Gender bending in anime and manga.
- Keiichi, the male lead of Ah! My Goddess, has a brief instance of this. A mishap with some of Urd's potion ingredients results in him growing breasts and his hair growing out, which is the default state for most of the arc but dialogue implies that in attempting to correct this he managed to turn completely female for a time.
- Akane Chan Overdrive is a short, humorous ecchi manga where the main character, Amamiya, gets knocked unconscious and then sucked into the body of an attractive high-school girl (Akane). Later in the story Amamiya manages to return to his own body, but his best friend Murai is then sucked into Akane's body. Amamiya proceeds to propose marriage.
- In the manga Ame Nochi Hare, there are not just one, but five protagonists who were transformed into girls after a freak thunderstorm. The effects are temporary but they will transform whenever there's rain.
- The protagonist, Amel, in Americano Exodus, uses magic to turn himself into a female in order to conceal his real gender to become a magical girl.
- Anpanman: In one episode of titled "Dokinchan's Valentine's Day", Bakinchan created a hammer that can change genders of the person.
- Asuka Hybrid: A feminine boy with an ambiguous name is accidentally put in the girls dorm. He has a roommate who turns out to be a gay crossdresser who also looks feminine. Believing that he can't stay in the girls dorm as a boy, he runs away and accidentally saves a witch from the police. In gratitude, she wants to grant him a wish, but misunderstands the wish and turns him into a female. The entire plot of the series is him trying to find her again and change his gender back.
- Ayakashi Triangle: Main protagonist Matsuri is transformed into a girl by a malicious ayakashi, who aimed to ruin any romantic relationship with his childhood friend Suzu. Matsuri's female form takes inspiration from the one-shot Ayakashi Triangle was based on, Reo × Leo, with a similar gender-bending concept for its main protagonist.
- Battle Angel Alita:
- Sechs in Battle Angel Alita: Last Order is a female-to-male version of Alita, thereby becoming her Spear Counterpart. They start off looking like a very tough and "masculine" woman, but end up opting for a male cyborg body. Lampshaded when Elf and Zwolf ask them if they miss having breasts and they answer "What's the use of having them?" They have a point; being a full android, it's just useless padding to them. Their situation is given a very weird touch by the fact that their brain chip is in a separate, chibi-fied, female body that's connected to the male one and which rides around on his shoulder. Yes, really. Though "Mini-Sechs" probably doesn't have any gender at all. Either way, they at least assume the same male clothing after getting trashed in the first round. Although, if the interactive interface does have gender, then during the first round, they had a still female chibi on his shoulder, which from there on out crossdressed but was still female. Wrap that around your head for a while.
- Arguably, Alita herself qualifies for a while. Her second body from the original series was originally male until Dr. Ido reconfigured it for her. Sechs's decision may be seen as a Continuity Nod, because in the original series, after Hugo dies, Alita shows a desire to give up her female body in order to abandon her past emotions and become nothing but a "gun".
- Birdy the Mighty, in which the female title character has to share her body with a boy after she accidentally kills him. They are still discrete bodies, with Birdy able to switch them (and assume control over Tsutomu) at will. There is a short-lived exception to this, when Birdy receives heavy physical and mental trauma after a battle, and Tsutomu becomes the default personality, while stuck in Birdy's body. This isn't the only case as later in the remake manga's sequel, Evolution, it's revealed that Christella Revi, the Big Bad, was forced into a failed attempt at a similar Two Beings, One Body combined with this trope: Revi was born male and forced to fuse with a dying female Super-Soldier in a failed attempt to save her life, hence Revi currently being a woman.
- In BlazBlue: Remix Heart, protagonist Mai Natsume gets transformed into a girl right before the start of the series. She is then sent to a boarding school under a false name where she lives together with a group of other girls. The series covers Mai's attempts to adjust to life as a girl as well as its effects on her personal identity.
- Kenzo in Blue Drop: Tenshi no Bokura has been turned into a girl by aliens intent on conducting sexual experiments on human beings. He/she is supposed to get impregnated, and chooses his/her best friend Shouta as a partner. Eventually, it turns out Kenzo was Dead All Along, his memories were just implanted in an existing girl. When the girl's memories return they pretend Kenzo's went away, but the reality seems like more of a Split-Personality Merge.
- The Blood Princess and the Knight: A knight is captured by a vampire lord and forcibly transformed into her "daughter", along with a healthy dose of Mind Rape to make him more subservient and willing to embrace vampiric tendencies. He managed to escape and return to a relatively low-profile life in the city, along with having enough power to return to his original male self; however, should he fail to satiate his thirst with blood (which he consumes from rationed packs rather than from fresh sources), he reverts back to his vampire princess form, who still possesses some of the same blood-thirsty and haughty tendencies "she" once had. The series follows him being inducted into an order of knights and embarking on peace-keeping missions while still trying to keep his condition in check, all while one of his commanding officers is aware of his other identity as her "niece".
- In Boku Girl, the lead character is a very girly looking guy, and Loki the trickster god decides to screw with him by making him into an actual girl. Mizuki looks nearly identical in female form, allowing him to spend the earlier chapters pretending he is still male.
