The Day of Revolution
The Day of Revolution is a two-volume manga series by Mikiyo Tsuda about a fairly normal, if scrawny and undersized, high-school boy named Kei Yoshikawa who discovers after a series of fainting spells that he is intersexed and genetically female. (While this could be any one of several real-world conditions, the exact one afflicting Kei is left unspecified.) Faced with the choice (as he sees it) between remaining an "incomplete man" or becoming a "complete woman" Kei elects (albeit reluctantly) to embrace his newly discovered femininity in the hope that a new start as a girl will heal his strained relationship with his cold and distant father.
So Kei takes a half-year off school for therapy, training and "adjustments" (i.e., surgeries) to feminize his body before returning to repeat freshman year as a girl, hoping that by wearing her hair long and pronouncing her name 'Megumi' (which can be written using the same kanji as 'Kei') she can somehow avoid recognition by her former classmates. Naturally, things aren't going to be that easy.
The manga as a whole is a fairly realistic and non-melodramatic depiction of the difficulties inherent in Kei/Megumi's situation.
- Alternate Character Reading - How Kei became Megumi; this type of name change might make sorting out Personal Seals and certain documents easier.
- Attractive Bent Gender - inevitable, seeing as Even The Boys Wanted Him pre-Gender Bender.
- Attempted Rape - By Nakagawa on Megumi, allowing her to commiserate with Mikoto when he tells her about his own Near-Rape Experience.
- The Beard - Mikoto. At least that's how his sister presents him to Megumi; Mikoto himself has other ideas. Megumi soon gets other ideas as well.
- Bleached Underpants - Tsuda moonlights drawing Yaoi. It shows
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: That's going a bit too far... this is a shoujo manga, after all!
- Character Overlap - with Princess Princess
- Cool Big Sis - Makoto, Megumi's BFF and guide to all things feminine.
- Different for Girls - focused more on the internal/psychological aspects then the external/social ones.
- Does Not Like Men - Invoked to explain why Megumi is using Makoto to hide her face from some of her old friends.
- Dropped a Bridget On Him - Averted. Megumi actually wanted to "drop a Bridget" on a persistent admirer, but he just wouldn't listen.
- Easy Sex Change - Zig-zagged: Megumi's gender reassignment is said to have taken months, even though an intersexed body like Megumi's probably required fewer 'adjustments' then most. However, everyone agreed to it far too easily, and for fairly dubious reasons.
- Even the Guys Want Him - Kei, before her change. Mikoto, much to his distress. Their similar experiences resisting unwanted advances from boys actually draws them together.
- Gender Bender - Kei/Megumi
- Gender Blender Name - Megumi, Makoto, Mikoto
- Has Two Mommies - Junior, in the under-the-dustjacket Omake
- High School - Japanese version
- Ho Yay - Kei and pretty much everybody.
- Jumping the Gender Barrier - played for laughs. The boys think it's a lock, but Megumi is thoroughly squicked.
- Man, I Feel Like a Woman - never even mentioned, believe it or not.
- BestFriends - the "Tail Wags the Dog Quartet (minius one)"
- Rape Is Love - Subverted. Nakagawa seems to think he can make Megumi his girlfriend through sexual assault. Even his own henchmen think he's nuts.
- Romantic Two-Girl Friendship - Parodied. Megumi tries to latch onto Makoto whenever the boys scare her too much; Makoto's interest varies as Rule of Funny demands.
- Sitting on the Roof
- Skinship Grope - Megumi complains that she doesn't have breasts; Makoto proves otherwise.
- Second Law of Gender Bending - Of the "reluctant admission" variety. Megumi concedes "I really am a girl now" near the end of volume one. Volume 2 is more about Jumping the Gender Barrier than Different for Girls.
- Something's Different About You Now - Averted. Megumi is not ready for this reaction from her former best friends.
- Third Law of Gender Bending - Going back to school as a girl forces Megumi to wear a very stereotypical sailor-style girls' school uniform complete with a middie blouse and a ridiculously short skirt.
- Tomboy - Megumi, for obvious reasons. Moreso in the epilogue, where she seems to have adopted "Tomboy" as her style.
- Tomboyish Name
- Transgender - though Makoto asserts that Megumi isn't undergoing an actual "sex change" since she always has been genetically female.
- Well Done Daughter Guy - Megumi opts for gender reassignment largely in the hope that she can finally have the sort of healthy relationship with her father that eluded her as a boy.
- Wrong Genetic Sex