The abandoned, ambitious feminization grooming epic!

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TSF Showcase 2024-28
Requited Change by MassManic

This week’s subject is a… slightly complex one. Requited Change is a Koikatsu comic that was released from 2021 to 2024 by MassManic. A creator who first started with the erotic transformation RPG Maker game, The Last of the Kitsune, before gradually shifting into comics. They produced quite a few during the past few years, but Requited Change was always their main project, being a large ongoing gradual transformation story. There are a few similar works that are on my radar and that I want to cover, but Requited Change came to an end recently. Or rather on April 7, 2024.

I initially thought this announcement meant the work was going on hiatus, but MassManic later made it clear that this work was discontinued, without any plan on picking it up or resuming it. Meaning, while not a complete story, it is done, and it is ripe for my usual summary and analysis.

This discontinuation is something that, in retrospect, makes more sense than I would care to admit, as there were cracks in the production and output for over a year. MassManic had a lot of health issues, was gradually losing Patreon support over time, and just from looking at their output, it’s clear they were not the most focused. They pursued a bunch of different projects over their tenure, ranging from an attempted Pokémon comic series to an ‘homage’ to the discontinued TF RPG Maker game Magical Camp. But after getting one or a few updates, they were just abandoned. Combine this flurry of projects with a dwindling number of new releases and a shift to micro-updates throughout late 2023 and early 2024, and it’s not surprising that support dried up. However, just because a work wasn’t successful in the cutthroat world of crowdfunding does not say anything about its quality.

Requited Change follows Ken, a 19-year-old student at Quid Est Academy, fresh from a rejection from his childhood friend, Lola. While this didn’t destroy their friendship, the experience still left Ken bummed out, believing he was rejected for not being sufficiently masculine for Lola. Lola’s friend, Emily Mendel, strongly dislikes Ken and, recognizing his vulnerability, comes up with an idea to “kill two birds with one stone.” After class, she gives Ken an experimental formula of her creation, one she claims to make him more masculine. In actuality, it’s an experimental blend of hormones and bonding agents meant to facilitate breast growth, because Emily is a flat twintail tsundere with breast envy and a stock Koikatsu character model.

This formula sends Ken down a cycle of escalating transformations that gradually make his body unrecognizable, shatter his psyche with the development of a new personality, and just completely destroys his life. It’s a progression firmly rooted in the pantheon of TSF fiction— I could easily draw many comparisons to the seminal Girl in my Dream— and one that I consider to be prime for additional exploration. How is Requited Change’s exploration? Well, I’ll just jump straight to the conclusion and say its execution is effortful, but also messy.

Why do I say so? Well, let’s start with the cast of characters, as I think you can see the cracks from here. Ken, as a character, is pretty straightforward and not as complex as the comic makes him out to be at times. He is a straight cis dude who has been pining after Lola for years and wants to be with her. He is not the most academic sort, but he is devoted to doing well at Quid Est because his late partners, who died when he was a little kid always wanted him to. Because of his parents’ deaths, he has been living with his mother’s sister, Elizabeth, who has branded herself as Ken’s mother. A woman who Ken platonically loves… and harbors some less platonic affections for as well.

Something that I want to stress is that Ken, as a character, wants to be masculine. He wants to be strong, wants to be taller, have a bigger penis, and be the sort of man who will impress his childhood friend. The type of man who his parents would be proud of— should be proud of. He isn’t a meek dude with a sloshy bucket of gender issues or a strained relationship to women. And while he might get excited about some of these changes, that’s because he’s a dude who’s attracted to women, and his growing boobs feel real good to touch.

As for Emily Mendel… she’s a bitch! Actually, no that is being too generous to her. From the onset, she is presented as an absolute liar, peddling an untested drug to Ken, saying it will do the opposite of what it actually does. And when Kens asks her questions about it the following day, she lies again. Emily calls Ken her “guinea pig” to test this concoction and treats him with such disregard I cannot believe she considers him to be a ‘human’ in the same way she is. 

Emily clearly has no respect for his intelligence or well-being given how often she calls him an idiot or some other derogatory term like “IQ challenged deviant” while calling herself a “certified genius.” She constantly gaslights Ken into thinking that she is doing him a favor while pursuing her own desires, which are twofold. Get titties (for herself) and get pussy (that she can fuck). Emily, as a character, starts bad, but she manages to somehow get worse with each and every chapter. She believes herself to be God’s gift to mortal humans, is emotionally moronic, always blames others for her own deficiencies, and is not only dishonest to others, but dishonest to herself. Also, she’s incredibly wealthy and loves to flaunt her status, like she deserves every goldarn thing she’s ever gotten in her life.