- Boku No Shotaiken is perhaps the Ur-example of Gender Bender Manga: After a partially successful suicide attempt the main character has his brain transplanted in the body of a young woman. He then goes back to school seeking vengeance on the girls who drove him to jump off the cliff in the first place, only to strike up a Gender-Bender Friendship with his old crush instead.
- Cheeky Angel: A mischievous spirit twists Megumi's wish to be a "man among men" and turns him into a beautiful girl instead. Nobody except Megumi and her best friend remember she was ever male. It's eventually revealed that she'd been a girl all along and the spirit had hypnotized them into believing she'd once been male because he lacked the power to actually change her sex. The anime changes tweaks this with the change being treated as legitimate, but Megumi is similarly unable to return back due to the genie mistakenly assuming she was content with being female despite the case being otherwise.
- In Chirality, Carol is able to use her shapeshifting ability to do this.
- Cinderella Boy is about two detectives (a man and a woman) who are badly injured in a car accident and put back together in the same body by an ambiguous doctor — they switch places with each other at the stroke of midnight, with the twist that neither one can remember what the other did while in control of the body.
- CUTE×GUY follows the life of Sumi Takaoko, a girl whose father promises her a serum he concocted will make her mature looking and sexy. She uses it because she hears that's the type of woman her crush likes; sadly, her eccentric dad neglected to tell her that it will make her a mature and sexy man. One she turns into whenever her heart rate increases, which happens all too often when she's near her crush. She goes on to make friends with several guys who turn into girls, all with different triggers.
- Daily Life in TS School focuses on a unique all-boys junior high school where all the students were born with a syndrome that causes them to temporarily transform into girls when a certain stimulus is activated, like being frustrated, hungry, etc. Much of the manga's runtime is spent focusing on helping the students adjust to their conditions in such a way that while many of them still very much identify as male, they come to enjoy or at least become accustomed to living as girls. Later volumes reveal through some of the school's alumni that prolonged exposure to their stimuli could irreversibly make the transformation permanent.
- Descendants of Darkness: Yutaka Watari's goal in life (well, goal in death) is to find a potion that can do this. He's not even transgender, just curious and a bit bored.
- Fairy Tail has Natsu turning into Lucy when they learn transformation magic from Mira. His reaction to the change is a typical one.
- In Fushigi Yuugi: Genbu Kaiden, Rimudo has the ability to switch between male and female forms, although he usually stays male.
- Futaba-kun Change! has a rather unfortunate scenario. The title character's entire family changes sex whenever they get sexually aroused, which means a) he will have to be the "girl" in any future relationship and b) the person he always thought of as his father is actually his mother.
- The second half of the manga Gacha Gacha, Gacha Gacha Secret (volume six and onward) has a malfunctioning virtual-reality pod turn a guy into the game's female instructor whenever he sneezes. Unlike most he never even tries to reverse it, and instead becomes friends with the girl he likes to get to know her better and get closer to her as a guy. Towards the end, the game's developers get him to try to cure it, as—per the manga's approach to science — each switch causes reversible (but fatal without treatment) brain damage.
- In Galaxy Angel, Forte and Volcott had their genders switched thanks to a piece of Lost Technology. Volcott is suspiciously enthusiastic about being turned into a woman, while Forte nearly finds "himself" married to Ranpha.
- Ohiri from Gestalt. Not revealed in the OAV, but in the last volume of the manga, Ohiri is a false body & she's actually a male god.
- In Gintama, there is an entire arc centered around this trope. It starts off with Kyuubei talking to a fortune-teller who then changes the gender of the entire Kabukichou residents.
- In one episode of Girls Bravo, Lisa uses her magic to switch various people's bodies, although she didn't actually intend for gender-bending to occur.
- Gonna Be the Twin-Tail!!, a Super Sentai parody at its core, has its male protagonist turn into... a short, flat-chested redhead wearing pigtails. It's partly due to it being the most effective form to combat the antagonists with (what them being a group of pervert otaku), and partly due to the creator of the Transformation Trinket (who is female, mind you) having a thing for young girls.
- .hack//SIGN does it a bit differently; one character is a Cross Player; trapped in a game which perfectly replicates sensation. More than that, this character thoroughly believes that he is male offline, and is offended at the idea that he isn't. This is part because of the incredible trauma he's been through at the hands of his abusive father and the fact that his memory was tampered with by a psychotic AI.
- A darker Sci-Fi themed take is featured in Heavenly Delusion in regards to Kiruko. She’s the result of a Brain Transplant procedure that a doctor performed for unknown reasons on two children who were both dying: Haruki Takehaya and his sister Kiriko. When Haruki’s brain was transplanted into Kiriko’s body, she gained the mind of Haruki and believed herself to be him stuck inside his sister’s body. However, due to the post-apocalyptic lawless world she lives in as well as the fact that nobody would believe her story (since even a Brain Transplant is unheard of to most people in that future), she doesn’t bother telling other people other than her traveling companion Maru and instead acts the part of a young woman to avoid drawing unnecessary attention.
