Wandering Son, Vol. 1

Wandering Son #1

by Takako Shimura, Rachel Balzora Thorn (Translator)

The fifth grade. The threshold to puberty, and the beginning of the end of childhood innocence. Shuichi Nitori and his new friend Yoshino Takatsuki have happy homes, loving families, and are well-liked by their classmates. But they share a secret that further complicates a time of life that is awkward for anyone: Shuichi is a boy who wants to be a girl, and Yoshino is a girl who wants to be a boy.

Written and drawn by one of today's most critically acclaimed creators of manga, Shimura portrays Shuishi and Yoshino's very private journey with affection, sensitivity, gentle humor, and unmistakable flair and grace. Book One introduces our two protagonists and the friends and family whose lives intersect with their own. Yoshino is rudely reminded of her sex by immature boys whose budding interest in girls takes clumsily cruel forms. Shuichi's secret is discovered by Saori, a perceptive and eccentric classmate. And it is Saori who suggests that the fifth graders put on a production of The Rose of Versailles for the farewell ceremony for the sixth graders, with boys playing the roles of women, and girls playing the roles of men. Wandering Son is a sophisticated work of literary manga translated with rare skill and sensitivity by veteran translator and comics scholar Matt Thorn.

Genres: Manga, Graphic Novels, Comics, LGBT, Queer, Young Adult, Fiction

210 pages, Hardcover

First published June 30, 2003

About the author

Takako Shimura (native name: 志村貴子) is a manga artist primarily known for her manga works published in Japan which feature LGBT (especially about lesbian and transgender) topics. Originally from Kanagawa, she now resides in Tokyo.

Reviews

[Sesana · Rating 4 out of 5]

At heart, this is a sweet, simple story about two two transgender kids, a boy who is a girl and a girl who is a boy, discovering themselves and each other. What was most surprising to me about this book is how restrained it is. It's way, way less dramatic than it could be, trading big scenes and shocking revelations for something as simple as Takatsuki modeling a headband in the mirror. For me, it made the story that much more emotionally effective.

The art is very nice to look at. But the character designs are all rather similar, which can make it difficult to learn who's who. It took me a big chunk of the book before I could reliably tell the major characters by sight. Worth it, in the end, though.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fifth grader Shuichi Nitori wants to be a girl and his new friend Yoshino Takatsuki wants to be a boy, and they dress as such as much as they can. Gender/sex roles get explored in ways kids can ask questions about... Pretty complex and interesting, a basis for raising and asking questions. A sort of tween book, that raises issues about how we think of and treat boys and girls in society, especially as we are in elementary school and into middle school. In my life, in Oak Park, IL, this is a very relevant story and issue, and I will recommend to folks interested in/dealing with transgender and LGTBQ issues.

[Seth T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was in elementary school in 1980 and in high school in 1990. I predated by a few years the rather briskly paced evolution of alt sexualities from something horrifying to kids to something that kids could dabble in without too much fear of ostracizing. I grew up in a town whose homosexuals-per-capita population was second in the state behind San Francisco. We were all pretty well aware of how common open homosexual lifestyles were in the town. We knew about the Little Shrimp. We knew about Sneaky Pete's. We knew about the Different Drummer bookshop. And yet, for all that, "homo" and "fag" were still slurs, and when a rumour spread in junior high that this one guy was playing pocket pinball in class, the whole school took it upon themselves to brand him as gay and therefore worthy of a derision that remained probably all the way through high school for the poor guy. We were all little bastards and didn't really have the cultural wherewithal to learn any differently. There certainly wasn't an internet out there to help us empathize with different people's stories about being different. Even when some of us turned out to be different in the ways we previously derided.

I'm not sure that having a book like Wandering Son would have helped when I was a kid, but it wouldn't have hurt, I don't think. At worst I would have written it off as gross—but even so, I would have seen another perspective. One I wouldn't see for nearly a decade more.


[That's the trouble with girls.]

Story time. In a gathering of high school kids for some event or other, there was a game in which people would have to perform some stunt of the leader's choosing. One of them was to speak in a gay lisp. Five-sixths of the guys involved wouldn't participate—not because it was insensitive and othering—but because it was too gross. A friend of mine took a trip to Africa and this tribe's chief took his hand, wanting to show him the village. My friend shook off that man's hand. Fifteen years later he is still proud of that decision. In high school, at a school in the center of the second gayest town in California, there was a boy who tried out for the cheerleading squad. He was immediately deemed gay. I don't even know if he ever wore a cheer skirt or if he wanted to. Of course that wouldn't have had anything to do with his sexual preferences—we wouldn't have known that—but at least within the scope of our warped cultural pericope, that would have been slim justification for our prejudice. As it was, the mere hint of peculiarity in terms of sex or gender presumptions was enough to send us all into a whirlwind of confusion and antipathy.

