Don’t crank it into overdrive unless you know what you’re doing!

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TSF Showcase 2024-35
Akane-Chan Overdrive by Mikan Momokuri (Mizuki Kawashita)

I’m scheduling this showcase ahead of my vacation with some friends, so I’m going to be tackling a smaller-scale story again. Specifically, a TSF comic I only vaguely remember reading 15-ish years ago, Akane-chan Overdrive. A two volume body swap manga from 1999, so old that its scanlation is from 2004. 

Its premise is pretty straightforward. Takeshi Amamiya is a 19-year-old guy who trips on a bottle and gets sent into a coma, causing his soul to detach from his body. Desperate to find a new body, his soul is pulled into the body of a comatose girl in the hospital, Akane Hagiwara. A 16-year-old girl who is the only child of a pair of inexplicably wealthy parents who have a ravenous adoration for their daughter, especially Akane’s father.

After getting situated, Takeshi is contacted by… a Buddhist monk spirit, who I don’t believe has a name. The monk explains that he and the forces of heaven— Buddhists don’t believe in Heaven, but just roll with it— are looking for Akane’s soul, but in the interim, Takeshi needs to stay in her body for the time being. Meaning he needs to attend Akane’s all-girl school, be friends with her best friend, Shizuka, and deal with Akane’s wannabe boyfriend, Touma Amamiya. Before you ask, no Takeshi and Touma are not siblings, they just have the same surname. Just like Kazuo and Kazumi from Tenkōsei. As a premise, this makes for a perfectly workable possession romcom type story, but one with just enough of a bizarro factor for me to want to talk about it.

The first chapter sets up the premise, introduces the core characters, and establishes the overall dynamic. Takeshi is ultimately a self-centered, rough around the edges sort of guy. A university dropout who likes to smoke, gamble, and has a perversion streak aimed at young women. Takeshi is a kinda shitty guy from the outset, but this simultaneously is not really a starting point for a story about his personal growth, nor is it a major hook for the series. It’s not the story about a shitty guy who was put into the body of a young girl, but a guy who was put into the body of a girl and acts shitty sometimes.

Takeshi is rude to Akane’s parents at first. He has the intention of masturbating with his new body before the monk shows up and implements a ‘no horny’ mandate. At her school, he gawks at girls in the changing room and eagerly ‘hugs’ Shizuka— the pretty yet oblivious friend. However, he actually tries in school, using his college level math skills. When meeting up with Touma, a pretty boy model, for the first time, he is dismissive of him, only for it to later be revealed that Akane wasn’t ever fond of him either. Touma is presented as a guy who cannot take no for an answer… yet the story brings him out for every chapter as he keeps trying to push himself on Takeshi.

Looking at it critically, the 63 page debut chapter has a lot of almost contradictory ideas. It wants to be a guy-turned-girl story with a bit more spicy protagonist. It wants to be a gradual feminization story, where Takeshi steadily adapts to his new body and views himself as a girl as he presents himself as a girl. It wants to be a romance story aimed at a young female demographic about a boyish girl learning to feel affection for a pushy, handsome guy. And it wants to be perverted, but also… not? It all makes for a strange balancing act, and it only gets more awkward with the next… 6 chapters. 

You might be confused by that, as most sources say the comic has 10 chapters in total. Not 7. However, there were actually just two unrelated side stories published as part of the two tankobon, and a prequel story with a different cast of characters. You might wonder how one can wrap up a story like this in about 250 pages ‌and the answer is… you kind of don’t. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Chapter 2 is primarily focused on having Takeshi reconvene with his main friend introduced in chapter one, Satoru Murai, a timid and studious glasses-man who has been visiting Takeshi’s body after its hospitalization. Takeshi wants to visit his own body alongside Murai, but visiting hours come in slots, so they decide to burn a few hours playing PlayStation, falling back into their usual relationship as Takeshi acts like his usual old self. In part because he’s only been in this body for maybe two days. It establishes these two are close friends and how casually Takeshi is still viewing this whole ‘being Akane’ situation, before they fall in an erotic tumble.

This leads Takeshi to reconsider his masculinity and wonder if he is becoming more feminine psychologically, but before he can come to a conclusion about this, he runs into Touma again and chases after him. Not because he needs anything from him, but because Murai basically tells him to. Takeshi does not actually catch up to him though, and despite having met with Murai to visit Takeshi’s body in the hospital, they don’t actually go there either. Instead, the only thing Takeshi gained from this outing was a pair of cigarettes, but because he doesn’t have a lighter, he doesn’t even smoke them. I’d ask why he couldn’t just buy a lighter at a konbini, but I’m guessing that it’s illegal to sell them to minors in Japan. 