Later, during the “Inazaki Robin” arc, this devolves into Existential Horror while Kiruko was being raped by Robin, Haruki’s former Big Brother Mentor who ended up being a twisted sadist. In order to break her will to resist, he gaslighted her upon learning of her Brain Transplant procedure and made her question if she really was “Haruki.” Robin claimed in a roundabout manner it was possible that Kiruko’s mind was actually that of “Kiriko,” who only believed she was “Haruki” because she had his brain, when in reality it could be that “Kiriko” was tapping into the memories of “Haruki” due to not remembering her own. When Kiruko realized she couldn’t disprove Robin’s theory, later even starting to see visions of a memory from the perspective of “Kiriko” instead of “Haruki” for the first time, Kiruko realized that she didn’t know who she was anymore. - In Heaven's Lost Property, through some Applied Phlebotinum, protagonist Tomoki transforms himself into "Tomoko", his female identity. After gaining the trust of the school by acting like the anime girls he's familiar with, his main objective becomes clear: to get into the baths with the girls and get intimate under the pretense of "we're all girls, aren't we?". His plan nearly succeeds, if he hadn't succumbed to the excitement of it all. He uses the transformation again in the second season; since everybody knows what "Tomoko" looks like, she decides to use another Applied Phlebotinum to turn herself into swimming pool water (to grope the girls in it, of course). After she is found out and transforms back into her girl body, she runs into the girls bathroom, where she is trapped in one of the stalls. Rather than go out and get beaten up by the girls, she instead flushes herself down the toilet.
- The manga Hungry Marie has a father and daughter attempt to resurrect Marie Therese (the daughter of Marie Antoinette) by sacrificing a school boy named Taiga. The result has Taiga and Therese sharing a body which transforms between the two ala Birdy the Mighty; the key difference here is that because the ritual went awry, Taiga's personality is in control of Therese's form, and vice versa. As with other notable examples, both personalities can talk to each other mentally. The change is triggered when Therese becomes hungry, changing the body to Taiga. When her appetite is sated, Taiga retakes control by turning it back into Therese's.
- The protagonist Eita Chinami from Idol Pretender gets turned into a girl overnight when he mistook the "female beauty" pills as cold medicine. The story centers around Chinami becoming an idol, trying to earn lots of money to purchase the same pills in order to change himself back.
- Inu × Boku SS:
- In the anime, Miketsukami transforms into a female version of himself to try and help Ririchiyo feel comfortable around him. In the anime, this happened in the OVA episode in Ayakashi Hall, but in the manga it was done throughout Ririchiyo's day at school.
- In the manga, there is a bonus chapter in Volume 9 where Watanuki changes his form into a female swimsuit model. Nobara tells him that he doesn't have the proportions right, so he transforms into Karuta instead, matching the details of her body perfectly and spending the rest of the chapter in her form.
- In Is the Order a Rabbit?, for reasons unexplained, but implied to have something to do with a young Cocoa's wish on his behalf, Chino's grandfather lives in his female pet rabbit's body.
- Yadori of Jagaaaaaan assumes the form of one of his customers - a university student named Airi - after accidentally killing her with his newly-found Frenzied Foglet abilities. While remorseful of his actions, Yadori takes Airi's place in her day-to-day life, with his abilities later causing him to completely assume her identity, down to thinking and acting like her reflexively despite still retaining his original male personality. On top of this, despite being able to transform into anyone else he consumes, Airi's form is now his default, and by the manga's end he continues to present himself publicly as Airi - albeit wanting to later admit his true self to his friends after enough time has passed.
- Played for angst with Ranmaru of the manga series Kagerou-Nostalgia. Formerly a woman, Ran was transformed into a man by the series' Big Bad before the story even began and now serves as one of his two Dragons. This sucks for her partner, Rikimaru who had a huge crush on her female form. And did we mention that they're now forced to serve together as Heterosexual Life-Partners? And that once a month she changes back to a woman? And that fifteen years ago he told her how he felt and pretty much destroyed their relationship? As previously stated, it's played entirely for angst.
- Kamisama Kiss has Tomoe, a male Little Bit Beastly Kitsune, posing as Nanami, a female human Ordinary High-School Student, a total of three times so far. The first when she was sick, he covered for her at school. The second time when she was attending the conference, he also covered for her at school. The third, well...
- The romantic dramedy Kami-sama no Ekohiiki sees high school student Yashiro visit a local God's shrine for 100 days to build up enough courage to confess his feelings towards his best friend Kenta, only to be rejected since he's not into guys. After dying in a car accident immediately afterwards, said God offers Yashiro a second chance to capture Kenta's feelings by placing his soul in the body of New Transfer Student Kagura Tendo. Part of the comedy comes from Yashiro's gradual understanding of how to act remotely feminine since he still identifies as male all throughout.
- The two-chapter manga Kanaete Aizen tells the story of a young man who desperately wants a girlfriend. However, with the exception of his childhood friend, who he sees more of as a friend than a girl, he can't even talk to a girl without going into a full-blown panic attack. One night, he wishes on a temple charm for a cute girl of his very own, only to wake up the next morning to find out the spirit of the charm granted his wish by turning him into a girl. Going to school as his "cousin", he, well, you should be able to figure out the rest.