Again, I'm not sure that having read Wandering Son would have helped, but it very well may have. Anything that humanizes the targets of othering is worthwhile because empathizing with those who are Not You and Not Like You is essential to loving them as you do yourself. And above everything else that it does so well, Wandering Son humanizes its characters—regardless of how much they deviate from the cultural norms their societies dictate.[1] When I first approached Wandering Son I was concerned that, like so many works that have lessons to impart, it would come off as didactic and proselytizing. Instead, we have this warm-hearted, gentle story about a collection of kids growing up. Wandering Son doesn't lay out any argument for the humanity of its characters who diverge from social expectation. It doesn't need to.


[Pro-tip from a non-pro: don't answer the door in a dress if you don't want to be seen in a dress.]

Takako's book allows you to grow comfortable with these kids as you would members of your own family. You see them happy; you see them hurt. You see their dreams; you see their fears. You see them reaching for lives that make sense to them, struggling even as we all do to find comfort and value in the things that attract our affections—all while trying desperately not to have our spirits crushed along the way.

One thing I appreciated about Wandering Son is how neatly it eviscerates the presumption that transgressing gender distinction also necessarily informs sexual preferences. Growing up, it was the law of my land that transvestitism also meant homosexuality. A man who wore his wife's clothes in secret also obviously harboured a closeted homosexuality. A woman who dressed in man's attire[2] was giving off strong lesbian cues. Our understanding of the immutability of gender and its ties to sexuality offered us no room for understanding things in any other way. Wandering Son, by beginning its narrative journey in elementary school, removes sexual preference from the initial spectrum of topics—at least for the principal characters, if not for their peripheral antagonists (who engage in all the weak-minded slurs I would have ejaculated when I was their age). Series lead, Shu, a fifth-grade boy who gradually finds himself dressing more and more in girls' clothing does so wholly apart from any sexual interest. He simply enjoys looking like the archetypical young girl. So too with his opposite number, a girl named Takatsuki, who likes to dress as a male (which is easier for her to get away with, since male clothing is increasingly bi-sexual). In the first volume she begins her period, underscoring her sex despite her objection to normative gender cues, but has so far not had any opportunity to express her sexuality.[3] [4]



While pretty clearly a book intending to explore the social issues involved in the gender/sex confluence of spectral anomalies—and one that so far as I can tell does a pretty stellar job at that investigation—Wandering Son is foremost an interesting story. I don't think it could possibly succeed at drawing out its social questions if it failed to present well-described human characters in largely believable[5] narrative circumstances. These characters move and speak in realistic, human ways. They aren't cartooned caricatures of pedagogical lances meant to joust with our presuppositions. They may actually do some of that jousting, but it's only because they are realized characters that they have any power to blossom empathy in our hearts.


[It can be tough being a freshly minted man...]

The art is rather lovely, the lines fine and bold. Takako employs a simple illustration style that provokes the reader to focus on characters, their expressions, and the way they carry themselves. The illustration of the book in every way serves the purpose of the story and its unadorned vitality both keeps the reader from distraction and invests characters with an immediacy that helps sell the illusion of their reality. Fantagraphics' production on the book gives the art plenty of room in which to luxuriate. The pages are large and the paper thick. For hardbacks, these volumes are surprisingly light. They are beautifully produced and will look handsome on a shelf. The only drawback is that considering their not-insubstantial size and the fact that there are currently fifteen volumes available in Japan, these will easily take up a whole shelf in many bookcases (and of course, for fans with plenty of space to grow, this might not be a bad thing).

In a year of some fantastic books, Wandering Son continues to shine and is easily recommendable. It can be a handy introduction to a different kind of experience for those who come from generations with more ossified social beliefs (such as my own generation); and it can function as a great segue for parents to begin discussing social/sexual issues with their children. Complex moral structures treated with humanity and care is one of my favourite hallmarks of good literature—and in case you hadn't guessed, I'd happily deposit Wandering Son in the category of Good Comics Literature.


