Have you ever heard the phrase "Damned with faint praise"?
I would agree with the reviewer. This is one of my first times reading this type of manga. I absolutely loathe the main character Masato. He's a complete loser who doesn't mind playing the field at the expense of other's feelings. There's nothing really redeemable about the guy, and yet, he has two women fawning over him (well, one woman).
A very good manga, much better than No Bra that I'm reading that deals with transgender topics same is Hourou Musuko
. A few spots strain credibility, but otherwise it's a very good read. There's not a lot of romance however since the characters are all in elementary school.
Have you ever heard the phrase "Damned with faint praise"?
Sure I have. What's your point? It wasn't meant to be a positive review.
Yeah, No Bra was a series that made me want to pull my hair out in frustration, but I couldn't stop reading because I wanted to see how much of a train wreck it would be. By the end, only Hidepon was even remotely likable. Yuki crossed the line after sexually harassing another girl. Masato, though... he just took the cake in asshattery.
And I'm not sure I'd recommend Double House, if only because the series was cut short so early in that there was really no time for serious character development or for any relationships to form. It definitely wasn't one of Haruno Nanae's best works.
Hourou Musuko so far seems to be the best handling of transsexual characters I've seen so far. Takako Shimura definitely did the research. Ayumi and Aika from the Mermaid Line collection is a pretty good portrayal as well, although it makes one little gaffe when the effects of the hormones are mentioned.
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Thoroughly mediocre, but not as offensive as it could be
No Bra doesn't have a lot going for it. The art is not very good; the events are mostly the type you'd find in any seinen school romance, and the characters are very cookie-cutter and often unlikeable. Even Yuuki is just a typical Yamato Nadeshiko type, apart from her physical sex. Basically, one of the main girls being physically male is this manga's only twist on the usual seinen romance/comedy setup, and by the end of the first volume or so it's starting to wear thin already.
The one thing No Bra does do well — or at least unusually well for this sort of manga, which is not saying very much, but which I still found pleasantly surprising — is its handling of a transgender character. Though the main character is a jerk about it and the Bridget-dropping is often played for laughs, the series makes no excuses (at least as far as I read) for Yuuki's desire to present as female. It's not because she's in love with the main character and thinks he won't accept her as a male, it's not because there's some great trauma in her past or some Dead Little Sister she's replacing, it's just how she is, and always has been. All she wants is to be accepted for who she is, and it hurts her terribly when the main character, the one person she thought would be her friend and accept her no matter what, is... well, a jerk about it (for example, his first act when he finds out she's "really a boy" is to force her to cut her hair to look more boyish, even though the idea upsets her to the point of crying over it). That being said, she still loves him no matter how badly he treats her, which is frustrating.
But who am I kidding — most people who would even consider reading this manga probably don't care about any of that. And I can't even recommend it to the people who do care about that — if you really want a good manga about MTF characters, go read Double House
instead. On the other hand, if what you really want is a mostly-generic seinen romantic comedy with a slight twist, this would fit that bill quite nicely. Though there are probably other ones out there with nicer art and main characters that you won't want to punch in the face (well, maybe that's just me).