The Day of Revolution is a two-volume manga series by Mikiyo Tsuda about a fairly normal, if scrawny and undersized, high-school boy named Kei Yoshikawa who discovers after a series of fainting spells that he is intersexed and genetically female. (While this could be any one of several real-world conditions, the exact one afflicting Kei is left unspecified.) Faced with the choice (as he sees it) between remaining an "incomplete man" or becoming a "complete woman" Kei elects (albeit reluctantly) to embrace his newly discovered femininity in the hope that a new start as a girl will heal his strained relationship with his cold and distant father.
So Kei takes a half-year off school for therapy, training and "adjustments" (i.e., surgeries) to feminize his body before returning to repeat freshman year as a girl, hoping that by wearing her hair long and pronouncing her name 'Megumi' (which can be written using the same kanji as 'Kei') she can somehow avoid recognition by her former classmates. Naturally, things aren't going to be that easy.
The manga as a whole is a fairly realistic and non-melodramatic depiction of the difficulties inherent in Kei/Megumi's situation.
The Day of Revolution contains examples of:
- Alternate Character Reading: Kei became Megumi, giving a different pronunciation to the same spelling in kanji. This type of name change might make sorting out Personal Seals and certain documents easier.
- Artistic License – Medicine: Megumi muses that if she hadn't transitioned to being female, she'd being effeminate to the point of lacking facial hair or an Adam's apple. Both of those issue and others would have been solved by simple hormone therapy—and with a lot less trouble than the surgery she did go through.
- Attractive Bent-Gender - inevitable, seeing as Even The Boys Wanted Him pre-Gender Bender.
- Attempted Rape - By Nakagawa on Megumi, allowing her to commiserate with Mikoto when he tells her about his own Near-Rape Experience.
- Character Overlap - with Princess Princess
- Cool Big Sis - Makoto, Megumi's BFF and guide to all things feminine.
- Different for Girls - focused more on the internal/psychological aspects then the external/social ones.
- Does Not Like Men - Invoked to explain why Megumi is using Makoto to hide her face from some of her old friends.
- Easy Sex Change: Zig-zagged; Megumi's gender reassignment is portrayed fairly realistically in a medical sense, taking months, even though an intersexed body like Megumi's probably required fewer 'adjustments' then most. However, their decision to transition is made so rashly and for such dubious reasons (Kei/Megumi had identified as male all their life beforehand, while their parents ignore their child's about-face when told they didn't have to), one questions how an ethical doctor would have ever agreed to it.
- Even the Guys Want Him - Kei, before her change. Mikoto, much to his distress. Their similar experiences resisting unwanted advances from boys actually draws them together.
- Gender Bender: Although Kei/Megumi is intersex and medically transitions from male to female in a mundane fashion, their experiences is far from typical for real life intersex or transgender people. Thematically, the story has more in common with fantastic gender-bending fiction, but with a mundane justification. Kei/Megumi's transition occurs for reasons totally unrelated to their gender identity, and with a great amount of reluctance, leaving her adjusting to live with a sex and gender she'd never previously identified with.
- Gender-Blender Name - Megumi, Makoto, Mikoto
- Hero of Another Story - Megumi's boyfriend Mikoto is one of the protagonists of Tsuda's Princess Princess
- Intersex Tribulations: Megumi is intersex, but was raised as a boy named "Kei". Upon learning about Megumi's chromosomes, it's decided that she should transition into living as a girl. Megumi originally hates the idea but comes to accept it.
- It's Not You, It's Me: It's not that Megumi doesn't want to see her old friends, she doesn't feel ready to face the inevitable storm of romantic interest.
- Raised as the Opposite Gender - Kei was raised as a boy before being revealed as genetically female.
- Sitting on the Roof: Nakagawa's entire conflict with Megumi's former True Companions is over who — and more importantly, who does not — get to hang out on the school roof. They're willing to share but he isn't, because sole possession of the roof would cement his Big Man on Campus status.
- Skinship Grope: Megumi complains that she doesn't have breasts; Makoto proves otherwise.
- Second Law of Gender-Bending - Of the "reluctant admission" variety. Megumi concedes "I really am a girl now" near the end of volume one. Volume 2 is more about Jumping the Gender Barrier than Different for Girls.
- Serious Business: Nakagawa seems to believe that possession of the roof justifies kidnapping and physical assault.
- Third Law of Gender-Bending - Going back to school as a girl forces Megumi to wear a very stereotypical sailor-style girls' school uniform complete with a middie blouse and a ridiculously short skirt.
- Tomboy - Megumi, for obvious reasons. More so in the epilogue, where she seems to have adopted "Tomboy" as her style.
- True Companions - the "Tail Wags the Dog Quartet (minus one)"
- Unsettling Gender-Reveal - Averted. Megumi actually wanted to ward off on a persistent admirer by revealing she was previously male, but he just wouldn't listen.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy - Megumi opts for gender reassignment largely in the hope that she can finally have the sort of healthy relationship with her father that eluded her as a boy.
