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DiscussionSkip and Loafer
Posted August 24, 2024 by HalfMentalAlchemist in Television

This came up in a recommendation and the art style was endearing. It has a really good first episode but I got the uncanny valley impression from Nao. I initially thought it was just the goofy art style and it was pushed aside by other scenes but in the beginning of the next episode a couple of girl students clock Nao. I had to look it up and sure enough, Nao was formerly Naoki. I couldn't continue watching comfortably after that.

Would you send your daughter to live with a TIM in the big city?

Why does gender shit have to ruin everything?

4 comments

RappaccinisDaughterAugust 24, 2024(Edited August 25, 2024)

Thanks for the warning. I was thinking of that series, myself.

Gender shit ruined the anime Blue Period for me, too. There's a prominent TIM character in that, too, and apparently much is made of him "finding himself" later on.

What's hilarious to me (not acknowledged in the series that I saw) is that he dresses like a man's idea of a woman, complete with overly sexual clothes that no actual female character in the show wears. Even in sympathetic fictional representations, they tell on themselves.

WillowshadeAugust 24, 2024

I personally love skip and loafer, it is well written and the character development is great.

Nao is just there in the background, adding to the contrast between the big city vs countryside. The average tumblr user loves to gush about Nao being “trans” but, reading the manga, I didn’t get this impression. To the family of the main character that lives by the countryside, Nao is a crossdresser gay man. Nao goes by “Aunt” to avoid unsettling Mitsumi’s friends however.

I don’t think the manga will ever address the “identity” of Nao. I feel there are great cultural differences on how Japan would understand such individual. Clearly it is drawn as a man at least, instead of the stereotype in mangas that make impossible to distinguish visually between crossdressers and girls- you have just to accept that person happens to be a “man”.

Even if he was a TIM, it is one written by a woman and thus doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. It does break the immersion a bit- who would send a teenager to live with a strangled crossdresser relative?

If you can ignore that plot line it is still a very worthy read.

CathyVerattiAugust 24, 2024

Doesn't Nao have a girlfrend, though? Between that and his expression of jealousy of his 15-year-old niece in chapter 33, I read him as a typical AGP with the typical creepy avidity for "girlhood".

WillowshadeAugust 24, 2024

Nao has a boyfriend.

When he was back at his hometown a older relative directly asked him if he had a boyfriend, as if that was expected.

Yes it seems he is jealous because he wasn’t allowed to be openly flamboyant/feminine because of societal expectations and his teen years were mostly wasted in depression and loneliness.

There was a flashback in which he was jealous of Mitsumi being pretty with flower crown. He Stated that to the 4 year old Mitsumi, and thus was moved when she put the flower crown on his head 🙄. It’s amazing how the quality of the writing drops when it’s about Nao. He’s not AGP however, considering he works in fashion he seems like campy gay, he doesn’t seem to deny he is a man though.

I think the author is an gay ally. She wrote a manga about a gay relationship between boys best friends.