- In Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl, space aliens reanimate a shy, diminutive and sensitive Ordinary High-School Student as a girl after they 'accidentally' crush him under their crashing spaceship. Unlike some other examples of this trope no "cure" is even possible so Hazumu stays a girl, and seems quite a bit happier that way.
- The premise of Kedamono Damono revolves around this: the main character's boyfriend, Haruki, turns into a lascivious girl at night. Naturally, it involves some bisexuality.
- The namesake protagonists of Jun and Kaoru are a pair of Childhood Friends who change genders every midnight. No cause is given as to why, and their transformations have become such a mundane part of their life that they routinely trade uniforms for school, and none of their classmates seem to bat an eye when either of them turn in for class looking different than the day before. In addition, both characters are subject to Ambiguous Gender a lot throughout the story; not only are their names unisex and can fit them as either boys or girls, but they look similar to each other enough to the point the only major physical characteristics that can be used to distinguish them is their hair color (Jun has brown hair, Kaoru has black). That said, their original genders and what they likely continue to identify as can be implied through context clues: Jun and Kaoru are introduced respectively as a boy and girl in the first chapter, and respectively use masculine and feminine pronouns even while transformed.
- Life with an Ordinary Guy who Reincarnated into a Total Fantasy Knockout: 30-year old salarymen and Childhood Friends Tsukasa and Hinata are killed and brought into a fantasy world by a goddess who tasks them with defeating a demon lord. While Tsukasa reincarnates in the exact same form he was in - business suit and all, Hinata is transformed into a short-haired blonde girl by the goddess responsible for their reincarnation. As their adventure progresses, both exploit Hinata's new form for hijinks while desperately trying to avoid Jumping the Gender Barrier for each other.
- Magical Girl Ore has an inverted version of the "Magic Costume Turns You Into the Opposite Sex" plot: instead of a boy turning into a pretty girl, our heroine turns into a very toned boy when she transforms. And he still keeps the frilly pink dress. To top it all off, the love interest is very much in love with this form.
- Maken-ki!:
- During chapter 19, Takeru used "Overblow" to briefly short out Celia's Maken, which was how he and the others first learned Celia was originally male. As long as her Maken has power, "Inversion" allows her to maintain the form of a fully biological female just as Celia wants. She was told by Akaya that, if she perfected it, it may eventually become permanent
- In the chapter 37 bonus story, Celia used "Inversion" to change Takeru and Usui into girls for fun, when they drunkenly barged in on the girls' private party at the beachhouse. It wore off by morning, but they couldn't recall any of what'd happened, or why they were wearing girls' underwear.
- In Maomarimo, a boy takes his twin sister's place in a (non-bloody) Virgin Sacrifice, and gets turned into a girl.
- Maze Megaburst Space is a complicated example. The title character changes gender at sunrise/sunset but each form has a separate personality and could almost be considered distinct individuals. The straightest example is when a hex meant to seal her powers results in Female Maze inhabiting Male Maze's body when night falls. The next day, Male Maze is in control of Female Maze's body in order to fight some thugs. After that, Female Maze and Male Maze occupy their respective bodies as normal, and continue to do so for the rest of the series.
- Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid:
- This ends up happpening to Kobayashi twice, courtesy of Ilulu (athough the second time was by accident). Since she's a flat-chested Tomboy who's only distinctly female trait is her long hair, no one other than herself actually notices the difference. Notably, Ilulu only knows the female to male spell, meaning that Kobayashi had to wait for it to wear off naturally.
- Lucoa takes this one step further, as she is not only able to swap people in both directions, but can actually perform a Cosmic Retcon to make it so that her target was always the opposite gender (and then swap it back just as easily).
- Downplayed in Kanna's spin-off, where Ilulu teaches her how to cast the spell and she accidentally casts it on Saikawa. But since she was so inexperienced with it, Saikawa's body remained female but she becomes slightly stronger and gains some masculine personality traits.
- In My Celestial Family, male protagonist Ray transforms into a Magical Girl Warrior to battle the forces of evil.
- In My Mental Choices Are..., Kanade Amakusa receives a phone call from someone claiming to be God. Naturally, Kanade thinks this is a prank call... until the caller turns him into a girl. The caller changes him back when he apologizes and admits he is God. After the credits, there's a "what-if" clip that shows how Kanade's life would have gone if he had chosen to remain a girl.
- Shirou and Shiho in My Monster Secret are a case of Split Personality gender bending, much like Ren and Run from To Love-ru (and like in TLR, they're the childhood friends of the female MC). They are a wolfman whose gender changes whenever they look at the moon… or anything that remotely looks like a moon (including pictures). Shiho is the main personality, but because of the above, she sometimes inadvertently transforms, leaving Shirou in an Accidental Pervert position.
- In an episode of My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, the main characters all get pulled into a dollhouse that puts them into their dream life. Keith, having grown up with his Cloudcuckoolander of a sister, wished that in his next life he would be reborn as a girl so that he would know what a normal girl was like. The result is him becoming a sweet little sister to a male copy of his sister Katarina, surrounded by Gender Flip versions of the rest of their friends. And unsurprisingly, all of them are in love with the male!Katarina.
