With a face that pretty, you’re disqualified from being a man, bucko!

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TSF Showcase 2024-39
Dansei Shikkaku [No Longer Male] by Ooshima Yumiko

It’s still busy season for me at work, so this week is going to be a shorter one… and another fresh translation from TSF historian Chari Shal!

Back when TSF Showcase was in its primordial form, I covered 1973’s Joka he… [To Joca/Joker] by Ooshima Yumiko. Joka he… is a love story centering around a young girl, Joca, with a loving yet messy relationship with her cousin, Simon. After Simon agrees to duel Jean-Claude, a mutual friend of theirs, Joca tries to help Simon by giving him a drug invented by her father to make him strong. However, this winds up transforming Simon’s DNA and sets them on the path to develop as a woman. For their own ‘good’, Simon is sent away to another country for seven years, and when they return, they look like a woman and go by the name Solange. From there, the story blossoms into a love triangle between Joca, Solange, and Jean-Claude and… well, let’s just say the story goes into some wild bitter-sweet directions. This was the 70s, and the rules were still being written.

Personally, I found it analogous to a trans or intersex person going away from their home for several years before returning, unrecognizable as the person they used to be and going by a new name. It’s a generalized way that gender transition ‘worked’ during the mid 20th century— at least, for those with the means to do so. It is definitely a TSF work by my own definition, as it features sex change drugs, and is about someone being transformed but also very non-traditional in its approach. Because the tradition had yet to be established.

It’s a good comic that was translated and preserved by Chari, the great TSF manga historian, and you can freely read it on MangaDex.

Not content with just discovering this treasure, Chari also found and translated what is believed to be a prototype of Joka he… A work that, when it was originally published in 1970, went by the name Simon and Simone but was later entitled Dansei Shikkaku, or No Longer Male.

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Much like Joka he… the story of Dansei Shikkaku centers around a love triangle, this time following a set of college students. The über masculine and show-offy Simon, the more grounded and reserved Arvy, and Anne, the prized woman. Things begin with the three on a sailboat, goofing off on the coast of France, with Simon using this as an opportunity to act bold and reckless in order to earn Anne’s affection. Arvey tries to get him to simmer down, but Simon is a man’s man right down to his hairy chest and shows his adventurous side by investigating a red buoy in the distance. 

…

…

THEN SIMON GETS NUKED!

A nuclear bomb goes off, explosive hellfire fills the sea, and while Arvy and Anne are unharmed, Simon is missing and presumed dead, because nukes do that. This devastates Arvy, as while Simon got on his nerves, they were dormmates, acted like brothers, and he truly cared for him. Anne has fared better, moving on only after a week and deciding that she loves Arvy (this is a red flag for later). Arvy goes back to his dorm room to mull things over… when Simon emerges from his bed, bruised and dead tired.

Arvy is naturally overjoyed to see that his bro is alive… but I have to ask how the hell did he get back to his dorm room? If they were at a nuclear test site, they had to be a couple kilometers away from the shore, and I doubt even Olympic swimmers could swim a few kilometers, in the ocean, after getting pounded by radiation. Then he walked however far to get back to his dorm room and just conked out? Nu-uh. I don’t buy it! …But I will buy that he suffered critical damage, respawned in his bed, and was just sleeping off his wounds for the past week. Funny how suspension of disbelief works like that…

However Simon survived, Arvy is quick to figure out that Simon’s beloved chest hair is gone, his once strong physique has become more slender, and something about him is just… off. He struggles to run, points out a pretty pink dress he saw at a shop, and when Arvy goes to reintroduce people to Simon, they don’t see him as Simon. They think that the person before them is Simon’s sister, and as he goes to defend himself, his voice starts changing. It is change after change, but all of them point to the idea of his body feminizing— turning into a woman. It gets so bad that not even his parents recognize him anymore.

The two visit the university doctor to gauge this theory, but he laughs it off. Avry tries to press the doctor for more information and he claims one case where uranium allegedly transformed a man into a woman. But the doctor passes it aside as mere science fiction while saying that if someone were to undergo this change, they would be locked into a lab and observed for the rest of their life. Which is probably true. The 70s were still in that post-war, pre-ethics era where they would just inject people with diseases or abuse animals for kicks. Nowadays everything’s got to be cleared by an ethics board.

