Name: Wandering Son
ISBN: 9781606997079

Takako Shimura

After writing the script to their adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, Nitori-kun, the boy who wants to be a girl, and Chiba-san, the girl with a crush on him, disagree about the casting the roles of Romeo and Juliet.

Wandering Son

V.1: "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 "-- back cover.

Sarah Sammis

Maggie Gordon

For a full review of this book, as well as volume 2, please see: http://mgbookreviews.wordpress.com/20....

Ken Yuen

** spoiler alert **
           The classic story of a boy who wants to wear dresses, and his friend who wants to dress as a guy. Unfortunately, the first volume makes it seem like the main character is having girliness foisted upon him by his family and friends, which made me uncomfortable since it seemed like borderline bullying.

Edit: There's a sub story about a friend who's hinted to be a fujoshi. She wants to see her friend dressed up as a girl, but in a selfish way that feeds into her fetish. She eventually realizes the error in her ways, since she was treating her friend as more of an object than a person. It makes me wonder if this character is the author's way of saying, "Don't treat my characters as objects for your titillation."

As a coming of age style story, there's a lot of uncertainty in this volume. Which makes it difficult for me as the reader, since it's hard to tell if what I should be rooting for if the characters themselves don't know. It becomes easier in later volumes when the main character does know that becoming a girl is what he wants.

The art has a nice simplicity to it, but it's a bit hard to tell who some of the characters are sometimes, because of how similar they look to each other. The book that I read was a nice hardbound edition.

Andrea Pozo

nonchi

Shimura Takako

In the latest volume of this realistic manga about transgender students, our protagonists experiment sartorially.