Yubisaki Milk Tea is a manga by Tomochika Miyano that ran between 2003 and 2010. It was originally planned as one volume, but it ended up with ten.
Yoshinori Ikeda is a high school boy who works part-time as a photographer. One day Yoshinori's older sister Miki has to model for the latter as a bride, but forgets and runs off on a date instead. Yoshinori is dragged in and has to wear the wedding dress instead. After that he finds out that he actually likes to crossdress and begins to get more and more into it, creating a female personality, Yuki. But Yoshinori/Yuki gets into a complicated love affair when he falls in love with both his lively neighbor girl Hidari Morii and his classmate, ice queen and honor student, Minamo Kurokawa. Since Minamo becomes a home tutor for Hidari it doesn't take long before they both know about it. Things however get more complicated when Yoshinori's best friend, Wataru, unknowingly falls for Yuki, all while both Wataru and Hidari also have their own admirers...
Compare with Wandering Son, one of the very few series, like Yubisaki Milk Tea to actually take transgender themes seriously.
This manga contains examples of:
- The Ace:
- Wataru is a very good soccer player, and Nogi is the best on the basketball team. Which gives them both problems, since both sports are team sports, where one player isn't enough to win a match. Wataru learns this the hard way, when he tries to play despite being out of form, while Nogi has to face a boycott from her fellow players.
- When it comes to studying Minamo is usually the best student of the year with Kodama as the second best. Minamo's teaching also makes Hidari able to advance from the middle to the fourth best of her year.
- A-Cup Angst: Yuki admires Minamo's big breasts and complains that "her" own are small and fake.
- Always Second Best: Kodama would be prefer to be in second place since you don't get so much attention then. Minamo disagrees on that, saying that no one want to be number two, which leads Kodama to correctly conclude that she must be in love.
- Big Sister Instinct: Miki to Yoshinori, especially after she accidentally discovers his crossdressing.
- Brick Joke:
- During the school festival, Wataru makes a joke (or not, no one's sure) about wanting to suck on Yoshinori's cock after seeing how pretty he is when crossdressing (although it's not as Yuki). Later, when Wataru is in a funk after losing a football game, about a chapter after Yoshinori outed himself as Yuki to him, Yoshinori comes in full Yuki regalia to comfort him, and asks him if Wataru wants to suck his cock. He doesn't, but they kiss.
- Miki finds out about Yoshinori's crossdressing in volume 1, but it isn't until volume 6 that she sees him dressed as a girl again (as he's returning from a date with Wataru), and she just greets him as if nothing was strange about it. This scene may have been done to remind readers that Miki knows about Yoshinori's crossdressing.
- Camera Fiend: Yoshinori, who mostly takes self-portraits of himself as Yuki. Minami, Hidari and Kagami, however, also come in front of the lens.
- Cute Little Fangs: Lampshaded with Shiba in her first brief appearance in the second chapter.
- Cute Sports Club Manager: Nobuko for the boys soccer team in the high school. Yoshinori and Wataru wonder why she has the position in a boys team but guess she is the type who supports others. Yori may also count as she starts a girls soccer team in the middle school with Hidari, Yu and others.
- Deconstruction: of Attractive Bent-Gender and romance manga in general. It becomes evident fast that being stuck in a Love Dodecahedron is not doing anything good to Yoshinori's mental health, along with trying to still be able to pass when crossdressing.
- Destined Bystander: The manga was originally planned to be only one volume. When it grew longer several of the characters from that first volume got their role expanded a lot. This goes for both Wataru, Miki and Shiba.
- Fanservice: The mangaka loves to draw his female characters in various states of undress. Pushes dangerously close to Hentai territory in the sex scenes with Yoshinori and Hidari at the end.
- Genre Deconstruction: Anywhere else, the situation Yoshinori finds himself in — crossdressing and having people attracted to him — would be Played for Laughs (Ranma ½, anyone?). But here, Yoshinori feels how the situation gets to him, with his attraction to both Kurokawa and Hidari, and manifesting emotional turmoil due to his fear of hurting either of them, his coming to grips with the fact that he's becoming a man whether he wants to or not, the impulsiveness that comes with being a teenager and how it affects those around him, etc.
