I’m probably going to have a bunch of odd manga showing up here in the next few days because in one of those “wow, I’m really down a weird rabbit hole” moments, I found myself trawling Wikipedia’s List of Japanese Manga Magazines (by circulation) webpage. It was there that I came across I (♂) Cross-Dressed for the IRL (♀) Meetup) / Josou-shite Off-Kai ni Sanka Shite Mita, as it was originally serialized in Monthly Shōnen Sirius, which ranks 51 in the list of most popular manga magazines, by circulation.
If you can’t tell, I’m going through these backwards.
It’s a weird way to discover manga, but I’m curious to see what sort of stuff is published by the people scraping the bottom of the circulation barrel, as it were.
That being said, this one wasn’t that bad…. maybe (see: caveat at the end of my review.)
SPOILERS
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According to the Wikipedia article for this manga, Kurano-sensei really wanted to write a manga about a cross-dresser because they met someone at a doujinshi convention who was an exceptional cross-play cosplayer.
I was initially very concerned when I started reading this because it can be extremely hurtful to the trans community when the entire schtick of the humor is, “ha, ha, ha, a MAN!” But, I feel like Kurano-sensei tries very hard to thread the needle here. Not being a trans woman, I can’t really speak to how successful they are, but I can tell readers that Kurano-sensei does have a canonical trans woman as part of this Meet-up, who is treated with… well, initial confusion, but eventual acceptance and respect.
The reason the other two people pictured are saying, “C’mon, not this again,” is that they’re quickly discovering that by chance all of the women in this group (with the exception of Kanentarou (often just ‘Tarou’), pictured above) are crossdressing men. At least the author seems to be saying that the only woman in the group is Tarou.
So that’s something.
Why the remaining three members cross-dress and their complicated feelings towards their gender is the subject of a lot of the rest of the manga.
Our main character is ostensibly, Cocoa (Morinaga Satoshi). When asked, Cocoa/Satoshi says that he feels more “me ♀” (<–how it is often written in the manga, completely with female symbol) when in women’s clothes. When he’s out in the world in men’s clothing, he lacks confidence, etc., even though when the reader finally sees him not as Cocoa, other characters all react as though, as a guy, he’s a total hottie (by which it is implied that his appearance alone should impart confidence, but of course that’s not at all how it works. If you’re not a guy, being an especially conventionally attractive one actually makes things worse, I’d imagine.). Cocoa apparently has some kind of corporate job because at one point in the story Cocoa gets roped into helping plan Satoshi’s surprised office birthday party, as s/he says, “This is probably the first time someone has been asked to help plan their own surprise party.”
I have to wonder with the addition of Tarou in the case, if part of Cocoa journey will be becoming herself.
This Meet-up very quickly pairs up, too. Cocoa had initially been coming to the group for the desserts, but she’s fallen for another member, Opera (they are all named after desserts, and Opera is short for Opera Cake.) Opera says he started crossdressing to “get along,” in his all-boys high school. This is one of those “what the f*ck goes on in Japanese high schools??” moments for me, because you actually see this a lot? Nitori Shuichi from Wandering Son also ends up having this happen as part of this plot, were the class has to pick a “boy” (Shuichi is a trans girl) to play a girl’s part in some gender swapped play. I feel like we see this in an episode Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun, too?
At any rate, Opera more often than any other character shows up in his guy-persona (shaggy haired guy pictured above). Yet, when in his Opera mode, he’s often the most “girly.”
In a set of chapters that unfortunately keep showing up out of order in the scanlation, we find out that Lemon and Tarou also become a couple–Tarou having the perhaps ironic realization that she is bi (having previously thought she was a lesbian), when Lemon confronts her by saying, “So, you were only into my gender, not who I am?”
Between Opera’s tendency to end up in his male persona and the fact that we learn that Lemon is only 19 and hasn’t had his growth spurt yet (and seems to want to be loved as a man), I kind of fear that the resulting end parings will be heteronormative, if not fully hetero–with two trans (one bi, one straight) women hooking up with two cis, straight guys.
It is perhaps most telling that while there is an official English publication, you can ONLY buy it in the UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/I-Cross-Dressed-IRL-Meetup-1/dp/1646517830, which, given the state of British so-called “feminists” and trans issues, is NOT a good sign.
So please read this, if you chose to, with that in mind.
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