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[Review courtesy of Good Ok Bad.]
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Footnotes
1) Which should be easy, right? Because these characters are human. Really, we shouldn't even need a book to make the effort, but even my own very narrow personal history demonstrates with force that we do need books to make the effort.

2) Granted, "men's attire" is a rapidly diminishing category of fashion.

3) Honestly, when I was their age, I wanted so very badly to "hump" my crush into oblivion, but that was mostly just me going with social expectation. Though I bore affection for a girl, it wasn't really sexual, I don't think. For one, I was prepubescent. For another, I really only had the vaguest understanding of what "humping" included. I understood the reproductive aspect and I understood that I should want to do this thing, but I had no real libido and so no visceral understanding of how sexual desire actually worked. I had, instead, a stand-in for that desire that was constructed from expectation more than anything.

4) Homosexuality does become topical later in the series.

5) Not being Japanese, I don't really have any sense of how much verisimilitude with which Takako represents the Japanese reaction toward transvestitism and transgenderism and transsexualism. Translator Matt Thorn offers a brief essay on the subject in the backmatter of volume 2, but it's unsatisfyingly brief. In any case, the protagonists meet much less resistance in Wandering Son's story than I believe they would in the U.S.

[Maia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very quiet, gentle story of two trans elementary school students who meet, become friends, and slowly begin to realize their own identities. I read the first couple volumes eight years ago, but I just noticed my library finally has more of the series, so I am re-reading it to get to the new material.

[Jyanx · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sweet, and almost gentle story about identity, friendship, acceptance (of yourself and others), and belonging. Not a sexually charged, or exploitative book. It made me happy that this series was avaible to order through my library, and was part of more than one library's collection.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

Why I picked it up: It's on the list for the YALSA challenge I'm doing it and my friend Snow got a dreamy look in her eye when she described it.

Shuichi Nitori is a 5th grader in Japan. Most of his friends at school are girls, including the new girl, Yoshino Takatsuki. And there is a reason for that: secretly, Shuichi wants to be a girl. And Yoshino has a secret, too: she wishes she were a boy.

I loved the idea of two transgendered kids finding each other as they are on the verge of puberty. I am heartbroken not to have loved it. It was a sweet story. But so much of it was lost to me. I've read some manga where I don't feel like I'm missing anything, and other manga where I feel like I am missing a whole lot. This falls into the latter category. There were a lot of places I felt like there weren't transitions, and there seemed to be a lot of understandings between characters that I never saw verbalized. I loved the idea of it, but I just didn't get all of the pieces.

Contains: no language and no physical affection

[Aleksandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

Delightful and charming!

I love this volume! The strongest start to the series I've read! It's slice of life manga with trans girl Nitori as protagonist and their friends, classmates and family. Nitori's best friend is Takatsuki, who's a trans boy.

The story features their day-to-day life, friendship and coming into their true self. It's been a long time since I've read a story with ten year old protagonists. I love these kids so much! It's very character-driven story, with rather slow flow but I love it too.

They are making a theatre play, doing group projects, celebrating birthdays and being adorable. Although, there's bullying happening and Nitori's older sister is mean to her sibling (she's only a year older). The manga is a realistic without it being overdramatic or dark. I'm intrigued with Chiba, their other friend. I hope we get to see more of her in next volume.

I appreciate this story so much and I can't wait to see more of Nitori and Takatsuki.

Wandering Son is sweet and charming slice of life story, the artwork is simple and adorable. I definitely recommend the manga!

Content warning: use of f-slur in one scene, bullying of Takatsuki over them getting their periods.

Note: I'm using they/their pronouns for both Takatsuki and Nitori.

[Sean O'Hara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to break into a school in a really conservative district and plant copies of this book in the library, just to watch the ensuing outrage from moral guardians. In terms of content, it's absolutely G-rated -- no cursing, the only fight takes place off screen, and the closest it comes to nudity is someone changing clothes off screen. But Certain People will still object.

The story concerns two fifth graders, Nitori Shuichi and Takatsuki Yoshino. Shuichi just transferred to a new school and ends up sitting next to Takatsuki on the first day of class. They soon discover that they have something in common -- Takatsuki likes to put on her older brother's old school uniform then take a train to the suburbs where she can walk around with everyone thinking she's a boy at no risk of meeting anyone she knows; and Nitori has an urge to put on dresses and makeup. There's one other character of note in the class, Chiba Saori, who, as the song says, likes "Girls who are boys/Who like boys to be girls."

