The only theme park I’d ever visit…
TSF Showcase 2024-29
Oide yo Onnanoko Land [Come to Girl Land] by Yoshida Gorou
It’s been six months since the last time I showcased something from Yoshida Gorou, so let me start this off with a primer for those who are not in the know. Yoshida Gorou is definitely up there on my TSF all-star artists list. Their artwork routinely impresses with its high quality, cuteness, and at times amazing level of detail. Their characters are adorable moeblobs that are thriving with personality and cutie zest. They employ a wide variety of transformation methods in their work, unafraid, if not eager, to push the boundaries. Their works all have something interesting or remarkable about them. And if you haven’t seen some of their shorter comics or illustrations, I recommend you get on that pronto. In fact, here’s my little collection.
I could do a showcase on most of Gorou’s work— I could turn this into a multi-segment showcase if I felt like it— but in perusing and double-checking the available translations, I found one that is just perfect for a showcase, because it is adorable, creative, driven, weird, and messed up where it counts. It’s time to go to Girl Land!
Oide yo Onnanoko Land is framed as a straightforward rescue mission. Tohru is a student who admires his masculine and righteous senpai, Amatsuka, who went missing after becoming obsessed with a mysterious theme park dubbed Girl Land. A place that, contrary to its name, is a theme park exclusively for boys, where girls are not allowed, and where the boys are transformed into girls, allowing them to live out their cutesy and perverted fantasies. Despite being adamantly disinterested in this place, Tohru still arrives at the gates, eager to rescue his friend and get back to his ordinary school life.
From that premise alone, you can probably figure out how this story goes, but what makes this story so remarkable is the journey and spectacle. From the second page, the comic already shows the uniqueness of Gorou’s work with the way Tohru transforms as he enters Girl Land, stepping through a door-like screen of what appears to be skin. This covers him with what is effectively a skinsuit sealing his male visage behind a moe face, longer androgynous hair, and a buxom body. It’s a unique transformation concept that I have only seen executed by Gorou, and I believe dates back to this comic from 2018.
From there, the comic kicks off a tour of Girl Land and it’s a thoroughly detailed fantasy. Starting with a convention-center-sized dressing room with over 5 million different outfits. A fully featured DisneyLand like park, but filled with cute girls as far as the eye could see, all dressed up in cute cosplay of contemporary fashion. People are galavanting, shopping, taking photos and… well, just look at the header image. They can take a tour on the T.S. Friendship, go spinny as they dance in a garden plaza, or attend an idol concert without any gross dudes shouting over the music. I’ve talked about TSF Mecca before as a website, but this is the closest depiction of it that I have found in fiction.
Well, for MtF enjoyers. For the FtM enthusiasts… there can be a Boy Land across the lake, nestled in the woods, themed after a rural summer camp. Because that’s where boys girls go to become men— the woods!
After getting fastened into a flashy blue dress and examining the many highlights of this place, including a castle/school for club activities, Tohru, predictably, falls down a rabbit hole. Except instead of the depths of a land of pure fantasy, he finds himself in a creepy-cute operating room. Complete with stabbed and disemboweled plushies, like this is Kämpfer or something. (Now there’s an idea for a future showcase.) It is here where he finally finds his precious Amatsuka, in the form of a twintail bunny nurse, complete with a pocket watch. …Because If you couldn’t tell from my subtle hints, Gorou was going for an Alice in Wonderland thing.
Tohru tries to end this now and rescue Amatsuka, but she explains she likes being a cute girl, and knows that Tohru too, pressing a convenient remote to bring up screens of incriminating evidence. With Tohru too frazzled by this to do much, Amatsuka decides to convince Tohru that they like being a girl with the power of… a drill dildo! Or an drilldo if you prefer, and I certainly do.
Now, this is where the story gets into a lot of weird logistical hoopla that just does not make sense. Rather than giving Tohru a vagina as part of their skinsuit, they have a flat doll’s crotch, without even a hole to pee, but the skinsuit is so tight that their penis is still visible. So Amatsuka is able to drill a new orifice into Tohru’s crotch. That might sound like some gorey, horrific thing I’d put in one of my novels, but the drill’s dull, so there’s no blood or anything. Just the grunting of Tohru and the excited words of Amatsuka. Words of her vague plans to create a new world, free from competition, fighting, and war. A bold new world with only girls! Which… sounds interesting, but doesn’t really make sense, but it only lasts for a page.