While Lola… is just a big comforting tall dark-skinned lady with giant boobs who often wears a flower in her hair. From her design, she’s about what you could imagine. She is kind, loving, supportive of Ken, sexually adventurous, and, unsurprisingly, bisexual a lesbian. She can be overprotective and quick to assume what someone else may be thinking, but she’s a good enough person to be Ken’s rock as his life gets swept up in a whirlwind of changes.

Now, this arrangement of characters could work in more of a gradual ‘feminization grooming’ narrative, and while that’s kind of what Requited Change is, it’s also not really. Here, let me just get into the story itself.

The first few chapters can largely be lumped together. Ken is given the formula by Emily, which causes his body to slowly feminize day-by-day. Nipples become tender, he develops breasts, his body grows slimmer, ass gets bigger, hair gets longer, hips flare out, penis gets smaller— it’s Super HRT Turbo Hyper Edition HD ~Final Remix~. Ken tries to mask these changes to the best of his abilities, but he eventually needs to get assistance from Emily. Though, their relationship already gets off on a bad foot. Right after his changes begin, Emily grabs Ken’s developing breasts, leading him to shout and spin around, knocking Emily down. Emily frames this as Ken assaulting her, nearly gets Ken expelled for this, and effectively gains the ability to get him expelled whenever she so pleases. This means Ken depends on Emily not only to fix his transforming body, but in order to remain enrolled in this school.  

Emily tries to downplay this, but she’s too damn smart to not be fully aware of her actions, and immediately uses this leverage to plant herself into Ken’s life. Making him drink more of the formula, barging into his house, and forcing him to get a bra, because she has an emasculation kink. Ken, as established, is a cis dude though and the only thing close to acceptance he expresses here is a stray thought after a dream. 

Things continue to waft between rapid breast growth and near exposure through chapters 4 and 5, where Ken tries to maintain his male-presenting self during a botched date with Lola and a day at school. This reaches a new breaking point when, during gym class, he gets hit in the back with a ball, causing his bindings to break and his breasts to expand. On that note, the one who intentionally threw the ball at Ken was a blonde-haired, dark-skinned, homophobic delinquent character who… I don’t think was ever given a name. I’ll just call him Delinquent. He’ll be important later.

After getting smacked with a ball, Ken runs to Emily, revealing that his breasts have grown to an unwieldy, difficult to hide size and, worse, are now lactating due to an excess of hormones. Emily milks Ken’s boobs into a bucket, relieving the build-up and shrinking the breasts, drinking a finger’s worth once he leaves. This, within the span of a single night, fills Emily’s body with such powerful super-science hormones that cause her mosquito-bite boobs to grow into A-cups. As she does so, she makes it explicitly clear that this was her plan all along. That the whole damn point of this formula was to give herself bigger boobs. But rather than make the formula again, she devises a plan to have Ken save his breast milk so she can keep drinking more until she gets a set of D-cups.

I’d ask why go the lactation angle, but lactation is a rising niche, and is easily a tier 2 thing in the list of biological differences between men and women. Sure, most of the time it’s only a thing when a woman is pregnant or recently gave birth, but that can be adjusted with the power of hormones. (Please consult your doctor before taking lactation hormones.)

Chapter 6 sees Ken trek through a day at school only to pass out from the bindings on his chest and his growing milk-filled breasts. Emily bullies her way into the nurse’s office, basically threatening to get the poor nurse fired, and then proceeds to suck Ken’s milk straight from his boobs, leading to another growth spurt. Also, Emily, like a classic tsundere, is developing a crush on Ken, but this never really goes anywhere and just makes her actions all the worse, as you don’t hurt the people you love. That’s like rule three of being a decent person.

Chapter 7 sees the aftermath of this, with Ken getting a milking dream from Emily, milking himself in the shower, and going to school with a bottle of milk and water in his hands. Because why would a college student use a backpack? Once in class, the only remarkable thing that happens is the introduction of Tim Phelps, Michael Phelps’s fictional cousin. And yes, that is an absolutely random reference to throw into a story like this. Tim is a perpetually timid and effeminate little guy who Ken is tasked to look after and, by proxy, develops an affection for Ken. Unlike Ken’s obligatory friend, Aran, he contributes enough that he can’t really be omitted from a plot summary.

