Akira, a good-looking but not very manly kind of guy, has a crush on Nakano, for reasons I don't really understand. Nakano looks like a lovely, sweet-natured girl, but anyone who gets in her way or talks to her quickly becomes aware that she's actually rude, violent, and direct to a painful degree.
When Nakano is called in sick at school, Akira volunteers to bring her the day's handouts. He learns that Nakano wasn't actually sick, but was instead being experimented on by her grandfather, who wanted to test something he invented that was supposed to make people smaller. Nakano volunteers Akira as a guinea pig instead of her, but then they both accidentally get zapped. Instead of becoming smaller, Nakano and Akira's personalities switch bodies.
Nakano seems perfectly fine with the situation, happy that she can do things without having to worry about being ladylike (never mind that she was never very ladylike anyway). Akira, on the other hand, is desperate to get back into his own body and frustrated that Nakano's grandfather doesn't even seem to be trying to fix the machine that could switch him and Nakano back.
In this volume, Nakano, in Akira's body, starts dating her best friend Shiina (who has no idea she's not dating Akira). Akira's best friend Senbongi falls in love (or would it be more accurate to say "in lust"?) with him, not realizing that he's dealing with Akira in Nakano's body. Also, Akira experiences his first period and learns how to bat his eyes and look cute in order to get his way with men.
Commentary:
This was recommended to me by a few people. I think this is only the second of Ai Morinaga's work I've ever tried, but it seems like Morinaga comes up with some great series premises. This bit of craziness was difficult for me to write about, because there were enough things I really disliked that I kind of feel like I shouldn't have liked it. Somehow I ended up enjoying it anyway.
If this volume's jokes had only centered around Akira being more feminine in his behavior and Nanako more masculine, I probably wouldn't have liked it as much as I did. What really got me laughing was Akira and Nanako's reactions to their body switch. Akira had the expected reaction – he's just enough of a teenage boy to be psyched at the chance to get to see his crush's naked body (hey, he has to undress and shower sometime), but he'd still like his own body and life back.
Nanako, on the other hand, revels in her new body. She approaches this situation like it's her ticket to try out any “guy thing” she might ever have wanted to do. For her, that means getting to do karate, having sex with a perfect stranger (technically, she didn't flat-out say she had sex, but it's implied and that's how Akira understands it), and dating Shiina, her best friend.
