Hourou Musuko Review
Hourou Musuko revolves around a group of middle school kids and how they and those around them deal with situations like cross dressing and gender identity disorder. I admit I wasn't terribly drawn in by the premise of the show at first, but it was a part of the noitaminA time slot I gave it a chance. I'm certainly glad that I did as its easily one of my top three animes from the winter season.
This isn't the usual take on gender benders that anime and manga tend to fall back to. Cross dressing as a plot device is usually used to toss somebody of the opposite gender into a large group of all one gender students. Instead, these kids have serious desires and concerns. They are confronted with the conflicting opinion of society, their own insecurities and even the challenges of puberty.
The show is slow paced, but full of charm. There is a great cast of characters and their interactions prevent the show from seeming boring. Whether they are preparing a gender reversed rendition of Romeo and Juliet or trying to get rid of their first pimple, the characters genuine expressions and down to earth feelings make the show easy to relate to. Shuuichi Nitori is a boy who wants to be a girl. He's quiet and likes it when people call him cute. He thinks girls clothes are more fun than a boys and occasionally goes out while cross dressing. He also wants a girlfriend. He's so honest and adorable its doesn't take a far stretch of the imagination to understand why he would want to be a girl. It fits him. He's not an overplayed cliche and really none of the characters are. His actions are believable as are those of the people around him. The subtle drama between the characters is just another part of this series charm.
Hourou Musuko is the perfect example of manga adaptations done right. Especially for an adaptation of a currently ongoing manga. Time and again I have seen it where shows faithfully adapt the source material and then discover they won't get another season or that the allotted amount of episodes can't cover all of the material. In any case the animators are usually stuck doing one of two things. They either pick a somewhat reasonable place in the manga to stop at or they come up with an anime original ending. In my opinion the latter is usually the poorer choice. Shows like that tend to end with sloppy or rushed endings. They feel a little lackluster compared to the generally more solid writing from when the source material was still being used. Compare the difference between the two Fullmetal Alchemist releases and it becomes pretty obvious. The former option of picking a stopping point can leave a lot of open ended questions or just seem kind of cut short and leave viewers with a feeling of incompleteness. Either way the quality of the overall show tends to suffer.
This isn't always the case though and Hourou Musuko handles this problem wonderfully. It starts somewhere in the middle of the manga storyline, skipping the beginning entirely. Instead, the creators chose to explore a small subset of the larger overarching story. It's apparent that from start to finish that they knew exactly what they were doing and what story they would tell.
At only 11 episodes and an upcoming bonus episode with the DVD release, Hourou Musuko is a quick and very enjoyable watch. I recommend this for anyone with a little bit of time set aside.
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