In chapter 8, Ken is at his wit’s end with these transformations. He grew a foot of extra hair overnight, is having intrusive ‘female’ thoughts, and is desperate for a solution from Emily. She has been promising a cure and that this would get better, since his transformation began, but things have only gotten worse. In a rare bout of consideration for Ken, Emily hands him an untested formula that may change him back. Emily morosely departs the room as she leaves Ken to do as he pleases, and has a moment of reflection. It made me think she could actually grow and develop… but she then starts whining about how Ken shouldn’t drink the formula, because it is so dangerous.

Emily knows Ken is at his limits, that he is willing to do anything, but not only does she fail to disclose that this could kill him, she exits the room and crouches in the hallway. And right after Ken takes this, he falls down the floor, unconscious, his eyes still open, his face colored like a corpse. He is in a critical condition, every second counts, and rather than Emily being there to help him, Tim is the one to enter the room, take action, and try to help his new friend. Only after hearing Tim scream does Emily think to check in on Ken, and she immediately begins accusing Tim, scolding him as he frantically runs off, mixing up Ken’s milk and water bottles in the process.

This gives way to chapter 9, which is where things start getting… introspective. Ken has a vision of his late mother, now in the form of an angel. She tells Ken how proud she is of everything he did, and reminds him that, while these changes may be sudden, while this transition may be extreme, not all changes are bad. A move that primes Ken for accepting these changes but, in practice, is more of a misnomer and one that, despite being referenced later, never really amounts to anything. 

After being put to bed by Emily, who has a blanket and pillow in her lab for… reasons, Ken is left to drift to sleep. As he sleeps, Ken has a dream, and… Ken’s dreams are something that I have deliberately avoided talking about until now. Dreams are a recurring element in the first half of Requited Change, most of which show Ken adapting to life as a girl in some way. Though only the one in chapter 8 is relevant up to now, as it was the introduction of an alter ego who took control of Ken’s body, forcing him to act ‘feminine’ and turning his dialogue text pink. At first this seems like just a throwaway hook for a dream sequence, but in chapter 9 it is revealed that… no, that actually was the introduction of Ken’s female personality, Katy. 

Katy is… a complex character, but the repeated narrative is that she is a repressed part of Ken that wants to accept this transformation, to become a girl. She is based on what Ken considers to be ‘ultra feminine’ and believes herself to know what is best for Ken. And from her perspective, Ken is a woman refusing to accept her own identity. Katy is absolute in this belief, and will stop at nothing to get Ken to come out of ‘her’ shell, to embrace ‘her’ ‘true self.’

Now, in theory, Katy as a character could work. She is an aggressive manifestation of a protagonist;s desires that is trying to fix their life. However, as I said earlier… Ken is not a repressed trans woman. He doesn’t have anything close to the gender baggage of someone like Zach from re:Dreamer. He did not have a childhood where he struggled to live as a boy. He does not get excited by these transformations beyond how they feel. And unless you want to point to nightmares as the sole evidence… Ken has as much of a ‘repressed female side’ as any other cis-het bloke in the world.

Katy does not make sense as a part of Ken. There is no substantial evidence to support her existence. If a character like her were to come into being, it should be after a long introspective look into what Ken wants. I can believe she could be created from a mixture of trauma and looking inward. Except, while Ken is traumatized from all this, there is no inciting incident or precedent to make Katy feel like a logical progression for this story..

On that note, Katy is also… a terrible fucking bitch. She has not done anything yet, but she is as entitled as can be, believes everything she does to be a favor to Ken, and disrespects him constantly. Except she’s not an evil force who wants to take over his body for herself. She just wants to groom Ken into being her ideal sister. Her ideal heterosexual, fully female, 100% gal sister. Which… is actually worse in my book. It is one thing to want to send someone’s identity to the dark recesses of their mind forever more, killing them. It is another to make them into a puppet and watch their resolve slowly die as their desire for independence trickles away and they accept being someone else. 