- Naruto has a special technique called "Oiroke no Jutsu" (usually known in Western fandom as "Sexy no Jutsu" thanks to fan translations, officially translated by Viz as the "Sexy Jutsu"), used occasionally near the beginning of the series, where he temporarily turns into a cute, naked girl in order to give his opponents The Nose Bleed. It's stated that this is a "very easy technique" as the normal disguise technique is standard for any ninja (this one just transforms into a non-existent female); however, it's also a reference to the fact that Naruto has a kyuubi fox spirit within him. Traditionally, they had the power to shapeshift into beautiful human women. In the anime and manga he teaches the technique to the Third Hokage's grandson, and we later see the fruits of the training during the first couple of episodes/chapters of Naruto Shippuden. In the earlier editions of the Ultimate Ninja video game series, this is one of Naruto's special attacks. Users of the Sharingan technique can copy the special attacks of their opponents. The results are about as entertaining as you could imagine.
- After cross dressing as a girl throughout the 2nd half of the story, Cruz finally got turned into a girl by Blade in chapter 113 of NEEDLESS. The expression on Disc's face towards this is priceless.
- Nozomu Nozomi is about a pubescent boy (ironically teased for having a big penis) who is forced to dress as a cheerleader to redeem a bet made by his coach and discovers an interest in crossdressing that is just as strong as his love of baseball. After suffering an inexplicable spontaneous sex change when he almost gets caught wearing his younger sister's clothing he continues to live as boy ("crossdressing" as a girl in secret) until he hits puberty and starts feminizing in ways that can no longer be hidden. He eventually uses their Strong Family Resemblance to change places with his tomboyish lesbian sister who had been genderbending the other way.
- In Nyotai-ka, a goddess turns an internet chatroom G.I.R.L. into an actual woman to teach him a lesson, though it's not clear just what that lesson should be.
- In the first season of Ojamajo Doremi, the girls once use their magic to turn into boys, in order to investigate in their stolen Magic-Shop. Doremi, however, blew the cover by chanting her Catchphrase ("I'm the unluckiest pretty Girl in the whole world!!") upon seeing magic charms who are claimed to be able to prevent said Catchphrase.
- One episode of Onegai! Samia-don has a teenage boy named Sil ask the wish-granting magical being Psammed to transform him into a girl with the looks of his crush Anne so he can chase away his love rival. Hilarity Ensues.
- One Piece:
- "Miracle Worker" Emporio Ivankov is a man who ate the Horm-Horm Fruit, which allows him to affect the hormones in a person's body, to the point where a man can become a woman and a woman can become a man, with Ivankov refusing to say which of the Newkama were altered and which weren't.
- An April Fools joke made by some people created a page in which Luffy was a girl because of Ivankov, mainly to disguise himself.
- There's also Mr. 2 Bon Clay, who ate the Clone-Clone Fruit, which allows him to transform into anybody he's ever touched, be they male, female, or no gender at all. Not surprisingly, Bon Clay and Ivankov are good friends.
- At some point during or after the timeskip, the Doctor of the Blackbeard Pirates, Doc Q, gained the power of the Shiku Shiku no Mi (the Sick-Sick Fruit) which grants him the ability to inflict his targets with various diseases. When his crew attacked the Heart Pirates, he infected many of them, including captain Trafalgar Law with a Feminization Disease resulting in the majority of the male crew turning female. It is shown that those with a sufficient level of Haki can resist and even destroy the disease in their bodies, though it is unknown if Doc Q can willingly reverse a disease he uses or if it has to be medically treated like an actual disease for those without sufficient Haki.
- In the manga Osananajimi wa Onnanoko ni Naare, a student named Shuichi saves a fairy named Sylphy from drowning, and is given one wish as a reward, which he uses to wish for a female childhood friend. Because she couldn't create a new person or change history, Sylphy instead transforms his male childhood friend Iori into a girl. However, Iori can simply force himself to turn back through sheer willpower so long as he can insist he's actually a guy. With Sylphy refusing to give up, the series follows the ongoing pursuits of keeping Iori a cute, well-endowed chick (to the admiration of his classmates) and falling into the role of a female childhood friend, much to Iori's hesitation.
- In the Otoboku - Maidens Are Falling For Me game/manga, Wholesome Crossdresser Mizuho finds out that being possessed by Ichiko turns him into a real girl, just in time to solve his swim class predicament. This doesn't make it into the anime.
- In the manga Otome no Iroha, twins Iroha (female) and Hifumi (male) are transformed into their opposite genders by their dead grandmother because Iroha is so masculine and Hifumi so feminine that they would never get married and have children. The supposed cure is to act as closely to their original gender's stereotypes as possible, so either way, the grandmother wins.
- A case of a voluntary gender bender is Kuugen Tenkou in Our Home's Fox Deity. Kuu can be either female or male and is comfortable in either form. This is because Kuu lived for so long they forgot what gender they were, and being a fox spirit, can change at will. Kuu seems to prefer female form, though.
- Pretty Face is about a boy whose face was constructed to look like a girl's and whose body slimmed down thanks to atrophy after an accident, but still remained physically male, just adrogynous (though he occasionally wears fake breasts).