As you can tell, the characters here are a bit precocious. I don't doubt that there are some kids this young who do experience gender issues, but the degree of awareness Nitori and Takatsuki display is a bit much. They seem much more like middle schoolers than pre-teens. But that quibble aside, this is a great book that discusses a subject rarely broached in media, and does so without any polemical stridency.

[Jessica-Robyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wandering Son is a beautifully drawn hardcover manga, that feels a lot like what you would normally expect from a North American graphic novel. Whenever I think manga, I think of things like Inuyasha and Fruits Basket, but among all the shojo and action fantasy romps we also have books like this one. Wandering Son is a quiet book. It's a slice of life look into the lives of two main characters, Nitori and Takatsuki. What makes this book unique is that Takatsuki is a girl who wants to be a boy and Nitori is a boy who wants to be a girl. The pair become fast friends near the end of their fifth grade year when Nitori becomes a new student. They don't know each others secret, but when the truth is shared, together they begin on a journey of self discovery and friendship.

I found this first volume really rather fascinating. The issues that face transgender people are complex and never before have I seen this complexity approached from the perspective of very young, young adults. Puberty is an awkward time for anyone, but what happens when you are experiencing all of those changes in a body that doesn't reflect who you are? Self discovery takes on even more weight when you're also reconstructing what gender really defines to who you are. What I really ended up enjoyed about Wandering Son is that this first volume didn't turn these events into huge melodramatic moments. As I said earlier, Wandering Son is very quiet, very restrained, and because of that these issues are presented in a very real and genuine way in moments of wanting, not dim the lights and play your violin sort of moments.

I know that this is a manga that I will become more and more attached to as I read on. However, that doesn't mean it didn't have some issues right from the starting gate. Confusion was my primary emotion for the first 80 pages. It was hard for me to keep track of the characters. There aren't that many of them, but because of the art style a few characters look very similar to each other. This manga also chooses to honour the norm in Japan that characters are referred to by their last names, which I've seen done before and can normally follow pretty well, but here this only added confusion. Trying to figure out who was who was hard at first, but it did get easier the more the characters interact and the character info page at the front of the book certainly does help. Also, as someone who has already read volume two, let me say this problem does begin to fix itself as the series becomes more confident in its characters and who they are.

I am very happy that I found this series and am really interested in seeing how the characters progress on their journey.

[Chiara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shit, this was adorable. I need the next one ASAP.

[Seth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, lengthy review for the whole series incoming. There will be spoilers.

I've seen a decent amount of discussion of this series online, and it seemed that it was generally viewed as a controversial series either adored or hated. People who hate it have called it horrible representation, and I truly do not think that's the case at all. I think that overall it is a very genuine and empathetic series that takes us on a journey of gender discovery within Japanese society and through the difficulties of junior high and high school.

My main praise for the series is that it portrays a range of experiences of different trans women:
-We follow our protagonist Shuu as she goes through school knowing that she wants to be a girl, but being fairly unable to act on that desire other than by crossdressing for the entertainment of her friends, and sometimes taking the train far enough away that she can spend the day presenting as a girl where she won't run into people she knows.
-Another character, Yuki, is an adult trans women who lives openly as a woman, has a boyfriend and career, "passes" in public, still talks to her mother, and seems generally very happy with her life.
-A side character near the end of the series named Ebina is an older trans woman that Shuu meets while out and about. This character is still living as a man and as a single father. Ebina's mother is very active in her life, encouraging her to remarry and helping to raise her daughter. This familial presence especially limits Ebina's ability to explore her gender socially, leaving her limited to the occasional outing wearing womens' clothing. During these outings, she does not "pass" and strangers make comments towards her appearance as well as the presence of her young daughter.
-Mako, a close friend of Shuu's, is also a trans girl. The difference between the two of them is that as a tween, Mako is less "cute" and "naturally girlish" in appearance to Shuu, and so is not accepted nearly as openly by friends when she expressed that she likes to wear girl's clothes.

Shuu's arc throughout the story contains a lot of moments that felt extremely heartfelt and real. We watch as she gets interested in writing stories as a way to explore her gender identity, handles social situations with friends, crushes, and bullies at school, and wrestles with her body becoming more masculine during puberty. Going into the series fairly blind and aware of the controversial views of the stories quality, I was afraid that Shuu might not decide to transition at all and would become overwhelmingly pushed down by society into living as a man. I was very pleasantly surprised that this was not the case, where in the end she pushes out into the broader trans community in her area, decides to write about her experience as a trans girl (implied to be the manga itself), and tells her girlfriend that she intends to become a girl. (Her girlfriend is supportive of this, commenting that she supposes she is a lesbian then).