For the time being though, Katy is contained in a chemical prison based on the male hormones Ken ingested and Ken’s body is slowly reverting back to normal. His breasts are receding, muscles are growing, and his model was more or less reverted to what it was in chapter 1. 

Also, while all of this billows and grows, Delinquent steals a bottle of Ken’s breast milk and proceeds to drink it throughout the day, unknowingly compromising his muscles and masculine frame as he tries working out. This is a primary subplot in Requited Change.

Chapter 10 is the big swim competition, and the events are pretty… predictable. Ken’s tits are still gone, he breaks a school record with Tim Phelps— who developed the hots for Ken. While swimming the chemicals leave Ken’s body and Ken begins developing breasts at a rapid rate yet again. Fortunately, the onlookers at the pool are too distracted by Delinquent’s exposed “cocklet” to really pry into Ken’s chest. Ken then calls Emily to tell her that his boobs are back and bigger than ever and before he can hear from her, he passes out on his bedroom floor. This sends Ken into another meeting with Katy, who shrinks his penis and retreats into his subconsciousness, eager to begin molding Ken into her ideal image.

Ken wakes up from this dream and is greeted with his aunt/mom, Elizabeth. She left for a business trip during chapter 1, has finally returned home, and sees this girl on her son’s room’s floor. A girl who is the spitting image of her sister, Debbie, is wearing a male Quid Est uniform, calls her “Mom” twice, and says “I’m still here, that is me, the person that you raised.” 

…Somehow Elizabeth does not piece together that this person is actually Ken, and instead assumes they are Ken’s girlfriend. This is a minor thing, but it speaks to a certain problem with the writing that I begin taking umbrage with throughout much of the latter 60% of the story. MassManic is the sole creator of this work, they can arrange things in whatever order they please and do whatever they want, so… why do it like this? MassManic knows that Elizabeth would help Ken, but needs Ken to leave the house so he lacks her support for the rest of the story. So… why give him the opportunity to plant these obvious clues that he is Ken? Why even have him call her Mom? Why have him in his male school uniform, instead of sleeping in the nude?

Anyway, written-to-be-oblivious Elizabeth is ultimately a kind person and tries to help this weird girl she found in her son’s bedroom. She lets Ken shower, gives him Debbie’s old tracksuit, and urges him to stay. But rather than come clean, rather than take the secure route of confiding in someone who he knows loves him unconditionally… Ken convinces himself that leaving is the best approach. Going out, on his own, with only his phone and $20, not even a change of clothes or credit card. 

This is such a bad idea that it’s hard to really imagine Ken doing it. It is harmful to himself, harmful to Elizabeth, and just devoid of security. And the writer had such an easier option to get out of this that I immediately noticed upon re-reading things. This chapter ends by introducing Katy’s ability to control Ken’s body, locking him as a passenger in his own body. She could have assumed control as Ken woke up, pretended to be Ken’s girlfriend around her, and deceived her while depriving Ken of her support. Same result, way harsher execution, way better introduction to Katy as a threat that will destroy Ken’s life. Which… is her goal. 

Again. Katy does not want to take over Ken’s body to become a milk fountain and baby factory. She’s not even Yuna from Girl in My Dream. But she does want to make Ken’s life a living hell and fuck things up for him so bad, so relentlessly, that his resolve crumbles and he has no choice but to become Katy. 

You might think I am making Katy out to be too much of a villain, but chapter 11, and every successive chapter, does that for me. Hell, if chapters had titles, this should just be called Katy the Whore. But before I begin, I want to highlight something… bizarre about this chapter, in that everybody in public is wearing a face mask, because a pandemic is going on. This chapter was released in December 2021 and January 2022, so still prime COVID times. I guess that this was used to keep certain characters’ identities a secret, but everybody still winds up recognizing each other in later chapters. So this whole gimmick was kind of pointless and makes later remarks about COVID and the pandemic very confusing. Either copy the reality of COVID or not, dude. Nobody needs this wishy-washy malarky.

The chapter begins with Katy prancing into a clothing store staffed by a green-haired girl, Carol, and Aran, while both Delinquent and Katy are trying to find clothes. Delinquent’s body is rapidly feminizing and he needs a bra, but is too much of a coward to just try some on and see what fits. Katy pegs him as an easy mark and puts on her best gold digger impression on Delinquent, trailing him along as she assembles a $200 outfit, offering him only a thank you kiss before bailing. As this sight plays out, Carol and Aran comment on how people like Katy make working retail sucks. And they’re not wrong.

