Mandy's Law Of Anime Gender Bending - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Mandys Law Of Anime Gender Bending

"Once a girl has been created, circumstances will conspire to keep her a girl."

A majority of anime creators and fans are male, and most fanservice is aimed at them. Furthermore, for a number of reasons, male-to-female transsexuals have until very recently been much more visible than their female-to-male counterparts. And Japanese society still has rather traditional ideas about gender roles. Finally, strong female characters with masculine or androgynous qualities have a particular attraction to a sizeable cross-section of the fan base.

All of this adds up to the effect that most Gender Bender situations tend to push their principal in the direction of going to female. In the case of male-to-female transformations (especially involuntary ones), this leads to a Failure Is The Only Option scenario where the person involved fails to switch back, or becomes convinced not to try. Examples of the female-to-male case are extremely rare and usually brief, serving to highlight the character's essential femininity.

Anything from simplified designs to placating enraptured fans in denial is given as the explanation. The gimmick seems less prevalent in works oriented to female audiences, perhaps because that audience is more likely to accept a simple crossdresser without issue. In that case of the Wholesome Crossdresser, it's a matter of simply never showing the character out of appropriate dress except in establishing scenes.

Also, the result of most male-to-female genderbendings will invariably be extremely attractive, which may pose further difficulties to the reverse process.

Examples:

Anime

Ranma 1/2 — once Ranma acquires his gender-changing curse, no attempt at curing it works, at least not permanently. Further, many fans have observed that he seems to attract water (which triggers the change) as easily as fiancées and rivals. However, attempts by other characters at making the curse perpetual also fail, so this may be less Mandy's law than Status Quo Is God, a characteristic seen in almost all of the author's other works.
Megumi in Tenshi Na Konamaiki has spent six years as a girl at the start of the series, dressing and grooming herself in a very feminine manner. It is later suggested that she was only hypnotized into thinking she'd once been a guy, although the final episode appears to contradict this. Either way, she stays a girl at the end of the series. The manga later confirmed that Megumi and Miki had indeed been hypnotized into believing Megumi was born a boy.
Mizuho in Otome Wa Boku Ni Koishiteru not only gets to stay at the girls' school after being discovered, but volunteers to do so. Except for an obscured view of his face early on, we never get to see him in a 'male' persona.
- The manga shows his face in his 'male' persona, and still IS cute.
Likewise Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl randomly obscures its lead face until he becomes female, even though he's described as 'girly' to begin with and looks virtually identical. The lead also remains a girl, even though (or perhaps because) two other girls fell in love with her.
- It's strongly implied that "he" was transgendered all along without realizing it, and that was the reason behind the gender bender in the first place. Hell, she even had the same female voice actor during the male phase.
Inversion: Sailor Starlights from Sailor Moon. They spend significantly more screen time in male identities, to various degrees, with the handwaving that this makes their act of posing as pop idol singers looking for a lost love more convincing. Of course, the show is aimed at girls...
- Another inversion is Haruka, who originally wore outfits of all sorts, but is always given a male outfit when possible in the show.
Exception: Makoto in El Hazard The Magnificent World gets to stop dressing up as Princess Fatora once the real princess returns.
White Haired Pretty Boy Vampire Guilt-Na-Zan of Vampire Doll seems to be doomed to this fate, mainly because the person who transformed him is a Magnificent Bastard. Lampshaded in one of the omake comics:
Kyoji: "Thus Guilt-Na obtained the treasure of "friendship", much more precious than becoming a man."
Guilt-Na: "You're not going to change me back, are you?!"
Gacha Gacha Secret has a more understandable case, as the guy is turned into a girl whenever he sneezes, but never even tried to cure it; he just used his girl-form to make friends with the girl he likes to get to know her better. In the end however, it's played straight, as the people that were hired to change him back screwed up because he tried to leave half-way through the treatment so the girl wouldn't lose her friend. This ends up not curing him of the changing, but did cure the condition that would have killed him if he changed too much.
Ouran High School Host Club plays with the idea. Haruhi's first appearance is that of a mousy, untidy-looking boy in thick glasses. This is done simply for the sake of setting up The Reveal; for the rest of the series, whenever Haruhi is not at school or getting roped into Host Club activities, she wears perfectly normal and flattering girl clothes, leaving the audience to wonder why she didn't wear any of those outfits instead of her father's frumpy cast-offs in her first appearance.
- She probably didn't wear her "normal" clothers because in school she's supposed to wear a uniform - however, since she couldn't afford to buy the school's insanely expensive uniform, she had to settle for the closest equivalent she had.
- The girl's uniform being a prom dress, it would have been way more expensive and harder to fake than even the boy's uniform.
  - They explained the whole situation in like the second episode/third manga: She didn't have her uniform yet, so she wore the leftovers. Someone had ruined her hair just that morning by smushing gum in it, and her contacts had been ruined as well, leading to her using her glasses, since she was too poor to get replacements.
The fake Mashiro in the Mai-Otome manga coincidently takes the appearance of the young, flat-chested loli character. He's rarely out of drag, perhaps to placate fans with generous dissonance.
Played with in Happiness!, where Jun is turned into a girl. He's virtually identical looking anyway, and it only causes lots of magic-related difficulties before he decides to turn back. This might be a simple Shout Out to the original game, where it was related to removing a Road Cone from more openminded fans.
Seen progressively in Youre Under Arrest. In the original season, Aoi is originally discovered to wear falsies and the animators make a point to be careful about what outfits they put her in. In later ones, Aoi wears virtually anything the standard girls can wear; we only get the fact dropped in the season premieres, and the requisite Once A Season episode starring him.
Played straight in Pretty Face. After regaining his original face Randou learns from the real Yuna that he'll need to continue posing as Rina's twin for another year, only to be told by Doctor Manabe that if he had another face-changing surgery he'd be stuck with a girl's face for the rest of his life. I Want My Beloved To Be Happy says he'll go along with it. Then the doc pulls off the mask Randou didn't even realize he was wearing, revealing that he actually still had Rina's face. It was a test set by Yuna to see if he was really worthy of Rina. The doctor couldn't bring himself to return Randou to his original appearance in the first place, and instead glued a mask of his original appearance to his face, and continually re-glued it while Randou was sleeping. So, in the long run he ends up spending more time with the eponymous pretty face.
- Though he now has the ability to glue the mask back onto his face if he wants to spend time as a guy again.
Space Pirate Mito Poor Aoi.
Manga example: in After School Nightmare, main character Mashiro Ichijo was born with the upper half of a male and the lower half of a female. Mashiro identifies as a male for most of the series, and struggles with his femininity. Toward the end of the series, he accepts his femininity and chooses to be a female. The series ends with the realization that Mashiro's male and female "halves" were really a pair of HalfIdenticalTwins, fighting each other for survival in the womb; the female twin lives.
Averted in Shugo Chara, mostly because Nagihiko is hiding from Amu that he and Nadeshiko are actually the same person.
In Birdy The Mighty, Tsutomu is accidentally killed and has to share Birdy's body, although it can change appearance between the two of them. The Decode remake takes it a step farther, when at the end of the first series he gets his own body back, it is destroyed almost immediately.
Kampfer is turning out this way Natsuru, after being turned into a girl to take part in a secret tournament of girl-fighters. It's said that he'll gain more control over the change, but the way the series is playing, circumstances will probably still conspire to make him female at the most hilariously embarrassing times. The anime is still new, but according to the cast list of the original novel, Natsuru is the only Kampfer afflicted with bent gender.

Literature

In Mercedes Lackey's "Oathbound" series, the sorceress Kethry puts a rapist under a visual (and tactile) illusion of a woman's body and sends him back to his rapist buddies. Later, a demon puts an end to this illusion — by changing him into a real woman.
Justified in the Discworld novels by referring to one of the universal laws of magic: Once something has been done, it gets easier and easier to do it again. For instance, Greebo the cat gets turned into a human once, and even though it wore off, he can later turn human by himself. Although it never happens in the books, one can quite logically assume that if a man is magically turned into a woman, and then back into a man, his third transformation will be much, much easier than his first.
- That Discworld also has universal laws of narrative probably wouldn't help - they state that in such a circumstance, anyone who utters a phrase like "I'm glad that's over!" or "It's good to be me again!" is guaranteed to be subjected to it all over again, ESPECIALLY if they hang a lampshade on it!
Jack Chalker (of course) lampshaded this trope even before it was a trope in Down Timing The Night Side. Once the timestream finds a niche for a nightsider, they become that sort of person in whatever time they leap to. (In the hero's case, a prostitute.) Also shows up in the River Of Dancing Gods series.