Much of the beef surrounding his series online is about its transmasculine rep, so here's my thoughts on that as a transmasc myself. From the beginning of the series Shuu's best friend and narrative counterpart Takatsuki, who is deeply uncomfortable being perceived as a girl and wants to become a boy. The two of them travel by train to hang out together in the clothes they want to be wearing, and I found Takatsuki's experiences extremely relatable as Takatsuki also wrestles with changes from puberty like chest dysphoria and menstruation. It makes sense then, that transmasc fans would be upset that Takatsuki, slowly throughout the course of high school, decides she's comfortable being a girl after all. I am a bit disappointed on a personal level because of course I was rooting for Takatsuki and Shuu to both be able to transition, but I genuinely don't think Takatsuki's change of heart regarding her gender is something that ruins the series. Here's some thoughts on why.

The thesis of this series, reached near the end, is essentially "sometimes people want to be a different gender than what they were born as, and whether or not that turns out to be true, it is okay for them to explore that and they should live authentically as themselves whatever they decide." I think that Shuu and Takatsuki's bond and the ways in which they are similar and different reflect this, and I think its a lovely thesis! Of course its okay to explore your gender and decide that you are cis after all. I think there's even a very poignant moment where Takatsuki feels like she has betrayed Shuu for not being transgender like her, in this experience they though they shared, and has to come to terms with the fact that its okay to changer her mind, and that Shuu is just happy if she is happy to dress and act the way she wants to.

I think that the main thing that would have made Takatsuki's decision not to transition feel more okay to transmasc audiences is if we had encountered other transmasculine characters in the series. While we get a wide range of transfemme characters, Takatsuki is the ONLY transmasc presenting character in the series, so of course its tough that in the end she isn't a trans man after all. But like I said, I do think the series is still of high value and I don't think that Takatsuki's arc is something that is inherently horrible. I think one of the other reasons that I feel this way is that during my study abroad in Japan I was talking to a college student there about my gender and and she told me that when she was in high school she had wanted to be a boy and had dressed as such, but had later changed her mind. While Takatsuki's story might be tough for some trans men to read, it is also just an experience that actual real people sometimes have.

My final note on the series is on the oft-present anime/manga trope of tween characters having an adult friend who acts pervy towards them. Unfortunately near the beginning of the series the author does write multiple scenes where Yuki acts inappropriately towards Shuu and Takatsuki, which sucks ass. This behavior is gone by the end of the series, and it never had to be there in the first place. Obviously its not something you should have to ignore when enjoying a manga and yet here it is. That's probably the main reason this is a 4 star rather than a 5 for me, along with me wishing that Shuu's friends had maybe spoken a bit more positively about the prospect of her transitioning at some point in the narrative rather than mostly just seeing Shuu as a boy who likes to dress girly. Overall tho, I did enjoy the series. Tough read at points, but felt very genuine and full of emotional depth. Impressive, considering that the author's other works contain train wreck premises such as "gay couple wake up one morning to find that one of their bodies has regressed to that of a ten year old".

[Reid · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this, to be able to say "oh, this was the series I needed when I was younger," but I can't. The trans characters are misgendered constantly (not just by the other characters, but also by the author) and the majority of the story seems to focus on the idea that they'd be better looking if they transitioned, as if that matters or is the most important reason to do it. Chiba is sooo creepy, but the way she's presented makes me think we're supposed to see her as being supportive/helpful. The pacing was very strange, and all the characters look pretty much alike (even the author admits it on the last page) which made it hard to keep track of what was happening sometimes. Some of these problems might be translation issues, but others can't be. There were a couple moments that were cute or relatable, but nowhere near enough to make up for the rest of it. Anyway, this one really missed the mark for me so I don't plan to finish the rest of the series.

[Kogiopsis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very subjective three stars, because I think this volume could have been a five-star read if it weren't for a few problems I had with it that may well be specific to me. The idea is interesting and the plot seems to progress slowly enough that it will be thoroughly explored over time. However, I have trouble remembering and distinguishing Japanese names, so keeping characters straight was a constant challenge - one not helped by some strong similarities in appearance.

That said, this is only a first volume and it's a very interesting story despite my trouble recognizing who's who, so I'll keep an eye out for the rest of it.

