doesn't care about her own looks much. What she enjoys is looking at cute things. She works as an editor and used her photo editing skills to help launch Meguru's modeling career.

In this volume, Meguru wrestles with his desire to be open and honest about his girlfriend and how much he loves her, even though people in his industry are supposed to be single so that fans can imagine being with them.

How is this not a one-shot? I mean, Meguru and Wako are cute couple who clearly love and support each other, and it's all very nice but...I don't see how there's enough here for more than this one volume? And even this one volume barely had any substance to it.

I bought this because the cover art was pretty (I want whatever Meguru is drinking), and because the idea of a romantic manga starring an ordinary-looking girl and her gender nonconforming boyfriend appealed to me. It's made clear from the beginning that Meguru isn't gay or trans or into cross-dressing. He just likes looking nice for his girlfriend. It causes some awkward moments because people sometimes assume he's female when he's out with Wako, or, if they know he's a guy, they assume he's into other guys. His biggest worry is that it might bother Wako, but luckily for him Wako doesn't mind.

Readers get to meet Kira, Meguru's friend and another model, who's probably the most entertaining character in the whole volume. He's completely self-absorbed and doesn't even notice people unless they're beautiful or important to him in some way.

And that's pretty much it. There really wasn't much to this volume, and although I know that volume 2 will be coming out in September, I have no clue how the author is going to manage to expand upon this. The only question I had, throughout the volume, was how Meguru and Wako met and started dating, and that was answered near the end.

No comments:

Post a Comment