- The Prince of Tennis has special "chibi" episodes, where Fuji, Oishi, and Momoshiro are all female. (And Eiji's a cat, to boot.)
- Ranma ½ is wholly built around Involuntary Shapeshifting, with the main character being an example of this trope's overlap with Sex Shifter. Both of Ranma's forms have their own Love Dodecahedron, though most pairings are unrequited. Particularly for the female Ranma, who has no interest in guys (because his mind stays that of a straight male). However, he has made full use of his good looks as a girl to get what he wants. He does not escape from the stereotype of feminine inferior physical abilities, which has been a disadvantage when he has to fight male opponents, for example, it's harder for him to land kicks or punches with shorter limbs, and in the anime, it's been stated at least once or twice that he loses raw strength in female form. For most of the series, he calls himself Ranko and always stays a girl whenever he has to confront his mother, who has sworn to force him and his deadbeat dad to kill themselves should he not grow to be a real man. There's also an arc in which his female self gets cloned by a Magic Mirror and literally falls in love with his male self, and hilarity ensues when you have an deadly jealous fiancee and an absolutely slutty female clone of yourself fighting each other.
- The anime's second movie, Nihao! My Concubine, has an incredibly rare example of a one-way and permanent male gender-bender device in the form of the magical spring of the island of Togenkyo. Anything touched by its waters is permanently transformed, becoming not just male, but a human male—the elite guard who protect Togenkyo's royal family are made up of animals transformed by its water. The downside is that contamination of Togenkyo's ground-water by this spring means all women who live there only give birth to sons, forcing the islanders to take wives from outside of Togenkyo to keep their population alive. At the movie's climax, Ranma and Akane are falling towards the spring; whilst it would cure Ranma, it would also permanently turn Akane into a guy. Rather than sacrifice Akane's gender, Ranma makes a Heroic Sacrifice and blows up the spring with a Moko Takabisha, although he's told it will regenerate in a century or so, as it was made by the magical sap of Togenkyo's giant peach tree seeping into a spring.
- One reason why Chrome remains relatively popular in Reborn! (2004), a series whose fandom is dominated by Yaoi Fangirl, is probably because half the time she turns into local Draco in Leather Pants Mukuro.
- Revival Game of Wandering Reincarnation has Asai Manatsu, a young man who gets pushed around by girls, find himself in the body of a swordswoman who tried to save his life from a monster. Awakening in a world where death is only temporary, Manatsu befriends other female warriors as they try to fight off the demons plaguing the world. It's revealed that the girl, Felice, had actually swapped bodies with Manatsu and has done the same to other countless heroes in the past. Her motive for doing so is because the Mind Is A Plaything Of The Body and vice versa, so each hero ends up imprinting their skills onto the body during their run with it. The hero borrowing her body also temporarily inherits the imprints of their predecessors, including Felice's deeply feminine mannerisms. Manatsu turns out to be the first hero with the power of exorcism, the key to ending the crisis. While never confirmed, the heroes speculate that it might be a Gender-Restricted Ability from Manatsu's male soul, as only a small minority of the summoned heroes are male due to the Demon Gods' tastes.
- Rosario + Vampire features a one-shot doppelgänger villain that turns into Tsukune in order to sneak off of the school's property without getting caught. It ends up getting caught by Tsukune's entire harem, who start fighting over "him"; when he hits Ruby, she gets aroused, which causes Yukari to demonstrate her favorite fetish. Perhaps now is a good time to mention that the doppleganger is terrified of women, though it's never mentioned why. Tsukune ends up showing up and starts using his powers, whipping him into a mindless rage. The doppleganger grabs Kurumu to steal her succubus powers and ends up turning into a girl complete with Kurumu's G-cup breasts, which it flashes Tsukune with to distract him; it works very well. Kurumu ends up being extremely upset about how the doppleganger is acting with "her" body. Considering that the doppleganger is wearing a bra when it rips open its shirt (which it stole from Tsukune to better disguise itself as him) in front of Tsukune, no-one quite knows which form was actually the gender-bent one. The bra was actually a result of censorship; in the original you can even see her/his nipples, which makes everyone's reactions make more sense.
- Occurs in one episode of Rune Soldier Louie. Attractive Bent-Gender is subverted, however, as Louie looks pretty much the same except for his new breasts.
- Sailor Moon:
- The Sailor Starlights from the final season of the anime are girls who transformed themselves into male Magic Idol Singers as their civilian identities, but reverted to female when using their Sailor Guardian powers. The manga has them as simple crossdressers.
- In the Sailor Moon manga, and its parent manga Codename: Sailor V, Usagi and Minako use their disguise devices to disguise themselves as men on a few occasions. It isn't clarified how far reaching this disguise magic is.
- Science Ninja Team Gatchaman: Berg Katse changes gender, at first at random, then on whim. In the heavily edited dub, s/he became two people.
- Yona Ryouma, the protagonist of Sekainohate de Aimashou, gets turned into a woman when the alien prince Emilio slips him a potion while unconscious. Emilio did so intending to make Ryouma his wife, much to Ryouma's dismay.
- Homura in Sekirei had an unstable sex, and so started turning into a woman in response to the main character. It's not been revealed if the transformation was complete or not, but Homura now has a more feminine body and face as well as breasts.
