Okaeri Alice
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"Okaeri Alice" by Shuuzou Oshimi is truly a unique manga. You don't see comic books like that very often. It is more like an experience, telling a story about gender identity, sexual desires, self-acceptance, self-esteem, puberty. All of that presented in a respectful and realistic way, as one would expect from a manga by created by Oshimi-sensei. Realism of "Okaeri Alice" becomes even more impressing when the person reading it is familiar with psychology, so a lot of emotions, reactions or situations happening to the characters of this manga can be easily detected as fine examples of certain behaviors known in the field of clinical ... psychology. There are also afterword sections that add even more depth to elements presented in this manga.

All of that is coated with beautiful art and great panelling, allowing readers to literally soak in the story. The farther we dwell into thoughts of certain characters, the more artistic the visuals become, making pretty much every scene filled with psychological content more memorable and impactful. I'm a fan of that kind of artistic methods, so I was delighted to see them in this manga. Also, we cannot forget about the absolutely stunning way of drawing expressive close-ups of characters' faces. Something well-known for Oshimi-sensei fans that will surely impress a lot of people for whom "Okaeri Alice" is the first manga created by this mangaka.

The cast is not crowded. The story focuses on a several characters. Few of them are the main ones, receiving obviously the most attention and "screen time", although what I find as really nice about this manga's wriring is that the line separating "main characters" from "side characters" is thin enough to give justice to pretty much all of them. At least equally to the time they had in the manga itself.

Even though I generally enjoyed reading "Okaeri Alice", there are two things worth of mentioning that I did not like in particular, and which have greatly affected my final score given to this manga.

First of them is the length. While the story is complete and the main element of it were wrapped up pretty well, I couldn't stop thinking about how it would've been grand to see more chapters of this manga. They would surely allow to flesh out more the story itself, but more importantly - they could give more depth to few characters that were interesting, but felt to be treated more like plot devices than actual characters.

Second thing is scenes containing lewdness and erotism. I'm not against seeing that kind of stuff. Also, we are talking about a seinen manga, so it shouldn't be a problem at all by default. However, many of them (mostly in the first chapters) felt forced in "Okaeri Alice", resembling more a typical fanservice from mediocre hentai manga than actually meaningful moments from a manga not focused strictly on showing spicy scenes. Sexuality and gender identity are surely sensitive topics requiring respectful approach and seriousness. While their core elements were presented in a rather respectful way, such additions felt pointless to me and out of place, unnecessarily reducing the seriousness of the story. Sure, later on there are no such elements, but was it necessary to include them in the first place? That's the question. If we add to them the length of the whole manga, we might think about whether it was really necessary to include that kind of scenes, instead of, let's say, more interactions between the characters.

Nevertheless, "Okaeri Alice" is totally worth of reading. It's really a well-written story, with great looking art style and original concept. I definitely recommend it. Of course, it's not for everyone, due to themes present in the story. However, if someone is a fan of good stories, filled to the brim with psychology, social elements and realism, then "Okaeri Alice" might be something at least worth of checking out.

Okaeri Alice is thematically about how social constructs of gender limits us from freedom of expression. It is not necessarily a work aimed at queer audiences, but anyone who is conscious of performative roles based on gender and the pressure that may come from living up to those expectations. Okaeri Alice can be fairly problematic in the way that it executes this message, and it needed more time in the oven to fully realize its message, but is nonetheless a sincere attempt at solving a complex identity issue.

The protagonist Yoh is effectively the vehicle ... for Shuzo to deliberate on his themes regarding identity and repression. Yoh does not show genuine interest in what would be considered "masculine" activities. He just does things based on what is expected of him and what his peers decide is the correct way for a male teenager to conduct themselves. This largely leads him down a path of confusion as he increasingly becomes more aware of his leanings towards homosexuality, which clashes against what he believes to be the correct way of life based on his straight edge environment. The internal conflict that Yoh feels throughout the story is the emotional backbone of the entire manga as you’re meant to empathize with his growing discomfort that he feels within a body that he doesn’t think matches his figurative soul. I found his internal musings to be very moving throughout the story as his conflict feels genuine.

The catalyst for Yoh to find self actualization is Kei, a childhood friend who disappeared and later returned as a transgender. Kei is by far the most interesting character in the story as they work to liberate Yoh and defy the conventions of how people should behave based on appearances. Kei is, regardless of your leanings, incredibly beautiful which seems intended to challenge heteronormative ideas of how beauty should be perceived.

But interesting as this character is, they also lead into one of the more problematic issues of the manga - Kei’s method of freeing Yoh is to stimulate him to the point that he can no longer deny his true desires. This is matter of factly sexual assault and probably more damaging to Yoh than for him to navigate life “normally” under their existing limitations. To make matters worse there is another character, Mitani, who manipulates Yoh as way to affirm her own social standing. She leverages Yoh's (perceived) attraction to her to make herself feel better. So Yoh is in the middle of two forces that are pulling him in opposite directions, both damaging to his mental state. I don’t think Shuzo intends to promote sexual assault nor emotional abuse, but rather chooses the most visceral approach to make a reader question their own views regarding gender and sex. The problem is that it’s the least sensical of all possible solutions (though it does make for a lot of drama, and more intrigue). Some of this could be forgiven if characters outside of Yoh were more transparent, but we get to know so little about them as their perspective is never really shown. We are always with Yoh.

I love reading Oshimi Shuzo manga because it feels like he “gets” the adolescent perspective more than any other writer. He comes close to doing the same here, but needed more time to make this work match the quality of his others under the same subject matter.

I haven't written a review in a long time and I am going mostly based on my memory of the story.

So we're on the same page about the plot: The MC is in a romance triangle with a girl he has crushed on for a while and his trans best friend who re-appears in his life. The story follows his struggles with his sexuality mixed with the complexities of having feelings for two different people and the complication of one of those people having been a male when he knew him last.

I enjoyed the premise of the story. Everyone has had to, at some point, ... pin themselves on the sexuality spectrum and doing so when you're young, still growing, and still experiencing what a relationship even means is difficult. It is also easy to say on the face of it how you view transsexualism in a broad categorical sense, while never having to had navigate those feelings in an intimate, personal context, not to mention as someone who has always thought of themselves as "straight". I liked that the story explored this and this is, so far, the most grounded manga that I've found that explores it from the perspective of a male MC.

That being said, everything else falls short. Alice, male MC, and the MC's girlfriend are too immature to explore the topics the author wants to tackle in any sort of nuanced way. Not immature in the sense of school children, but rather not introspective enough to overcome or even be aware of their own flaws, let alone empathizing with each other. That's really where the plot falls short - no one has any empathy in this story. Everyone has a vague sense of what they want - sex - and that's about it. They struggle with not being able to get sex when and how they'd like it. All of the deeper notions like autogynephilia, homosexuality, what it means to be straight or gay or beyond, what it means to be a man, what it means to be human - these are broached at a surface level at most. The rest of the story focuses on cheating, dating in general, and attraction, all of which you'd be better served reading any other good romance manga as this one suffers from a flat, indecisive MC and an overall immature and unlikeable cast.

Or even just watch Euphoria. Not joking, Euphoria explores these concepts better than this manga which is absurd.