Your and My Secret (2008).
© Tokyopop

Mania Grade: B
Manga: Your and My Secret
Rating: Teen (13+)
Story and Art By: Ai Morinaga
Publisher: Tokyopop
Price: $9.99

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Your and My Secret

Manga-ka will look for any excuse to pen a gender-swap manga, including changes in the season or the air pressure. Your and My Secret is Ai Morinaga's attempt at the gimmick, and it's mostly a successful one. The author of My Heavenly Hockey Club is no stranger to shojo, romance and humour, three traits that are not absent in Your and My Secret. Morinaga also explores double standards and gender roles, two important themes that are usually skipped over in favour of pages of confusion over which bathroom the swapped should use.

Nanako is a pretty schoolgirl with a tendency to be a brash and violent tomboy. Akira is a smart and good-looking schoolboy who is nonetheless tedious for his tendency to let people walk all over him. A few mishaps result in Akira running afoul of Nanako's eccentric inventor grandfather, who conducts an experiment to swap Akira's personality with Nanako's. Damage done, the old man flees to Hawaii while his test subjects are left to sort out the mess.

Some of the events that occur between the swapped pair are typical of such a story, but Morinaga's visual gags add humour to the situations. Akira is naturally curious about his new female body, but Nanako warns him that if he does anything indecent to the body she's loaned him, she'll show up naked to school wearing naught but socks. Nanako, on the other hand, abuses her loaner body by doing all the things girls are not supposed to do: Wrestling, martial arts, sleeping around with several girls in the school. Nanako also takes command in Akira's home, particularly by putting Akira's bratty little sister in her place.

Akira in particular learns that it's not easy being a girl. He's expected to act ladylike while Nanako conquers half the school's female population in his own body, a feat that's celebrated amongst his peers. He's also harassed by a trusted friend. On the other hand, he also comes to learn that society favours manly men, something he never became until Nanako took over his body. He learns his family actually prefers his new personality over his old one, which devastates him. What's worse, Nanako is having the time of her life and isn't about to give back his body or reclaim her old one.