Live Action TV

This is the premise behind the toku series Seishoujo Senshi Saint Valkyrie, as well as the webcomic that it appears to copy, Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki. (See this SGVY blog post for a discussion and video.)
Argentinian and Spanish telenovela Lalola. Lalo tracks down the witch who turned him into a woman, and she agrees to turn him back (after laughing for a while). They hold hands, she starts her mystic chanting... and promptly falls backward, dead.
- In the chilean version gets way more convoluted, as both Lalo/Lola and Pepa/Pepe can't get back to normal and when that happens it's just for a few episodes. Or the instances where there are Two Lalos or Two Pepas thanks to the later added conditions to the spell. But that's part of the second arc

Videogames

The protagonist of the X-Change Dating Sim series. Changing back to male and getting the lead girl appears to be the "canon" ending, but he gets turned back into one each game. The last game actually states that changing so will soon make him permanently female.
- X-Change Alternative varies depending on which ending you get, normally depending on the preference of whoever you happen to be dating. One of the more bisexual girls gives you a choice however. You're also a different character in the next game, so no ending is "official".
Both played straight and inverted in the Dating Sim Kuru Kuru Coeur, in which the three originally female love interests all become male at some point, two staying that way half the game, and all four datable characters have one ending for each gender with the main character changing to match. On the other hand, the originally male main character and his (dateable!) best friend spend 90% of the game as girls and have disturbingly large male fan clubs to boot.
Breath Of Fire 2 has a very interesting case, where the "circumstances" referred to by Mandy's law means the player. Since Spar is a significantly more useful party member as a girl (but loses the transformation if knocked out or zombified in battle), the average player will try to keep the character from losing the transformation if at all possible.