[Ayxan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The artstyle is cute, but the paneling is a bit confusing. One page sometimes has 3 different times of the day; at one panel they're meeting up and in the next one they're parting ways already. Random time-jumps without any notice. Cuts that aren't for aesthetic purposes, but simply random and confusing. Would work for a thriller, but not a middle grade slice of life...
Also, it's a bit difficult to distinguish the characters sometimes, as everyone looks so alike.

The premise is quite nice though; you don't have just one trans character, but two, and of the opposite gender. Shuichi, a boy, who wants to be a girl; and Yoshino, a girl, who wants to be a boy.

It starts off a bit awkward, though. Yoshino has it going pretty well and knows what she wants, but Shuichi is of rather shy nature and gets pushed around a lot. The strangest part is that his friends are pretty much forcing him to wear girls' clothes, just because he looks at dresses a bit too long sometimes and the others think he would look cute. I'm sure they mean well (at least I hope so), but who does that? Is it a thing in Japan? Maybe I'm just hit with weird cultural differences, which make me a little uncomfortable, but... uh...
Whether it's a cultural thing or not, just please stop forcing people to wear clothes, when they clearly don't want to – no matter the gender of the person and the gender attached to the clothes. Just... don't.

Volume 1 is rather superficial and just about the clothes. E.g. Yoshino wearing a guy's school uniform, and Shuichi wanting to wear dresses.
I hope it goes deeper than that, because transgender isn't just about clothes, and I really don't want this manga to be one of those false stereotypes stories.

Generally speaking, though, can we finally stop attaching genders to things? Especially clothes. Dresses shouldn't make someone feminine/female, and trousers shouldn't be masculine/male. Please. I'm so sick of this. Just let everyone wear what they want.

~

Also, every guy who makes fun of periods, deserves to suffer. Get that period-pain-simulator and wear it 24/7 for a whole week, and suffer. Seriously.

[Fable · Rating 5 out of 5]

A soft, sweet, and heart-warming manga about two trans kids coming to understand themselves, learning each other secret and supporting each other through their transition. With a really simple but cute and effective art style, this charming volume is a great introduction to manga for Western audiences.

One note; the characters are not only misgendered in the novel, as fits the premise, but also in jacket copy, with descriptors like "a boy who wants to be a girl" and vice versa. While the wokest of us will know that this isn't exactly proper, I am half way into the second volume and this seems to be well-meaning ignorance or a translation issue, and the story makes it clear that the kids are finding their truth, not just idly considering their gender.

[Eva B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was so cute! Can’t wait to see where it goes next

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very sweet story about two people.
Shuichi is a boy that wants to be a girl.
Yoshino is a girl who wants to be a boy.

The art is simple.
The story is simple, yet complex.

I'm looking forward to reading the next volume.

[Kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nitori Shuichi is a boy with a secret: he would really like to be a girl. When he starts fifth grade at a new school, a couple of startling things happen. One girl in his class, Chiba Saori, discovers his secret, and seems to find it fascinating. She even helps arrange for a surreptitious way for Shuichi to cross-dress in public: a performance of "The Rose of Versailles" with the boys playing the girl parts and the girls playing the boy roles. Meanwhile, another classmate has a similar secret to Shuichi's: Takatsuki Yoshino secretly wants to be a boy, and is really struggling with the physical changes that come with entering puberty.
The book handles its subject matter with wonderful delicacy. The three-star rating has nothing to do with that aspect of the book -- I honestly don't know that I could ask for a more realistic and yet kind treatment of the topic of kids and gender identity. Unfortunately, the artwork sometimes makes it difficult to tell characters apart, and at times the flow of events is unclear. There was one point where I actually thought that a page was missing or had been flipped, but I don't think this was the case.
I still recommend this book for public and school library collections, and to those who are interested in kids and trans issues. It's a lovely thing despite its faults.