Afterwards, Amatsuka reveals this is a semen-filled double-ended drilldo and after a wet kissy climax, their status as lovers is sealed. With the next scene showing them in wedding dresses at the Girl Land castle. Getting married as confetti and balloons fill the air and cuties rejoice at the overwhelming love and happiness that pulses through this magical kingdom. Or I guess it should be a queendom.
Actually breaking it down like this, the escalation does get a bit messy after things go sexual, but damn does this comic pack a lot of wonderful sights and concepts into a trim 28 page package. It’s jovial, adorable, and while I could pose some objections with the terminology used for Girl Land, I absolutely see what Gorou was going for, and I love it. This comic knows what it’s doing, triumphs in it, and showed me that Gorou’s still got it!
My only material criticism has to do with the distribution of the work, as I actually bought two copies of this work, both from DLSite and Pixiv Booth, and both were crappy compressed PDFs. Which sucks, as Gorou’s work shines in the smoothness and fine details, I know he should know better. Even the unofficial translation weirdly scaled down the two page spread. So I did what any sane person would do. I spent 40 minutes editing and stitching together the high res translation PNG files together to make my own. Sure, the water still looks kinda janky, but now I have it, and so do you if you save it.
Cassie’s (really small) Corner!
The T.S. Friendship is very obviously modelled after the Japanese Yamato class Superbattleships.
The easiest way to tell is the unique triple turrets, shared by no other Japanese battleship at the time.
The iconic Chrysanthemum with the notches on the same piece which is unique to this class.
The Yamato class is basically *the* Japanese ship of choice where I’ve also seen it represented in anime like Golden Boy and even Ranma 1/2.
She and her two sisters were the largest battleships ever built, fielding the biggest guns ever mounted to a naval vessel at 460mm. All three of whom had quite disappointing careers vs. their WW2 contemporaries but have remained icons of Japanese pride. The name Yamato itself being an archaic name for Japan iirc.
Of course it’s based on the Yamato! And of course THIS is what Cassie comments about. *Snuggles the Cassie*
Girl Land sounds a bit like a riff on Bikini Beach, though the skinsuit portal thing is quite creative. Not sure if Bikini Beach was all transformed women like Girl Land, or a mix.
I had a look over at the first couple Bikini Beach stories, as I only remember reading some later one. Majority of women there were ciswomen, though small numbers of men were forever being tricked into entering or were trying to sneak in there for one reason or another. Despite the name of the place suggesting it was solely a beach, it was essentially a theme park: “Ninety acres of beach and pools and a water slides.” Not Disney-sized, but in the neighborhood of some of the smaller Six Flags theme parks.
There’s a element I didn’t like to the first BB stories though, beyond just the non-con.
Bikini Beach is a niche TSF concept that I never really thought too much about. While I understand the appeal of it, I always considered that something like Exchange Island had more legs as a storytelling device, while still having water parks and beaches full of babes in bikinis, While I have dabbled into a lot of TSF niches, even I have my blind spots. :P
Niche, although 150 stories on Fictionmania dating from 1999 to 2024! And art and comics inspired by it as well.
In the first story, BB is described by its owner/creator witch (and friend of the Spells R Us wizard) as “a private club for girls only so they could spend some fun time without feeling like they were on display.” Somewhat oddly, toplessness is still described as “indecent” there. You’d think maybe it would be while not the rule it’d be at least common due to nursing mothers, desire for lack of tan lines, the absence of men. One of the members draws a line between what she describes as “a real girl” and the transformed ones, which isn’t very enlightened and doesn’t make sense given that reality is changed by the magic – their homes and relationships are all changed such that they’ve always been women, their own memories aside. And one of those “real girls” responds with unrestrained glee and taunting to one of the transformed women tearfully reporting to having been gang raped. Yikes!
In the following story, “Bikini Beach: Initiation Rites,” a frat is shown to regularly unwittingly gang rape their own pledges, who’ve been transformed and had their inhibitions and any thought of consent magically removed. It’s as if BB thinks raping transwomen is OK, more than OK really, because it means the ciswomen (the “real” ones according to the first story) are protected from it. Or am I alone in reading it that way?
I hope it changed in later stories. There were nicer elements, like the one character preferring their new reality because in that one they’re much closer with their mother and younger sister.
At first I thought this would be a “Fisher Kingdom” kind of story that gradually changes visitors over time, but the approach actually taken was certainly interesting. And both the art direction and level of detail are undeniably incredible.