Webcomics

Misfile, as referenced above. Not only does Ash seem to have a better life as a girl (since she gets along with her mother), Emily's recent "I should be dead now" and "I like my life now" moments seems to have sealed their fate in stone.
- Not to mention the majority of people around Ash have had their lives significantly improved (Kate isn't psycho, Harry and Kate hook up, Emily has finally found the courage to tell her mother off, Aiden and Bronwyn no longer have Bronwyn's evil psyche following them, etc.) just by having Ash as a girl.
  - To be fair, Rumisiel and Vashiel had something to do with it. If it wasn't for them, Kate and Bronwyn would still have evil following them. Still, Ash as a female is the only reason the angels are there, so it still fits.
- If Emily turns out to be a true lesbian and not just attracted to Ash alone, Ash will probably be forced to stay female if she wants to be with Emily.
Sailor Sun. Despite Transformation Rays being mundane (albeit prohibitively expensive), the Kid From The Future has a tendency to call the main character "Mom," suggesting that she never changes back. A later comic also revealed that a younger version of Honey had been sent to live with the main character's twin sister shortly before her future counterpart arrived.
Honestly, we've now lost track of how many times this has happened in The Wotch. (They have also subverted this trope: a straight couple is permanently switched without warning, and when it's reversed just as unexpectedly a significant amount of time later, she's the one who wants to switch back.)
- And, of course, The Wotch's spin-off comic, Cheer. The one character who knows she can be changed back doesn't want it (It would mess up her magical girl fixation, for one thing.)
El Goonish Shive is much less casual or frequent about it, but does pay Mandy her dues. The second time a boy (the main character) is turned into a girl, the device breaks, leaving "her" stuck for thirty days; the attempt to get around this leaves him with an Opposite Sex Clone and the permanent ability to change sex at will, something the rules of magic eventually force him to do on a regular basis.
- Also, much later, a "seyonuolu" (chimera) member of the Quirky Miniboss Squad, Vlad, is hit with a Transformation Ray in a fight-or-flight reaction, and is turned female, but more importantly to him/her, humanoid. "She" has no desire to change back, and since Bizarre Alien Biology overrides the time limit (and, implicitly, gender identity), Vladia, as she is now called, is treated as a woman from then on.
Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki. (See also Seishoujo Senshi Saint Valkyrie, above.)
Abstract Gender - The guy who has no problems gender changing can change back and forth at will, the guy who hates it is stuck permanently.
Triquetra Cats started the comic this way, but soon delegated it into a minor plot point in favour of a more complex storyline. (Still girls, though).
In Discordia, it's established that anyone transformed by a virgin winds up the virgin's gender; this is true whether they started out that way or not (for instance, a man neutralized via Fountain Of Youth ends up as a little girl). Since the only character with such powers is a prepubescent girl, the male cast members had better watch their step. Furthermore, the formerly male main character can't be transformed again at all.
...and many more. This trope has practically become its own webcomic genre.
Parodied in this Order Of The Stick.
Durkon: Roy, before I cast tha spell, are ye absolutely sure ye want to go back to being a man?
Roy: What? What kind of a dumb question is that?? Look, I'll admit it wasn't as bad as I'd feared. I wasn't any weaker or anything. I did have trouble keeping my emotions under control, but I think that was because I'm not used to the hormones. But come on. I was born a man, there's no reason I would want to stay a woman.
Averted in the Gender Swap storyline of Narbonic; Helen spends a full week of strips male before Dave is turned into a woman, and they switch back simultaneously (granted, the arc focuses more on she-Dave than he-Helen, but Dave is arguably the star of the strip anyways).
Jayden and Crusader referenced, and subverted, this trope twice, and eventually did swap the gender of it's most masculine character. However, that was reversed moments afterwards thanks to his excedingly violent nature. As the entire event was designed for the purpose of gaining readers the trope has only ever been jokingly entertained.
Subverted/Inverted in The Dragon Doctors with Mori, who turns into a guy, for good. Played straight with the rest of the main cast, but Mori gets the same developement.
In DDG Netta seems to enjoy keeping Zip a girl far too much to let him ever change back.
In MSF High, Nurse Keiri seems to have made it her mission to warp the gender ratio as much as possible. Everyone who gets more than bandages from her leaves female. At the end of the day, anyone who's been transformed in any way can change back totally or keep all aspects of the new form, forever; with this in mind, she also tends to give incentives not to change back. There's nothing to stop people who have been changed from being changed again, but (other than the daily Reset Button) female-to-male is rare, and never seen in the comic, where so far at least three significant characters (Urk, Collete, and Victoria) have gone through this progression and are now female for good.
- Also, the Legion are a fairly benign version of The Virus; the victims, who seem to be have been mostly male, keep most of their personality, but become unquestioningly loyal literal Green Skinned Space Babes. In the main setting, this is as temporary as anything else (although like Keiri, they put some effort into retention), but in most of the galaxy, it's irreversible.
The first comic of I dream of a Jeanie Bottle the main character Jean is turned into a female genie that looks very similar to Barbara Eden from the TV show. While Jean (aka Jeanie) attempts to understand her new powers, she has yet to find a way to turn herself back into a male.
A running thread in Slipshine's Momo Impact is the queen of a planet of lesbians - any male of any species that gets within a couple meters of her instantly and irreversibly becomes a beautiful humanoid woman.
- Also, in The Key To Her Heart, a Gender Bender, who had been distinctly male, falls in love with a lesbian, leading to him spending nearly all his camera time female.

Web Original

Whateley. Just Whateley. If someone is turned into a girl and used to be a guy, no force on Earth can fix it — literally so, as there's a goddess involved. Maybe. It has been hinted that the scientists that came up with this theory — that there's a force of evolution forcing mutants to out-breed humanity — may or may not have been wrong. Ironically, the few characters turned into guys also have trouble fixing it, or don't try. It's just about standard to say that it's easier to cause a transformation then fix it. (See The Big Idea, a Single Fold, and ALL of the Team Kimba stories.)
- Heavily subverted in the character of Jade. She has trouble finding a way to transform herself in the first place! And once she does, failure is the only option... until she resorts to 'traditional' means. Professional surgery that works!

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