I am constantly looking out for non-problematic things to hug and love

[esmenet]

I think I may have discovered a mangaka who treats not only same-gender relationships with respect but trans* people and their relationships as well! Like, this person did a manga featuring a host club owned & managed by a trans lady, and there is a gorgeous person who may or may not be genderqueer (signs point to hell yes), and all the actual drama was about people's relationships with their parents and friends AND NOTHING WAS CREEPY OR FETISHIZING AT ALL. ♥

It was super great! The second sentence our 'main' character (it's actually a very ensemble piece, but he's the first one we meet) says to the trans lady is "[I wasn't just trying to make you buy this thing I'm selling,] I think it's rude to call people men when they're presenting female."


So, despite the rather nonsensical title, I am recommending Gold Rush 21 and (so far) its author Fujiwara Kiyo with no real caveats.

Comments

[littlebutfierce]

Wow, that is quite a rec!!

[esmenet]

I spent a whole chapter (about one-third of the manga) going "It can't be! A comic dealing with trans* people that a) actually respects them and b) isn't focused on being trans*?" And yet, it was!

(The depiction of the possibly-genderqueer character is super awesome. At no point does anyone interrogate zir about why ze 'cross'dresses, and although the translators used gendered pronouns (and even switched them once or twice!) I'm willing to bet that the original Japanese didn't have a single one.)

[terajk]

SWEET!

(Though, as I said to inkstone recently: How will I read all the manga? HOW?!)

[esmenet]

By starting with the ones that, like Gold Rush 21, are one volume long? ;)

[terajk]

OH AWESOMESAUCE!!

(I..didn't know one-volume manga was a thing?)

[esmenet]

Sometimes it is! Most authors try to go for the long or medium-long haul, but sometimes (especially if it's someone who's already made it big) they'll just write something a few chapters long and publish it as one book.

I tend to stay away from one-volume manga, because if they're good then I always want more time with the characters than they give me, but Gold Rush 21 was worth it.

[torachan]

It is actually a very huge thing. And it's actually more newbies than famous authors (though many famous authors have single volume stuff from when they were starting out). A lot of single-volume manga are actually collections of one-shots, and many more are one longer main story with one or two one-shots to round it out, but yes, single-volume manga is a thing. (Also not much of it is published in English, I don't think, except maybe BL stuff, because a much higher percentage of BL overall is single-volume stuff, so there's not much choice.)

[torachan]

Woohoo! I was able to find it in Japanese pretty easily. Thankfully it had been uploaded to mediafire, not megaupload or multiupload, both of which had been very, very popular hosts on the manga forum I usually download from.

[pseudo_tsuga]

I love this manga but I totally forgot the title of it until I saw your post. It is so good! I love who the main dashing character has a crush on and that it's not treated as comedy at all! ♥

[esmenet]

Yes! ♥ Everything is excellent and nothing hurts.