This all leads to Takashi’s personality bopping around between highs and lows for the rest of the chapter for reasons that are eventually attributed to him being on his period. He sits on the roof of the Hagiwara residence, deliberating suicide. Gets extra pervy around Shizuka again. And gets upset when he sees Touma around another girl, only for it to turn out to be his sister. I understand the goal here, showing Takeshi going through a wider emotional spectrum than he is used to because of his mind being affected by the form and hormones of a teenage girl. 

Actually reading it though, it doesn’t say much of anything about Takeshi personally. Other than… he gets moody during his first period, which the story only reveals in the final three pages of its second chapter. Yeah, this chapter tackles a lot, yet it reads like the writer doesn’t know how to tie these ideas together, making it feel like a collection of disparate scenes awkwardly jammed together. 

Chapter 3 is the actual ‘Takeshi visits his own body’ chapter, seeing Takeshi meet up with Murai on a Sunday. This means that Takeshi needs to wear clothes other than pajamas or his uniform— for the first and only time in the series— and Akane’s father demands he go out wearing… Alice in Wonderland cosplay. Complete with the white apron and a big red ribbon. Takeshi is embarrassed by this get-up and has Murai help him undo the apron, only to blow up at Murai, accusing him of being a pervert for… watching him take off an apron. I don’t know…

As Takeshi chides him for this perceived perversion, Touma comes back into the story by throwing one of his shoes at Murai, intending to shatter his skull. No, really, he throws this shoe with enough force that it embeds itself into a concrete wall behind them, cracking it and forming what has to be a 3 inch deep hole. …And then he starts crying over how ‘Akane’ belongs to him and Murai is not worthy of her. 

Murai, being the nicer sort, tries to mend things over with this attempted murderer by inviting him to see Takeshi’s body in the hospital. Then, once they arrive at the hospital, Touma is immediately pulled away by an older, more rotund, nurse with glasses, who ties him down to a  hospital bed and sexually assaults him. All of which happens off screen, of course, but the final panel tells you all you need to know. This man got raped! Ass raped!

Finally in the hospital room, Takeshi shoos Murai away so he and the monk can launch their latest harebrained scheme. To put a lingering spirit in Takeshi’s body so that Murai does not need to worry about caring for Takeshi in the hospital. This is a… bad idea, and it immediately backfires. The monk grabs the fresh, hot soul of the first person he can find, and that winds up being some hot-blooded gangster, Kazuya Takahachi, ranting about how he’ll kill the bastard who stabbed him. He calms down after being reminded that he came back to life, and is given an abridged version of the story until now. He agrees to help and pretend to be Takeshi for a while… if he can fuck Takeshi in Akane’s body. 

Takeshi and the monk want to decline, but Kazuya threatens to kill Akane’s body unless he gets his way. The monk slithers away and Kazuya proceeds to make Takeshi ‘feel like a woman’. Throwing him down to the bed, stripping his body, fondling his most tender spots. Takeshi is helpless, made into putty in his original body’s hands, forced into playing the role of a woman and told that he will be given a taste of heaven for playing along. Takeshi accepts this fate, and just before the events are about to begin… a hot angel and devil babe show up, dressed in full fetish attire. They suck his soul up in a bottle, saving Takeshi from the hands of a sexual predator, and promptly peace out.

Takeshi then chides the monk for putting him into this situation, only for Murai to eavesdrop on the conversation. For the record, everybody can see the monk, not just people with displaced souls, it’s a curious creative choice. Takeshi tries to explain this situation… only for a nurse to walk in on a naked woman and a patient lying with their head on the floor.

After getting kicked out of the hospital, Takeshi loops Murai in on what’s going on. He proves his identity, recruits Murai as an ally, and teases him by asking if he’ll marry him as his mind acclimates to that of a girl. A tease for what could be a bizarre love triangle, but… if that was in the cards, it was scrapped. 

Chapter 4, or 5, depending on how you count, begins with the monk literally flying into Takashi to inform him that this is his last day in Akane’s body. This is a typical ‘false hope’ premise used in manga, anime, cartoons, and episodic fiction all the damn time. I can see it as a season finale premise but… this is the fourth chapter. This is less than a week into Takashi being in Akane’s body. It really speaks to the planning and intention for this story, but admittedly, that’s not what the chapter is actually about. Instead, it is about Takashi finding a bottle of sake while in his cooking class and deciding that… today’s a damn good day to get wasted at school!

Despite the monk telling him to not do anything strange, he steals the sake from the school and crawls into a classroom to… I’m sorry, but I need to stop and talk about this. 

