Thigh High: Reiwa Hanamaru Academy Vol. 1

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With “Thigh High: Reiwa Hanamaru Academy,” what you see is what you get. The manga delivers on its premise of “high school boys who dress and act like high school girls.” It’s short, silly, and entertaining, but never pushes itself further than that. Dude, Where's My Respect?: Kiritani is often brushed aside and ignored by his classmates despite being the Class Representative, and often depends on Harumi, who is much more well-liked than him, to get their attention and give out information. He really wishes to be relied on and trusted by others, and the manga follows attempts at him doing his job with various other men in the school.

Fanservice: If you're into men crossdressing, especially masculine men, this is the manga that will scratch that itch. This is especially true for things like Hot Springs Episode and Beach Episode in which the whole thing is played as straight as it would be in a manga about girls, but with guys dressed as girls. The students at Hanamaru Academy are putting the boot (and booty!) to gender norm uniforms. Instead of wearing drab blazers, these beauty-builders are obsessed with the length of their skirts and the size of their chests as they try to navigate high school. This high-energy comedy takes being cute and being cut to a whole new level!Schoolgirl Series: Parodied; the manga takes place in a school and follows many typical tropes of the genre, but the catch is that the "schoolgirls" are actually crossdressing men. Still, I was left with a lot of questions by the end. Do women even exist in the world of Thigh High? If so, do they dress and act like men? If not, where do babies come from? The story isn’t interested in answering any of these questions. Even though it’s just a gag manga, it still would have been interesting for these topics to be explored. One-Gender School: Reiwa Hanamaru Academy appears to be an all-boys school, with the twist being that everyone still wears skirts as part of the uniform.

Nov 24 Another Eden: The Cat Beyond Time and Space Releases an Update Featuring a New Episode 'The Cliffs of Wyrmrest (Wryz Saga I)' on November 24 loving cute things to admiring the way each other dress. Of course irl guys can also do the same, but this manga goes further with the gag of how female characters are portrayed in manga and anime. I loved that there were many tropes that female characters experience that are shown in anime and manga portrayed onto the boys. Some of the tropes that were made in this story I liked were skirts being blown in the wind and the boys being worried about it, some of the boys being jealous about each other's chest size, or of course the well known tripping onto another person and accidentally touching their chest. There's a couple more, but everyone should certainly read the manga to see what other tropes were shown. The boys at Reiwa Hanamaru Academy care about the same things that any others do… grades, sports, clubs, fitness, being popular, looking good for selfies… getting into shape to… fill out a bikini… Putting that conundrum aside, Thigh High is trying to be more of a silly comedy than a pure fanservice title and that's to its detriment; it's not funny enough. I found the first chapter touching enough and it does well to establish Kiritani's good points, but the jokes usually fall flat. For example, there's a chapter dedicated to Kiritani's competition to reach things that are high up after a taller classmate tells him he isn't cute and demands somewhat demeaning behavior before he'll get the objects for him. The manga ran from 2019 to 2020, finishing with 3 volumes. It is licensed in English by Seven Seas Entertainment.Thigh High is just okay, but I imagine certain readers who are attracted by its major selling point might enjoy it more. Just expect the substance to be pretty thin.