This is then followed by a trip to a hair salon, where Katy propositions the lesbian gyaru, Jasmine, working there into cutting $15 off her bill in exchange for playing with her boobs. Jasmine agrees, does such a good job sucking Katy’s titties that she cums, and gives her a lovely wavy hairdo. Now basically unrecognizable as Ken, Katy flaunts her stuff in front of a store display window, trying to convince Ken to just accept this, to live as the beautiful girl he sees in his reflection. Ken says no, arguing with her over how this is his life while she answers some likely questions about herself. Then, right as tensions are high, Elizabeth calls Katy, who hangs up on her, telling Ken that “we can’t ever be around ‘Mom’ ever again.”

Hearing this is enough for Ken to break free of her control, and he promptly runs over to Emily’s place, begging for her help, as he has nowhere else to go. This gives way to chapter 12, which is mostly devoted to Emily trying to help Ken, while still being a condescending bitch. Emily does not believe Katy exists and thinks that Ken is merely lying about this. Partially she’s close minded in a way that most “certified geniuses” are and because Emily wants to believe that Ken actually wants to stay a girl. Specifically, her girlfriend. And if this chapter is an indication, Emily would be the worst girlfriend. She does not respect Ken’s privacy, barges in on him while he showers, forces him to wear her clothes and sleep in her bed, and just… lies to him outright. 

As the two drift off to sleep, Ken expresses that he is determined to complete his time at Quid Est, and wants to resume as quickly as possible. Which… is a stupid idea that should immediately be shot down. Quid Est is a college, not a high school, and you cannot just enroll in a college part-way through the year. Ken is still undergoing rapid changes and is dealing with so much shit that he cannot be a productive student. And what is the point of going to school if you can’t actually learn anything? That is just asking for trouble, he could just stay under Emily’s tutelage for the rest of the semester, but… this plot needs more conflict damn it, so Ken wants to get back to school pronto!

Ultimately, Emily agrees to have Ken attend, but only if he presents as a girl. There’s no hiding his curves at this point, and even if there was, Emily gives up on ever finding a way to change Ken’s body back to normal just a few days later. A fact that she deliberately doesn’t tell Ken, because she wants to continue having leverage over him. Regardless, this means Ken needs to learn how to behave as a girl, leading to a series of exercises that should be familiar to most trans femme readers. Voice training and finding a femme cadence, walking exercises, posture exercises, the works. Well, except for the ‘trap’ reference. I thought we, as a collective society, had evolved beyond that by 2022…

While he is not thrilled about this, Ken does what is asked of him, gradually getting the hang of things, heeding Emily’s aggressive orders, and occasionally getting possessed by Katy. But not in the previous way, where Ken was aware that Katy was taking over. Now he simply does not know what is happening when Katy takes control, and with this boundless freedom Katy’s first order of business is taking a dildo up her ass. …No, I am not being reductive, she spends what seems like hours doing that.

At chapter 13, this is about the halfway point for this 17 chapter comic, and it is around the time that the story begins experiencing some friction with its presentation. Many Koikatsu comic creators choose to make every page a single panel, maybe two. While more limited than sequential art, it does give a clear focus to the reader and allow for large amounts of story to be delivered within relatively few panels. Because you are only looking at one panel at a time.

Requited Change does not do this, instead being a horizontal comic broken up into anywhere from one to eight different panels. I do not care for this approach. Having so many panels crammed together leads to a lot of dialogue filling up each page, and a lot of it is… redundant. While I love a wordy script, there is a limit between dialogue that enhances something, but dialogue that just wastes a lot of time and pads things out. This problem gets bad later on, but it is here where I started really noticing it. 

Quite simply, chapter 13 is the ‘Ken enrolling into Quid Est’ chapter. He arrives there under his female persona, named ‘Katy,’ gets stared at for being a hot babe, Lola immediately falls for him, and she starts fondling his massive milk-filled honkers at the school gate. The headmistress is quick to spot this, and she immediately hates Ken, or ‘Katy,’ because she views him as an untrustworthy slut, and casually drops that ‘Ken’ has been expelled from school. This would devastate Ken, but Lola takes him up to the roof and confesses that she loves him. A dream come true for Ken… if he had his regular body back.