If you are reading this, I probably don’t need to explain that most Japanese classrooms follow the same general structure and layout. However, something I never consciously realized is that the interior wall, beneath the frosted or filtered glass windows, is sometimes just a wall, and sometimes it has a little sliding door. Similar to something you might see on a cabinet. I have never acknowledged that these things exist, let alone that someone could squeeze themselves through them. Like… how aren’t these things a common gag, featured in 10% of comedy animes? Did they just seal these up or renovate all schools who had them? Because the idea of someone sneaking into a classroom through one of these holes and crawling on the floor is hilarious to me. 

Anyway, Takashi gets drunk as shit after drinking half a bottle of sake, and when Shizuka comes to ‘rescue’ him, he winds up kissing her, hugging her, and pouring sake into her mouth with a kiss. Shizuka proves herself to be a lightweight in more ways than one by immediately passing out and leaving Takashi to act a fool around campus, drinking straight from the bottle, no brown bag or nuthin’. He eventually dozes off, and is immediately met with Touma who, upon seeing his muse, all drunk and passed out, decides that… now’s a good time for rape! 

I need to pause to admire the sheer stones of this man. Touma not only publicly declares he is taking this drunken female-bodied person out to behind the gym, in front of several people. He’s not only innovative enough to eat pussy in Japan in 1999, before that shit stopped being a fetish and started being regular, mostly due to how hairy labias were back then. He has the swagger and bravado needed to say “itadakimasu” before he chows down on some underage vag. That middle-aged nurse must’ve awakened something in him…

(Un)fortunately, this does not evolve/devolve into hentai hi-jinks, as Takashi wakes up and starts goading Touma into polishing off the booze. They have a drunken conversation about how Takashi is not actually himself, how he will go back to being a man, and how Touma loves Takashi as he is and does not want him to change. It’s all drunk talk and Touma does not remember what happens when he gets drunk, so it doesn’t really amount to much. But once it’s done, the chapter can end with the predictable false capture of Akane’s soul, as the angel who found a loose soul actually captured Rakkaanee Hagiwara of the Bowa Bowa Republic. A Black guy whose design is probably racist on at least two levels.

Chapter 6 is the chapter where Takashi gets his body back. …Yeah, no, I’m not misleading you or anything. The monk mentions that Takashi’s body will die unless a soul returns to it soon, and with Akane’s soul still missing… they decide to just undo this whole possession angle. They head to the hospital, invite Murai along, and the monk ejects Takashi from Akane’s body so he can go back to being himself. This possession story only lasted about a week. Basically nothing was learned and… now the story is over. …Right? 

Well, it would be, but in Takashi’s haste to get out of bed and back to his life, he knocks over his IV stand… and it falls directly on Murai’s head. Remember, this is 1999, so they were still using one of those old school IV stands with the long metal arms, rather than the lighter modern ones with the smaller hooks. This, apparently, means it has enough weight and force to penetrate a huge hole in Murai’s head, sending him into the emergency room. (I doubt these things were heavy enough to do that, but I cannot exactly disprove it either.)

This impact causes Murai’s soul to be ejected and, seeking the nearest vessel, it lands in Akane’s body. Meaning the possessee switched from one character to another, but the possessed character remains unchanged. However, Murai takes to being Akane, to being a girl, with far less rejection and friction than Takashi ever did. He was already a mellow and timid person. He’s far from a pervert and tries to be as respectful about being Akane as possible. He views himself as a guest in her body and wants to preserve her life as best as he can, while steadily finding himself adapting to the role. In many ways, he is a more typical male protagonist for a story like this. 

I bring this up, because Takashi not only goes back to being a kinda shitty dude, but ascends to being a regular shitty dude. Minutes after Murai lands in Akane’s body, he starts talking about perverted things, like “XXXX” and “XXXX” and pursuing a “natural relationship between a man and a woman.” Takashi is a full-on pervert, and if not for the monk and his ‘no horny’ mallet, he probably would have XXXX’d her right there in the hospital lobby. He spent a week as a girl and learned absolutely nothing.

After the horny shenanigans, the monk says that Murai’s body will die in two days unless Murai cooperates and stays in Akane’s body until her soul can be located. Basically setting up the storyline all over again… and with a far stronger premise. Knowing that someone has to possess another person, or die, is a better incentive for them to not screw around and actually take care of the life they have been given. And Murai does just that. He treats Akane’s parents with respect, behaves like Akane around them and eats her preferred foods, and is so chaste that he shuts his eyes while bathing.