[Theresa Marsala · Rating 3 out of 5]

When it comes down to it I really enjoyed the heart of the story~ 2 young internally- struggling transgender kids who try to figure themselves out & how to be comfortable with their true selves, but because of culture & language differences between American & Japanese I found it confusing to follow at times. Some characters are very similar & even though there is a Honorifics guide along with a pronunciation guide to help you out, I still felt a little outta whack with who was who. I was also taken aback by some of what I thought was strange but apparently in Japanese culture would not be considered out of the ordinary. Deep down its a sweet story about a girl who wishes she was a boy & a boy who wishes he was a girl & how their friendship blooms.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sweet, tender, and engaging look at the friendship between two pre-teens -- Shuichi, a boy who wishes he were a girl and Yoshino, a girl who wishes she was a boy. The book pulls you in with these adorable and introspective little characters, on the cusp of becoming adults but not quite there yet and not quite sure how to be what they are on the outside or the inside. Drama with friends, family, and school creates a highly realistic world. It's a natural read-alike for "With the Light" or other manga about children that's really made for adult readers who enjoy thoughtful realistic stories.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

"In the future that I want to inhabit, it will be considered a classic." That quote is from Erica Friedman's post about the anime (which I haven't finished yet) which you can find here http://okazu.blogspot.com/2011/06/hou... and I think it sums up my thoughts about the first volume of this series perfectly. It is a beautiful book that addresses a difficult subject with remarkable subtlety and grace.

[Edna · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book for late-elementary, early-middle school aged kids who are curious or interested in material that addresses gender-confusion. The manga formatting makes it an easy, quick and non-threatening read - the characters, ironically, look a great deal alike which fits with the "confusion" theme - I was confused and had to re-read or return to panels to confirm who was who (!). Will definitely read V. 2

[Damon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting read. Appears to be about boys who like dressing up as girls and girls who like dressing up as boys.

[Dov Zeller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this a while back and keep meaning to read the next ones in the series. I'll have to reread this one, too!

[Charlotte Thaxter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is amazing and I don't see a ton of LGBTQ manga, haven't started the second book but going to next trip to the library.

[xenia · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the first things I learnt in sociology was the distinction between gender and sexuality. Hourou Musuko shows how such distinctions are far messier in real life; that performativity is always a dialectic between self and identity, between what you desire for yourself and what you desire for the other to desire in you. The question of Che Vuoi? of what do you want? constitutes all our social interactions. There is no singular desire of your own that is not already laced into a matrix of desiring others. There is no authenticity without authentication.

Throughout the manga, Nitorin is challenged by themselves, as well as others, over why they dress like a girl. Is it to become a girl? Is it because they likes boys? They're called pervert, faggot, tranny, and from the way these insults are thrown together, Hourou Musuko shows how bounded issues of gender, sexuality, and desire are; that through the eyes of heteronormativity, deviancy is polymorphously monstrous; and I think Hourou Musuko properly agrees with that, but from a position of allyship rather than bigotry. There's an amazing scene early on where Nitorin has a wet dream over being a girl (!!!). Like, I've barely seen this kind of shit represented, the sexual desire of self-love, of feeling good because you desire yourself as you'd wish others to desire yourself. Self-acceptance is perverse! Reject heteronormativity, embrace faggotry.

I really liked how much the stances of those around Nitorin shift in relation to heteronormativity. There's a character who bullies Nitorin in elementary school for dressing femme, but then becomes friends with them years later, encouraging them to start dressing femme again, and even dressing femme himself at one point (!!!). There's another friend, who initially supported Nitorin's experimentations in elementary school, but then becomes bitter and resentful when Nitorin connects stronger with another trans kid. Like fuck man, this manga was complex and messy af, neither purely affirmative nor tragic. There're boys who don't know how to comprehend their own sexuality after crushing on femme Nitorin. There's Nitorin's sister, who is constantly putting Nitorin down because they look cuter dressing femme than she does.

It all felt too fucking real, the fluid network of allyship, bullying, and reconciliation, as well as the bisexual entanglements of desire and affection, shifting from respect, to solidarity, to love, to jealousy, to eros, with no possibility of settling. I know Hourou Musuko has been critiqued for not gendering Nitorin as she/they, as well as other characters their respectful pronouns, but heck this manga has the kids beginning at elementary school and ending at high school. I think it's perfectly fine to have the characters never quite know who they are or what they want. It is unfortunate that so much time is spent within the hetnorm framework (here's a strong critique of that), but seeing as this manga was written in the 2000s, a decade before the explosion of queer media through tumblr, twitter, and netflix, I think it's a wonder that Hourou Musuko explores transness and queerness so frankly and respectfully.

When Nitorin finally confirms that she wants to be a girl at the end of the manga, and her gf simply smiles, kisses her, and replies "Does that mean I'll be a lesbian?" I teared up so fucking hard. A decade of shame dissolved in one scene by your most beloved. It was so understated and beautiful.