The two love birds then frolic throughout the school before Lola tries to rope Ken into cheerleading practice, in hopes of building up his confidence. This was probably meant to be a subplot that came back later, but in practice this is mostly a great example of another problem with the letter parts of this comic. MassManic keeps getting distracted by stray ideas they come up with when telling their story and devote several pages to them. Whether they be homophobic cheerleaders who encounter a wacky crossdresser who Naruto runs after getting exposed, or a subplot about Tim wandering around, eager to give a swimming trophy to Ken. It’s all so sporadic and bizarre that I have to wonder how these things fit into the outline… assuming there was a proper outline. More on that near the end.

Chapter 14 kicks off with another reprisal of Katy taking control of Ken’s body, and promptly making his life worse. She calls out Lola for manipulating her in an attempt to shatter their relationship. She makes an ass out of Ken by running around the school with pom-poms. But fortunately she passes out before she can do too much damage, giving Ken control back as he attends a weekend date with Emily and Lola. One extensively premised around shopping for clothes, but it quickly grows into something more. 

They go to the arcade and Lola wins a giant unicorn plushie for Ken. They spend what feels like hours getting curated outfits from a French stylist, where Lola tries to nudge Ken out of his shell by… making matching poses together in their underwear. And somehow a trip to the nearest restroom results in Katy and Lola being topless in a love hotel, where Lola starts sucking Ken’s transformation milk, neither knowing of its feminization and breast enlargement properties. They continue until Emily catches them, and then she takes Ken back to their home, where she… punishes him with tickle torture, gaslighting him into thinking this is all a ploy to help him deal with Katy. 

I’ve been brushing off the mentions of Emily being a bitch because of how dense the latter chapters can be, but trust me, she’s still at least as bad as I made her out to be. Not only does she try to humiliate Ken and call it sensory therapy, but she slips him a damn peppermint that she says will keep Katy from taking over. In actuality, all this does is make Ken horny, because a horny Ken leads to a Ken that’s more receptive to living as a woman, which leads to a person Emily can groom into a big titty wife. 

Ken then leaves bed to masturbate in the bathroom, and undergoes another change in the process, losing a few inches of height, becoming even shorter than the pint-sized tsundere.

But before Ken can reconcile with these changes, the masturbation lures Katy from her depths, and she takes control. Not because she wants to whore out his body while looking for a trans-girl-loving sugar daddy— she’s not quite that hateful— but because she wants Ken to read Emily’s research notes. A detailed recount of how she used him, how she never intended to help him in the first place, and how his milk causes people to transform.

This leads into Chapter 14, and no, I did not make an oopsie. There are two chapter 14s in this comic, deal with it. Ken promptly questions Emily on what the fuck has she been doing keeping this information from him, and her answer is the same as always. To lie. She lies and lies upon her lies. Her dishonesty is boundless, shameless, and she pats her back when she is done, thinking she flawlessly covered up her tracks. I would cite this as among the worst things she’s done, denying evidence thrown into her face, but it’s not. It’s not even the worst thing she does in this chapter.

After a few tangents that probably only exist because MassManic’s mind drifted and they wanted to make something different, Ken walks out the door, leaving Emily behind. I would say ‘for good’ but Ken is too trusting to see through this bitch’s endless lies. Instead, he wanders the streets in nothing but his pajamas, about ready to give Katy control… before Lola shows up again.

The remainder of the chapter is mostly antics between Ken and Lola, spread out over way too many pages. Lola conveniently finds Ken because they just so happened to be walking down the same bridge. They go to Jasmine’s salon again where Ken gets a new, androgynous. hairdo about 320 pages after the last one, but Jasmine screws up and dyes Ken’s hair pink after his boobs grow before her. With Ken now undergoing his final design, he goes to the salon backroom and tries to eat Lola’s pussy out, but fails miserably. Afterwards, Katy reappears, teases Ken, steals his body, steals a chastity cage from a sex job, sprays her milk on Carol (remember her?), and winds up back at Emily’s.

I am skimming over things, of course, but there truly is not much of substance that happens here. There are micro conflicts interspersed, but they truly do feel more like momentary fascinations rather than something dedicated or planned. Though, there are two things I want to talk about from this chapter.

