My Thoughts on “Kanojo ni Naru Hi” Chapter 8
Chapter 8 introduced a character I hate. I wanted to reach inside of the pages to smack that gold-digging Koizumi woman! Do women really go to college campuses prowling for grad student husbands?! Ugh… Well, I’ve seen women prowling bars where young doctors and interns hang out after work, so I suppose it’s possible. But that is so obviously gold digging! I can’t believe that works! And then Koizumi’s ignorance about emergence made me shake my head. I was hoping that Mamiya would slug the woman at some point. I hope Koizumi doesn’t appear in the series after this.
On to to Mamiya… That whole replicating the mother’s X-chromosome seemed kinda hokey. Where does the old Y go? I decided to let go of thinking about it and accept whatever science is made up for this story. Moving on, I can’t imagine looking like someone I hate and resent. I’m very curious as to how Mamiya is going move past her doubts about herself and her individuality from her mother. Her past behavior as a boy can’t give much confidence if you look at it more as not being able to be faithful rather than a general distrust or dislike of women. But I think it was true distrust of women. Maybe somewhere in the back of Mamiya’s mind, he wanted to dump first before getting dumped.
I got a good laugh at Miyoshi thinking that when Mamiya was a boy, Mamiya was definitely someone he didn’t want to date. It brought back what happened in volume 1 when Miyoshi wondered whether Mamiya had casual sex with his girlfriends and how he didn’t want to be treated that way. I don’t think many woman think of guys feeling about that. Unfortunately, many of just cast men off as sluts who will have sex if the opportunity is presented.
Getting back to the woman hating, I thought it was funny that Koizumi jumped to gay first after learning of Mamiya change of sex. I’m not sure what to make of this. Coming out of a character like Koizumi it sounds like ignorance, but it’s been my hope that Mamiya was in love with Miyoshi all along. I can’t reconcile my hypocrisy now, so I’ll have to give it more thought. Perhaps it’s just my romantic/idealistic wish rather than coming off as an insult like Koizumi. I hope some more of Mamiya’s past is examined in chapter 9, which should be arriving here in about two weeks.
Here are some of my favorite scenes from the chapter.
Lovely Manga 
Another possibility in regards to Koizumi assuming Mamiya was a “drag queen” and homosexual: in the first chapter, its stated that emerging gets more rare the older you are, and Mamiya’s case is presented as very rare. She knew him when Mamiya was 15 of 16 (so his/ her emerging at about 17 would likely not occur to someone not present at the time), and Mamiya left hastily instead of introducing her, which makes many people assume there’s something that the evasive person is ashamed of (rather than simple avoidance of awkward situations). I would assume that Koizumi was not in the same town or school as Mamiya and Miyoshi during the first part of the story. Even given all this, since Mamiya seems generally known, I have to question how observant she is.
In terms of Mamiya’s psychology, my personal feeling is that analysis will have to be taken with a considerable grain of salt until the next chapter. After all, while we have Miyoshi’s input and Koizumi’s statements (which seem to bare some resentment as well, which sometimes happens after brake-ups), Mamiya’s input is almost completely lacking. There are many possibilities, and I’m curious to see which the mangaka will use.
Not to invalidate what you are saying or doing, but just to put that out there.
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I agree that everything is speculation until Mamiya tells her side. I just like to speculate about the future for fun.
I think that Mamiya didn’t want to deal with Koizumi. She seems to be a flaming idiot and a part of Mamiya’s past that she didn’t want to remember. I don’t think it was shame, so much as Koizumi is bothersome.
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I really like how Miyoshi is completely in love with Mamiya and doesn’t doubt her sexuality or her inclination towards either of the sexes. He just accepts her as who she is, going so far as to even ask her to marry him. I hope they get a happy ending in the next chapter. But then again, trouble never ceases for the emerged Mamiya, considering the problematic nature of emergence. I checked out the release schedule and you guys are only releasing the scanlation for Chapter 9 in April. Hopefully we’ll get to see what happens next in the update soon 🙂
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“Kanojo ni Naru Hi” runs in a bi-monthly publication. We can only work at the speed of release in Japan.
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It must be painful for her to not even be able to see her own face without remembering terrible memories. I thought Koizumi was a fine comic relief until those last couple of pages. I wouldn’t mind seeing her get burned badly by Miyoshi for that.
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