Chapter 7, the penultimate chapter, sees Murai attend school as Akane, trying to behave like a girl, using Takashi’s old amnesia excuse to justify his ‘forgetfulness.’ This amnesia pushes Shizuka out of the story— she really contributed nothing— and sees Murai fall into the tendrils of Touma. He’s surprised by how passive his fiery Akane has become, but merely uses this change in personality to justify throwing himself onto a ‘girl’ without consent. Fortunately, Touma gets a firm kick in the balls from Takashi, who was recently discharged from the hospital. 

Takashi stands up to Touma, trying to claim Murai as ‘his woman’, and before things can escalate into a full-blown fight, Murai calls Takashi by his first name, indicating that they are close. This breaks Touma, allowing Takashi to grab Murai and run off to Akane’s home for dinner. Because Takashi is a broke college student who needs to pay hospital bills. His parents actually have money— they won the lottery and are traveling the world— but I guess he gambled away the money they gifted to him. He wouldn’t be the first dude to do just that…

Takashi continues to make himself out to be a regular shitty dude as he hits on Murai, calling him Akane in private, saying that Murai should make him his boyfriend, trying to force himself on her, the works. The only good thing he does is help save Akane’s mother after she fell and sprained her ankle. Which helps him avoid the wrath of Akane’s father as he comes home, ready to murder any man who dares get close to his precious girl. 

Takashi further props himself up by saying that he and Murai have been dating for two months. It’s an obvious lie. Akane was in a coma for a month— or three— it’s inconsistent, and the story has only spanned a little over a week at this point. However, the Hagiwaras believe it, and the mother suggests that Takashi and Murai get married this Sunday. The father initially resists, but after Takashi reminds him that he can see his daughter, still so young and beautiful, in a wedding dress, he agrees to hold a ceremony. 

On one hand, that is a LOT for just one chapter of manga to cover. On the other hand… I think this could actually work as the start of a TSF possession romcom. It puts a lot of things into play, establishes character dynamics, and while forced engagements are a trite artifact of a bygone era… they do make for good drama and tension. It sets up a lot that could make for the foundation of another story… but chapter 8 is the last chapter… and it sure is something.

The first half of the chapter is dedicated to a scheme devised by Touma’s sister. Her plan basically boils down to getting hired goons to abduct Takashi, offer to set him up with any model of his choice, and have Touma save ‘Akane’ so he looks like a ‘real man.’ …Except one of the goons drops his instructions, Touma and Murai figure out the plan, and after rescuing Takashi, he reveals that he and Murai are getting married. Rather than breaking Touma again, this news causes him to go Super Saiyan, or at least burn with rage.

That evening, Touma (somehow) barges into the gated home of the Hagiwaras, ready to announce his opposition to the marriage. His presence causes a cluster as Takashi tries to keep Touma from coming upstairs while Murai, wearing a wedding dress, stands at the top of the stairs. When arguments involve stairs, there’s only one way things can really end, with a tumble. And when a bunch of people tumble down the stairs in a possession story, things can only end one way. Taking a cue from Tenkōsei, the three fall down the stairs and exchange bodies. Touma winds up inside Akane, Murai is inside Takashi, and Takashi is inside Touma. 

Things are now wackier than ever, way more complicated, and just as this new plot thread is introduced… das ende!

…Akane-chan Overdrive is a manga from a creator who clearly had ideas, but rather than expressing them via a long-running or even complete story, something happened. Maybe readers did not really respond to it, maybe it did not fit with what the young female readers of Margaret magazine wanted, or maybe the creator was struggling to adapt to the rigor of a monthly comic.

The story rapidly shifts from chapter to chapter, never fully committing to its initial premise. The first four chapters are all experimental in their own way, pursuing vastly different ideas with little rhyme or reason. The last three feel more like a soft reboot done to revitalize interest by changing the fundamental structure of the story. And the longer it goes on, the more I talked about it, the less faith I had that the author knew what they were doing.

While the whole is a… mess, I would be lying if I said that it was without merit. The story can be inventive in its rapid pursuit of new ideas. It goes places I would not expect. And even though I criticize its structure, there are definitely fun and funny moments to enjoy in reading it. The vision or goal for this story may be a bit obscure, but I cannot deny the effort that went into it.

Akane-chan Overdrive was the second published work by its author, Mizuki Kawashita. She was young, inexperienced, and probably struggled to make this idea work in the long-term, resulting in a series that tried a lot but committed to very little. And a series that seems to have functioned as a good learning experience for her. Since publishing this work, she has continued her career as a mangaka, working on various series for Shonen Jump, such as Strawberry 100% and Gunjō ni Siren. However, she seemingly never returned to this premise to make a better Akane-chan Overdrive, making this just a one time venture into TSF for her.

Overall, I would not necessarily recommend this work. However, it is, at the very least, a fun comic to talk about. And in a genre with a deluge of surface level and blasé works, I appreciate that.