- Growing Up Sucks:
- Hit Yoshinori for the first time when he realized he had grown from 161 cm to 169 cm, which made it harder for him to pass as a girl.
- Later, Yoshinori fears having sex with Minamo because it means he has become a "man" and Yuki will disappear.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Wataru is much taller than both Nobuko, Yuki, Minamo and just about everyone else.
- Huge School Girl: Nogi at 171 cm, wondering who would like a big girl like her. Yuki is also seen like this after growing from 161 cm to 169 cm. For the same reason he also wanted to stop crossdressing but Minamo asked him to continue. Later when Yuki meets Nogi the latter thinks that Yuki should play basketball due to "her" height.
- Interrupted Intimacy: Miki walks in on Yoshinori and Minamo about to have sex.
- Japanese School Club: The series has a small collection with several friends of Yoshinori in different clubs in high school. Wataru is in the boys soccer club, Nogi is the captain of the girls basketball team and Kodama is in the art club. Meanwhile Hidari joins a newfound girls soccer team in her middle school. Yoshinori himself played soccer in middle school but dropped it when he got into crossdressing.
- Love Dodecahedron: A pretty big part of the story: The main Love Triangle is with Yoshinori, who loves both Minamo and Hidari. They both love him back. But then there are also Sakura and Kagami, who both love Hidari; Shiba, who loves Yoshinori; Wataru, who loves Yuki; Nobuko, who loves Wataru; Miki, who loves Hidari's father; and Nogi and Kodama who love each other. And we haven't counted the relationships between several family members.
- Malicious Misnaming: Minamo decides to call Yoshinori's crossdressing alter-ego Catherine, when she first meets "her". As a running gag, she'll do it several times afterward just to tease her/him, while Yoshinori corrects her. It ends when Minamo requests that they should be girlfriends.
- Only Six Faces - Possibly the reason Yuki is so attractive, the girls and guys have similar faces.
- Parental Neglect: Miki and Yoshinori are living with their divorced mother, but she's almost never seen during the series. Their father makes only a single appearance.
- Passionate Sports Girl: Hidari Morii likes playing soccer and is skilled as well, so when her classmate Yori Hotta is founding a girl soccer team she is promptly asked to join, which she does. Meanwhile Toko Nogi is the captain and The Ace of her high school basketball team. All three girls however have the same problem: other people have a hard time keeping up with their talents and ambitions, in sports as well as love.
- Precision F-Strike: Yoshinori gives one off when he realizes that he's infatuated with his own female alter ego, Yuki.
- Pretty Boy: Even when not crossdressing, Yoshinori is still considered attractive, and the others will often comment on how sexy he is or how sexy he acts.
- Real-Place Background: Many of the locations are real places in Tokyo, often drawn in surprising detail. A collection of pictures of the real places can be seen here
. - Sailor Fuku: Minamo's old school uniform which she gives to Yuki. It becomes symbolic on two later occasions. First when Yoshinori wears it to "continue" after he and Minamo got disturbed while about to get close. Second when he decides to break up in the last volume.
- Secret-Keeper: Everyone who learns about Yoshinori being Yuki, will keep it secret, unless they are sure those around them, know it as well.
- Secret Secret-Keeper: Kodama after he figures out, that the girl Yoshinori obtained for him as a model, is Yoshinori crossdressing. Kodama then helps to keep it secret, without letting Yoshinori or others, know that he knows — until he sees Yuki hand in hand, with his own love interest, Nogi...
- Smart People Wear Glasses: Minamo and Kodama, who are best and second best of their year, both wear glasses. Later Hidari as well.
- Unsettling Gender-Reveal:
- Happens to Wataru in Chapter 68; however, he's forgiving of this, especially after encouragement from Kurokawa.
- He's not the only one, though: It happened to Nogi, during her game against Yuki, Miki accidentally found out, while looking for her clothes, Kodama figured out Yoshinori's crossdressing, due to his collarbones, and Hidari only found out, after Yoshinori confessed it to her.
- Kurokawa, on the other hand, figured it out herself, to the surprise of Yoshinori, who thought his crossdressing was perfect.