I have not been talking about the visual aspect of Requited Change that much but it is a work that undergoes a dramatic boost in visual quality as time goes on. It starts as a fairly basic Koikatsu comic early on, but with each chapter you can see MassManic’s ambitions grow, the introduction of more robust assets, additional image editing effects, unique expressions, and general detail. This is particularly notable in chapter 14-2, as the comic goes from a painfully small 720p export to a full 2160 canvas. This allows for little details to shine in a way they just could not before, and the comic starts looking really good. During its later stages, Requited Change is genuinely one of the best looking Koikatsu comics I have seen. It evolves past the native limitations of the software and achieves a level of production values that truly feels professional.

This is a work with a lot of effort and passion behind it, a lot of intent from its creator, and while I may call it many things, I would never dream of calling it lazy, unambitious, or blasé. …But while I admire the effort put into the modeling, posing, and effects, the presentation is marred by its framing and the abundance of dialogue boxes. This is not true for every page— don’t get it twisted— but a lot of these scenes are masked behind walls of text, and this abundance of visual information actually gets worse as time goes on.

The other thing I want to talk about is… when Emily encounters Elizabeth, both of them walking, in the rain, without an umbrella. Elizabeth is manic, crying profusely, having a complete meltdown after losing all contact with her son, and the only way she can think of getting in touch with him is through Emily. She is unnerved, asking question after question, and is clearly barely holding it all together, if she is holding anything in at all. And when Emily is confronted by this hysterical mother… she tells her that she’s not Ken’s real mother. That her mother is more mature than her. That Elizabeth is abusing her by piling emotional baggage onto her. And that Ken should have left her if she is acting this way. 

Emily does soften on what she says after realizing that Elizabeth is drunk… but she doesn’t apologize. She recognizes that she is partially responsible for this as Elizabeth walks away, but she never does anything with this recognition other than feel sad for herself and move on. She can recognize that she is a bad person, yet she does not want to accept that, let alone do anything about that. Yet, despite having yet another revelation… she’s still a bitch, will be for the rest of the story, and in my mind, will only get worse. Because people like Emily Mendel only get worse.

Chapter 15 begins with flashbacks showing that Katy and Emily have basically formed an alliance, as they both pretty much the same thing. To see Ken thoroughly feminized, discard his male identity, and just… give up on his old life. It firmly establishes that Ken has no allies other than Lola, and paints a grim picture for what Ken’s future may be and… it only gets worse from here.

Ken is finally attending Quid Est as ‘Katy’ and is making his way from the entrance to the main hallway, assembling an entourage of onlookers as he makes his way to Lola the hallway. Or as I like to call it, the final hallway, as the story spends the remaining 276 of 1,354 pages in this damn hallway. A lot happens here… but it also doesn’t. It is such a wonderfully tragic example of a writer’s inability to focus on one thing. It tries to do so much, and barely any of it works..

Pages are cluttered and full of not only dialogue balloons, but comments appended next to dialogue balloons. The story gets distracted by tangents within tangents in what should be a pretty simple sequence of events. The characters just cannot stop bickering, cannot stop arguing, cannot just focus on getting on with this damn story. So allow me to cut through the bullshit and explain what happens in the 146 pages of chapter 15.

Katy and Emily conspire to ruin Ken’s life because they both want to groom him into being a woman in body and mind. Ken returns to Quid Est and is made a spectacle by the student body. Lola’s breasts grew from drinking Ken’s milk and she’s excited to share this with him. Emily’s a bitch and tries to spin some crap about how Katy is a celibate, when that is not part of the cover story they agreed on, because they are past the point of agreeing on things. Delinquent shows up and gets in a fight with Ken for bamboozling him out of $200 during that chapter 11 stint with Katy. Emily’s a bitch to him, Ken headbutts him, and Delinquent points out the pink cock cage that Ken’s panties somehow slid off of. This exposes Ken as a pee-pee-haver to the entire hallway posse, which serves as a cliffhanger to the final chapter.

Chapter 16 begins with Ken accepting the reality before him. Ken has ruined his new chance with Lola, has been exposed before he could even attend his first class, and will, probably, wind up getting expelled for a display of ‘public indecency’ or some stupid shit like that. He has been through a relentless stream of shit for so long, has been so burdened by his body, by his giant ever-growing milk fountain breasts, that he simply cannot take it. Ken grabs his head, shouts like a maniac, and has the mother of all panic attacks. He hates his life and this whole damn situation so much that he surrenders his body to Katy, sucking her back into his psyche so she can take control and erase his identity.

