On Votaries, I just tackled Girls Disguised as Boys. Hana-Kimi is one of the seminal manga works to use this trope, so I am reposting a prior review with added notes.
Hana-Kimi by Hisaya Nakajo is one of the first shojo series I read. I was helped in part by the local library having the complete set!
The series is delightful. The premise: Mizuki pretends to be a boy, so she can attend a boys' school in Japan and meet her idol, Izumi Sano, a high-jumper. A few people learn her secret, including the school's gay doctor, Dr. Umeda. In fact, the idol, Sano, discovers she is a girl early on (they are roommates) but keeps her secret from others and the fact that he knows the secret from her.
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| One of my favorite realistic scenes--hey, I learned |
| English grammar from studying French. |
The plots run the gamut from plausible (issues over cheating; the school contest where the "prize" is a bunch of boring pencils) to totally implausible (the local photographer decides to turn Mizuki and her friends into fashion celebrities) to cute to silly to occasionally spooky (there are a few ghost vignettes). The reliable thread is the behavior of the students--they talk and behave like teenagers.
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| The series is very "G"--but Dr. Umeda |
| is allowed to ask the risque questions. |
| Yup, he smokes. |
Regarding Dr. Umeda, my first reaction was that Nakajo-sensei made him gay to prevent him becoming a love interest. He is almost perfectly suited to be Mizuki's love interest since he is the one she confides in. He is also good-looking, sarcastic, and mildly insulting, making him a typical shojo/yaoi hero. And his age isn't a problem. Shojo/yaoi romances often have up to a 15-year age difference between the protagonists.
Keeping Dr. Umeda a confidant may be one reason for identifying him as gay but the series is full of operatic farce related to cross-dressing plus gender and sexual identify confusion, so his frank identification as gay makes sense (characters will occasionally break the fourth wall and inform readers that this is a SHOJO manga, not a yaoi one). I use "operatic" deliberately. The series is rather like one of those operas where men or women fall in love with boys, with boys who are actually girls, and with boys who dress up as girls who dress up as boys.
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| Forthright, bleached-blond |
| Nakatsu is from Osaka. |
The relationship between Mizuki and Sano is the touchstone for everyday reality and commonsense. And since the manga is set in (20th century) contemporary Japan, the food, settings, and references are entirely realistic. I learned a great deal about Japanese culture (which I later verified) from reading Hana-Kimi! For one thing Osaka appears to = Jersey Shore.
Note: The Japanese TV series, available on Viki, is a HOOT. It is any high school musical...on speed. It captures the high-jinks, the over-the-top scenarios, and the interpersonal conflicts. Despite the leads all being 19-25, they act like high schoolers and retain those relationships. Unlike other versions of Hana-Kimi (there are many!), Mizuki's membership in the social order is the overriding point, not merely her attachment to Sano.
As mentioned on Votaries, there is a certain suspension of belief/disbelief with Mizuki. However, Maki Horikita does a fantastic job at adopting the posture of young males. In one scene, she sits with Nakatsu on a bench and for a moment, I thought she was one of the male characters. That is impressive!