- In Sentou Hakai Gakuen Dangerous, there exist people called Majin, who have phenomenal powers. The main character, Otome Ryousein, can remove a man's testicles. Thirty minutes after removal, the victim will transform into a girl. As long as the testicles are unharmed, he can put them back. This leads to a bizarre sequence wherein a local gang begs Otome to transform them into girls in order to fight another majin with the ability of making men's balls explode. The transformation results vary - some end up looking like really cute girls, and the others... not so much.
- Sgt. Frog: In the anime, there's an episode where Natsumi is turned into a boy accidentally, while something similar happens to Fuyuki, who becomes a girl, in the manga. In both cases though, they return to normal at the end of a single story.
- In an in-game crossover quest with the mobile RPG Kemono Friends, it's the Keroro Platoon themselves who are turned into human girls. This is used for a longer in-game storyline and they can be used as standard party members even outside of that quest. Unlike the stories in the manga and anime, it follows the First Law of Gender Bending, with the Keroro platoon never going back to normal in the game's story, although they learn a way to do it. The characters also follow the Third Law of Gender-Bending to various degrees, with them all dressing as girls, and quickly becoming used to being girls, in spite of Keroro's initial shock, and Giroro's continuous denial. Giroro and Dororo even completely change their speech patterns to more feminine ones, while Keroro boasts to the player about how she makes a perfect girl in her self description.
- Shishunki Bitter Change is a departure from the norm for this premise, since the gender swap between two elementary school students ends up becoming a permanent situation, and wacky hijinks associated with it are absent. It's a bit of a Deconstruction of the genre, since the two of them end up living double lives, and by the time they get into high school, they've spent almost as much time as each other as themselves.
- Everyone in the world of Simoun is born female, and doesn't commit to a permanent sex until age 17.
- One of the main characters of Sorcerer Stabber Orphen, Local Cool Big Sis and Orphen's first travel partner Stephanie, is a Transgender woman who used magic for a voluntary sex change: Orphen explains to Majik and Cleao that she used to be a male magic-user named Stephan until few years ago, when she was seriously injured and her male body was horribly torn apart. During her recovery, she asked the healers if they could turn said male body into a female one; they accepted, and now Stephanie has a female body that she's very comfortable with.
- Soul Eater:
- A chapter features all of the main characters (as well as some other weapons and masters) being gender flipped. In context, they were experiencing the Seven Deadly Sins. In the Lust area, they became their own versions of lust. For example, Tsubaki is a tall Bishōnen, Maka is a straight-laced male student, Soul is a very stylish and feminine woman (Soul admits that he makes up his usual slacker look to look cool), and Black☆Star has an impressive chest (What other size would a person that loves attention that much have?). It's also worth noting that the twist of them being their own ideal sexualization has interesting ramifications for shippers. While Black☆Star is not quite the bishonen that Tsubaki is pinning for, he is certainly working his way towards it and Tsubaki certainly has the one ahem... aspect that Black☆Star seems obsessed with. However it is almost pathetically obvious with Soul Eater himself, whose ideal woman just happens to be the elegant small-chested woman that his "excitement" transforms Maka into.
- Giriko has done this via Body Surf into an Opposite-Sex Clone. Not entirely pleased about the fact but it was the only body available.
- In the Steel Angel Kurumi, manga Kurumi's accidental use of Applied Phlebotinum temporarily turns Nakahito into a girl.
- Yuuri in Tayutama has a magic charm that can turn him into a girl, mostly used for infiltrating Flawless Girls' School for purposes that are honestly good. As long as he doesn't make a habit out of it.
- To Love Ru: Lala designed a rocket to improve women's physical appearance, but Rito landed on it. When the rocket exploded, Rito changed into a girl until Lala makes a new one to change him back. A short time after, Lala creates a Transformation Ray for the express purpose of replicating the rocket's effects (and it's only ever used on Rito), except it wears off after a few hours, and "Riko" became a recurring element. It's usually a very unpleasant experience for Rito, as he's been variously forced on a date with his male best friend, felt up by some of his female admirers (one of which transformed herself into his male body), and his Accidental Pervert tendencies somehow reverse themselves to where he's the one whose breasts are getting groped.
- In Toriko, this is one of the side effects of eating PAIR, Acacia's Soup. Due to it being the "Two-Faced Drop", it allows people to see the world of the Spirits and to experience new sensations by inverting their gender (though the only obvious effect on men is to grow boobs and lose the testicles, while faces and beard remain). Drinking a second shot will revert the gender back to normal. This is the reason why Joa, who's currently using Froese's body, has a male appearance.
- One episode of The Tower of Druaga: The Aegis of Uruk had the entire main party switch genders as a result of a magical trap. Ahmey and Kaaya in particular found the experience quite distressing, as they were unaccustomed to walking with the, er, alteration in body balance.
- Tsukiyo no Fromage: This is the basic premise of the story. Ordinary Middle School Student and Eroge loving boy, Miu gets Trapped in Another World after an Erotic Dream encounter with his newest game heroine. There's only one catch, he has become said heroine.