Ken has no friends, no support, and no hope of reverting his body to normal. He knows that Katy, this malicious bitch who lives in his brain, will keep trying to turn him into her. So, he bites the bullet, sucks Katy into the deepest recesses of his psyche so she can take control and he can undergo complete ego death.

If this was how the story ended… FUCK. That’s hardcore!

It is the greatest admission and acceptance of failure, and you know what? It makes complete sense for Ken to do just that. It would completely reframe so much of this story, make it one about abuse winning, about it destroying someone through a TSF transformation. Katy would just wind up being another persona hellbent on bodily takeover. Emily’s actions would still be that of a fucking bitch, but they would have at least created a genuine monster. And the sheer potential of what someone like Katy could do with these powers is immense enough to warrant an open ending. I’d be likeTS Revolution but with MILK OVERWHELMING!

Instead… we get over 100 pages of Katy getting trapped in Ken’s subconsciousness, where she tries to modify Ken’s memories and transform him into someone else. Into her ideal, heterosexual, fully female, 100% gal sister. Most of which is spent in completely artificial memories created by Katy that have… nothing to do with the story being told. An abstract classroom where Katy tries to teach Ken to accept these memories. Or a black void where Katy is trying to convince Ken to accept complete ego transformation, instead of complete ego death. The story tries so hard to justify the difference here but… Ken wants to die. He has nothing left to live for. So just let the boy kill himself..

This entire subplot, this entire wackadoo story arc, is so scattered, so poorly conceptualized, that it ended this story. …But that’s not to say it is strictly bad. There are scenes and sections that can be funny. Without the greater context, there is some really inventive stuff here conceptually. Some of the visuals and presentation here are utterly inspired. You can tell there is a high degree of creative ambition and effort on display here. But the underlying story it is trying to tell… just does not work. 

Requited Change ends in the middle of a scene. Katy is desperately trying to avoid being absorbed by Ken and becoming the sole personality. She has been reduced to the size of a flea larva and is sinking into Ken’s scalp. There, with only her hands free, she returns to the classroom, attempting to take reigns as the teacher as the students are left flying around as Ken summons a tornado of negativity. 

It is a… terrible place to end a story. Not on a cliffhanger chapter, but in what could have been the climax to the overall story. I believe that a creator, especially one who was being paid by hundreds of people, should always strive to finish what they started. However, re-reading this comic, from start to finish… I can absolutely see why things ended this way.

Requited Change began by following a similar long-form TSF story mold as seen by various other creators in the Koikatsu comic scene. However, as the story grew longer, it grew more ambitious, more unique, and as it went against the grain… I think the lack of narrative experience started to show. 

The last few chapters are filled with a lot of little ideas, a lot of strongly executed scenes, and a lot of good moments that I have skimmed past in order to take a broader overview of the story. MassManic is not a bad writer. I just don’t think they knew how to effectively end a story like this and, in general, where it should be going. In a situation like Requited Change, I think the least that the creator can do is release an outline of their intentions with a story. Here though… I do not think there was an outline, or a clear plan, given how everything turned out. 

Reading Requited Change as it came out, starting in late 2021, I found it to be an enjoyable series, one that was funny, silly, and infused with a tasty amount of malice and despair. It’s just that when viewing the series as a whole, viewing all the same-y scenes, all the cyclical behaviors, and focusing on the major beats, it’s a lot harder to view the story in a more pleasant light. It’s a story filled with abuse, with grooming, with a regular guy just getting his life destroyed before him because he had the audacity to trust someone to not be a pathological liar. While the characters can be cute and silly in places, they are also capable of such extreme cruelty that I have to wonder how much of this was intended.

There is definitely stuff to love about Requited Change, but my final impressions of it are left murky and mixed. I started rereading this series with the hope that I could showcase it as a great work that was canceled before reaching its triumphant conclusion. However, unlike Emily, I don’t like being dishonest with myself. There are so many problems with the comic, with the pacing and framing that… I cannot call it more than what I see it as. An ambitious, earnest mess with some gems in the rough.

Is that really how I’m going to end this? …Sadly, I think so. I was hoping to have something more definitive to say about it, but after breaking my schedule and rushing to get out this 7,500 word essay, I think I’m spent.