The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn't a Guy at All: Queerness, Gender, and Maureen Murdock's Failure
Continuing with my streak of only covering Japanese media (I swear it is not intentional) I will be analyzing The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn't a Guy at All . This recent manga hit follows the friendship/love story of main characters Aya Oosawa (girly girl) and Mitsuki Koga (androgynous nerd) and deals with a lot of gender presentation stuff. As you can tell from the very specific title, Oosawa mistakenly thinks Koga is a guy due to her masculine appearance wearing casual clothes while part-timing at her uncle’s music store. Eventually Oosawa realizes the guy she is crushing on is actually her female classmate Koga and chaos ensues. Okay, not actually. Oosawa is upset at first because Koga didn’t tell her and it was lowkey trickery but they get over it and go back to being friends… So here comes my argument: the heroine's journey simply does not work for women who, either purely in terms of fashion or within their lifestyle, lean more masculine/androgynous. By framing mas...