- In the Cute Witch series Ultra Maniac, this is the first major spell we see Nina cast. Ayu needed to beat Hiroki in a tennis match as the girls' and boys' tennis clubs were feuding over the use of the school tennis courts and had bet on a match between the two. So when Ayu says she could use a spell to make her strong, Nina casts a Gender Bender spell without thinking much. While Ayu was able to pass herself of as her own cousin, all the spell did was throw Ayu's balance and timing off because of the size and strength difference. Later Nina and Ayu both use the spell because of mildly convoluted reasons surrounding a triple date.
- The manga Unbalance School Life sees almost the entire student population of an all-boys school turn into girls due to a freak alien accident, which occurred right around the same time the school was going to transition into becoming co-ed. The keyword is "almost"; the main male protagonist was spared due to physically not being on campus when the incident occurred. He spends most of the time juggling his interactions with the student body split between two camps: the newly transformed girls who still identify as guys but enjoy learning how to act more feminine and the naturally-born girls who tend to act a bit warier about their classmates.
- Until I Become Me centers around Akira Fujimiya, a young boy who bullied girls in school, only to irreversibly turn into a girl himself. After a horrifically traumatizing experience as a result of his transformation, Akira would move away, finding his First Friend in Rumi Watai as she helps him adjust to his home (while being unaware that Akira was originally a boy). The story revolves around Akira slowly coming to terms with becoming a girl (which is symbolized by Akira deciding to dress femininely), while becoming a nicer person as she struggles with her past as a bully and her sexual orientation.
- In Until the Full Moon, the hero is a vampire-werewolf hybrid who turns into a girl during the full moon. As if that wasn't enough, he's also betrothed to the son of a family friend.
- A surprising number of examples exist in Rumiko Takahashi's first major series Urusei Yatsura:
- In episode 68 "The Groom's Name Is Ryuunosuke" the minions of alien princess Kurama try to use a gender changing cannon on the resident Wholesome Crossdresser into a real man, but through a series of mishaps Ataru is turned female instead.
- In episode 82 "Full of Sunshine - Full of Amours" Lum decides to make Ataru jealous by letting a (male-voiced) talking dolphin attracted to humanoid women use a Transformation Trinket from her homeworld to become a human man. However, between the beatings he gets from Ataru's attempts to make him look like a pervert and the sight of Mendou blowing money on girls, he decides he'd rather be a human woman and promptly reuses Lum's gift to that end.
- In episode 120 "Revenge of the Protozoa: Poolside Rampage", Ataru and Mendou get sent back to the dawn of time while Adam and Eve are send to the future. The cosmic forces that be apparently decide that the human race must continue and Mendou is turned female. Ataru seems a little too pleased.
- In episode 172 "An Importunate Happiness Salesman Blue Bird", Ataru gains the power to change anyone he touches into a woman, for perverted purposes of course. Conversely, Mr. Fujinami gains the power to turn anyone he touches into a man in order to try and turn his daughter Ryuunosuke into the son he always wanted. Hijinks ensue.
- Vampire Doll (with the added subtitle of Guilt-Na-Zan in the west) is a Gender Bender story about a vampire aristocrat called Guilt-Na-Zan who was vanquished many years ago and later brought back by the descendant of the man who offed him. Because the descendant is a perv with a Moe obsession, he brought Guilt-Na-Zan back in the form of a cute teenage girl by placing the vampire's soul into a wax doll, Guilt-Na-chan. Guilt-Na-chan can become Guilt-Na-Zan for brief periods when (s)he drinks the blood of the girl Guilt-Na-chan was modeled on (the resurrector's little sister, which implies he has a crush on his sister).
- The Vision of Escaflowne: Allen Schezar's long-lost sister Celena isn't so much lost as transformed by lunatic Emperor Donkirk into Ax-Crazy antagonist Dilandau.
- In The World God Only Knows, a "Freaky Friday" Flip situation occurs before Keima enacts his plan to make Yui fall in love with him. As a result, they are forced to live the life of the other for an extended period of time. The spirit is still inside Yui's body, so the situation begins to affect Keima negatively, even if the spirit's growth is still dependent on Yui. In the end, Keima assumes the role of the heroine and incites events to simultaneously capture himself as a boy and a girl.
- Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches features some amusing Gender Bending comedy. Yamada who has copied the power to swap bodies spends a fair amount of time as a girl. He's admitted he had to go to the toilet "like a girl" (Shirashi meanwhile just avoids going to the toilet while she's a boy). Regardless of whether he is a boy or a girl Yamada will tend to stomp around like he's carrying bowling balls and shows little regard for flashing people when giving roundhouse kicks, which is probably part of the reason why Yamada's attempts to use feminine wiles to his advantage usually don't work out well.
- Your and My Secret involves a Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy duo who have their bodies switched due to the girl's Mad Scientist grandfather having a machine go wrong. In a weird overlap with The Unfair Sex, the girl-turned-boy loves her new male body and becomes even more macho than she was before, which makes the boy's former family fawn over "him" and consider "him" a flat improvement, whilst the boy-turned-girl becomes a friendless outcast who has to deal with being sexually harassed by his former best friend, whilst "her" grandfather refuses to undo the accident.
