Josō pandemikku/ Crossdressing Pandemic
by Mikuzu Shinagawa, Comic Valkyrie, 2019-ongoing
https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=171710
Please welcome a guest review by longtime correspondant Bobbie (bliss) Sellers:
Crossdressing Pandemic manga
Author: SHINAGAWA Mikuzu
Genres: Comedy, School Life, Slice of Life, Shounen Ai
Just as he was entering high school, Nanaki Koga experienced a certain accident and fell into a deep coma. After two years, he finally woke up. However, he found that the world had changed. While he was unconscious, a sudden craze hit Japan: cross-dressing. Now the newest fad, approximately 90% of Japanese people dress up as the opposite gender.
bliss note: This is online now….
Boys school full of sailor fuku and him still in a Gakuran. He switches his clothing with a friend from before accident. Later sees TV show and it talks about the craze. Wants to wear Gakuran but Mom has spent 128,000 yen for his sailor fuku and so guilts him into switching again.
Then there are apparently ‘pure love’ dating relationships between X-dressing boys. The Cross-Dressing Research Club leader appears and steals a kiss showing that it may not be so pure. Some adolescent erotic-mania. Hentai sempai-kun, Fights of jealousy over the boy to whom this is all new. And Sensei himself is in the mode…
By establishing the wide scale of the X-Dressing Craze it makes it a more believable story. The Japanese are very brand conscious and a lot of stories have featured popular
adolescent crazes and the exploitation of these by entrepreneurs.
The shounen ai relationships should be pure love. Many people are like adolescents who have gotten taller, more skilled but not more wise. Crazes reach a certain point though and generally collapse in front of the pressure of studies, work and the oncoming next thing.
bliss – a heavy old carp swimming in the mucky pond of
manga which extends apparently to infinity in all directions
but constantly expanding.
Muda: Wow sounds kewl, I’ll try it. Many thanks for tossing this over the transom.
–some time later spent creeping around the shadowy regions of the interwebs–
W00t! This one is fun. No need for the theory mallet here; good to see that this kind of fluff didn’t fade away when WAai! magazine folded in 2014. Looks like the author has toned it down a bit from their usual fare [ https://www.mangaupdates.com/authors.html?id=32070 ]
I was –supposed– to be grinding away at a major thinkpiece on “keep your politics and queer stuff out of my anime & manga – the right-wing conspiracy edition” but I got distracted. Also, health maintenance stuff; no Covid (knock wood), just endless delays on some minor eye-laserage due to the lockdown-ery. All done; Pop! Pop! Pop! Much clearer, thanks Doc.
However, the biggie post is looking like I can’t monolog it and will have to fire up my dubious 3.5HP interlocutor again – which means a complete rewrite. It might even go multi-part, I am very geeked on it. Then again, maybe a series with tiny, digestible chunks would be better…
And I have to work Samuel R. (chip) Delany’s Triton into it, even if is a hard read for me because the MC is an obnoxious ass.
Decisions, decisions. Oh, lookie, a shiny new thing!
Thanks and Happy (USA) Thanksgiving.
HEARTS OF FURIOUS FANCIES 