The manga: a college guy meets his childhood friend, who was formerly a boy but is now a woman, and has run away from home after an unspecified disagreement with her family which has left her with a significant amount of trauma; it's implied she was bullied heavily in the time since they've last seen each other.
But don't worry, she's not trans! She just got an illness which turned her into a woman!
The manga: a high school boy with an interest in make-up uses his gloomy, depressed (male) childhood friend as a model to improve his skills. This causes said friend to have an "awakening" and start dressing as a woman, and to overall be a much happier, brighter, outgoing person.
But don't worry, the friend is not trans! He's just a boy who crossdresses because his childhood friend likes him better that way!
The manga: a high school boy joins a club where the members can turn into magical girls, which in his case involves physically transforming into a girl. When in girlmode, he's much happier and enjoys his life much more, and overall prefers staying in girl mode; when the ability to transform is temporarily taken away from him, he sinks into a deep depressive episode.
But don't worry, he's not trans! He's just a boy who enjoys being a girl!
The manga: a college student loses a bet and has to crossdress for a night out on the town, and meets and hooks up with a butch girl; they fall in love and start dating. The boy always crossdressed when they meet, and starts enjoying being "treated like a girl" in the relationship and starts crossdressing even when he doesn't have to meet his girlfriend and enjoys activities such as clothes shopping and make-up and putting on nail polish.
But don't worry, he's not trans! He's just a boy who crossdresses to please his butch girlfriend!
The manga: a guy is magically turned into a girl as a result of saving his best friend, the crown prince, from an assassination attempt. The prince decides that he has to take responsibility, and asks the new girl to marry him; despite being smitten she refuses, wanting to date first. She is later offered a way to go back to being a man, but when she does turn back she's disgusted by her own appearance and depressed all the time, ultimately deciding to stay a girl.
But don't worry, she's not trans! She's just a boy who's been magically turned into a woman! And decides not to turn back when she can! Because she's not trans! Somehow!
"But we can't write trans women in manga! It's just not something that you do!"
I had seen your post :) I was just kind of like "Huh, I kinda miss manga, maybe it won't be horrible again?" (Narrator: "It was horrible again.") I abandoned reading manga for queer reasons yeeeears ago when looking for wlw stories, so I'm not even remotely surprised that โจ gender stuff โจ is kinda scuffed in manga. Like, I see ", very heavily implied trans" and think "My coffee maker has one job - to make coffee! I am not subject to coffe undertones!"
there's some stuff in wlw manga that's really good but also a whole lot of dreck. it's much better than trans (and especially transfem) manga but that's such a low bar. in general manga is not a consistent place to go for queer stories, even if it's infinitely better than anime. if you really want to dig you can find some gems (read otherside picnic) but it often doesn't feel worth it after reading 15 chapters of the blandest yuri imaginable or yet another "trans undertones" manga that people assured me was 'definitely for real gonna end up canon trans this time, it's not bait i swear'
People keep telling me abt Otherside Picnic, maybe someday I will read it. But for real:
I could have written this. This is why I started reading weird indiepub novels and ao3 stuff lol
yeah indie published and online stuff is good! we've talked about it before but it's such a breath of fresh air reading stuff written by actual queer people whose lived experiences have any overlap with my own. i'm planning on reading the last girlscout because it seems super neat (and her other book is a no go because spiders creep me out), and when i'm in the right mood i'll for sure check out nevada
otherside picnic is really good, and the main characters pov is so good i can't imagine the manga or anime do it justice. she's such a weirdo