Other things Hourou Musuko touches on:
- Gender dysphoria from puberty (period, voice drop, facial hair)
- The passive deadnaming of identification cards
- The unfairness of girls being able to wear boys clothing, but boys not being allowed to wear girls clothing
- Nonbinary, genderfluid, and androgynous gender expressions
- Reverting back to your assigned-at-birth sex to avoid the shame of failing to pass
- Feeling like you have to "grow up" or "grow out" of your desired gender
- Being disowned by your family
- Being accepted by your family
- Detransitioning

A bad joke I couldn't fit anywhere:
The virgin oedipal heteronormie 👺 vs the chad polymorphous pervert ✨

[Dana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review for volumes 1-8 (bc those were the only ones available at my library lol– may or may not read the rest online, but we'll see)

I think "Wandering Son" is a very poignant story that meaningfully showcases the everyday lives of trans kids (following them throughout elementary and middle school). While focusing our two main characters' journeys in finding and coming to terms with their gender identity, Shimura also artfully weaves in the everyday issues that come up during that age, ranging from topics like bullying, to sibling squabbles, to unrequited love.

However, being that this is a manga, it is not free of the problematic tropes present in this form of literature. In this series in particular we have:

- adult characters that make our main characters uncomfortable by touching, flirting, and preening over them without their consent
- (re: flirting mentioned above) subtle themes of pedophilia
- a school teacher who projects his own past onto his students in a really creepy way that shows he has a difficult time setting personal boundaries
- characters that repeatedly ask invasive questions (without the manga addressing this as wrong or disrespectful)
- one of the character's older siblings somewhat treats them and their trans-ness as a spectacle

Additionally, I'm not sure if the author is trans or not, so there's the issue of whether or not this portrayal is derived from lived experiences or from speculations and secondhand accounts. Either way, I have a feeling that a lot of the ways trans-ness is represented in this story is exaggerated for entertainment or drama which made me feel uneasy while reading this.

In terms of personal enjoyment I'd say my experience is somewhat neutral. I didn't feel any strong emotional investment in this story but I was also engaged enough to read through the 8 volumes that I did. A lot of the characters did really grate on my nerves though (mainly Saori, Maho, Anna, Shirai, and Yuki, in that order) which is why I'm pretty apathetic about continuing the series.

[Bryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely beautiful tale of friendship. The interactions between the characters are just very heartwarming. I really liked how the main characters are 5th graders. That’s around the age I believe I really began to grasp I was slightly different than my peers. Also, one of the characters has a dream that is a reoccurring dream of mine that I’ve been having I think since the 4th/5th grade. Seeing it in this book was sort of chilling, but also very comforting. The story does some forward “time jumping”, but I didn’t mind that as it allowed my imagination to fill in the gaps. The book is short which in a way was nice because it also allowed me to read it back to back days in one sitting.

This book is currently out of print which is a shame. I tracked down a copy in a library in a town I don’t even live in. The librarian was kind enough to let me borrow it. What really bothers me is that this is a book that shouldn’t be “rare” and obscure. This is a book late elementary/middle school even young adults would totally benefit from reading especially younger students who definitely are starting to feel they’re a little bit different than the “norm” like I was. I practically lived at my local comic book store/library 3rd to 8th grade. Reading a graphic novel like this would of helped me better understand myself and at that time in my life let me be aware that I wasn’t alone. Definitely a book that should be in every local/school library.

Like this, volumes 2-4 are also out of print, but I definitely plan on finding a way to read them somehow.

[DeannaReadsandSleeps · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75-ish?

Slice of life featuring the complexities of children slowly exploring, learning, and coming to terms with their gender identity but shown in the gentlest of ways. Soft and bittersweet.

I would prefer if the narrative was a bit more linear and straightforward, if that’s those are the right words, but I still enjoyed the introduction to this series.

Gonna give the anime a go too and compare.

[Joseph Jeffery · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting manga and though the translation falls down in a few places, works well as a setup for the ongoing story.

As Nitori and Takaktsuki prepare for a play in which the boys play girls and the girls play boys, they both have feelings that they would be be better off always being that way.

This is something that has long happened in the shadows of people's minds but is now getting exposure as more children openly identify as gender-fluid or Transgender. Thus, sensitive and well written takes on this issue are important and this does just that. Both journeys are primarily played via inner monologue with some people outside guessing but never understanding the pain the two seem to feel about their perceived gender.

It's interesting enough that I want to see where this goes.