With this fear instilled in him, Arvy is committed to keeping Simon’s condition a secret, hoping that, somehow, he will return to normal. But when the two are outside on the university grounds, Anne catches Arvy talking to Simon, who she believes to be a woman. Yeah, you know how I said Anne’s clinging to Arvy and lack of care for Simon was a red flag? This is what I was talking about. Anne is traditional even by 1970s standards and does not want her man to be around or talking to other women at this co-ed university. Arvy tries telling her it’s not like that, and after she’s out of earshot, Simon rightfully calls her “an entitled bitch,” saying that he doesn’t want to be a woman if he starts acting in such stereotypically feminine ways. …Before running off to look at a cute baby in a stroller, fantasizing about having his own child.

Arvy can see what is becoming of his friend and tries to urge Simon to accept this, warning that if he chooses to cling to his old life, he will eventually be found out. That he will be captured and studied, and should just accept the fact that he is free. Simon rejects this notion, still believing that he will somehow return to normal. All while ignoring the vivid dreams that fill his slumber and the obvious signs that part of him wants to just accept this and live as a woman. Whether this is due to Simon’s pre-existing desires, a desire to comply with his new form, a rush of hormones, or radiation brain damage, is up to interpretation. 

After being so stalwart against doing so, Simon eventually accepts their fate. They start presenting as a woman, wearing the dress Arvy bought for them, and begin going by Simone. Simon feels at peace with her new life, and right as things are going well and she is explaining this to Arvy, Anne barges in and starts acting like an “entitled bitch” yet again. She blames Arvy for making her fall in love with him only to go galavanting with another woman. She feels cheated, cries, and in an attempt to save this relationship, Arvy tells her the truth. That Simone is Simon. 

Simone overhears her secret being revealed and Arvy’s affirmed love for Anne and joins the conversation, confessing that she too is in love with Arvy. Anne overhears this and storms out as Arvy tries to mend things with Simone, explaining that, despite Simone’s love for him, he still only sees her as a friend. Simone takes this rejection well… only to be abducted by the university doctor and men in hazmat suits, called in by Anne. Simone is then imprisoned, put under glass and examined as a specimen for an unknown length of time. The dread that this will be here forever, that this will be the rest of her life, leads Simone to escape the facility, searching for Arvy and finding him crying over her loss. Over how, deep down, he did come to love Simone not as a brother, but as a woman.

The two reunite after this confession slips through, embracing as lovers. Arvy wants to go with her, to leave the country and start a new life, but Simone cannot bear the thought of putting Arvy in that kind of danger. She knows she will be a fugitive and so long as she’s free, so long as she knows she’s happy, that will be enough to keep her going. She flees and, in a half-page epilogue, Arvy reflects on these events. He states that, three years later, he hasn’t seen Simone since, yet he remains convinced that she is out there somewhere. Ending by stating that maybe she lives not too far from the reader.

Among all the works I have covered as part of TSF Showcase, Dansei Shikkaku has the honor of being the actual first TSF manga. At least as based on the data currently available to me. A few Osamu Tezuka stories may be the actual origin. But Metropolis involves a robot child changing their settings, and the ensuing story is not really about the transformation. While the lovely queer Princess Knight is ‘gender bending’ in the crossdressing and ‘gender play’ sense. So I’m calling this one the first! And as the first, or one of the first TSF manga… it feels surprisingly similar to more modern interpretations.

The gradual physical changes of Simon/Simone as their body steadily shifts against their will. The way Avry functions as their confidant as they cope with these changes. The eventual romantic tensions that develop between the TSF’d character and their best friend. The perception of being a different person, loss of external identity, pushing the MtF protagonist into behaving more femininely. It’s all basic stuff that people still do 50 years later, and the execution is surprisingly strong.

It does feature an almost eye-rolling amount of sexist ideas when it comes to the mental changes. Simon/Simone’s attraction to men, love of pink and dresses, and fondness for children are all shorthand for them becoming female. But none of these things should follow any sort of physical change. Unless the nuke engineers were playing with some pink uranium. Admittedly, many more modern works also conflate physical with mental changes like this, but they do a better job of justifying it. Specifying hormones, magic, or a growth of a maiden’s heart, while this is just… super radiation. However, the uses of these ‘mental shorthands’ could also just be a result of the comic only being 30 pages long.

I was pleasantly surprised by Dansei Shikkaku. It has a vision, carries it through to the end, does many things that threw me for a loop, yet has the foundational core of a solid TSF story. Meaning it quite likely had some level of influence on the development of the genre over time. And as a purveyor and enthusiast of TSF, I just love the fact that I get to read, discover, and share things like this.