Wandering Son


Wandering Son is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Takako Shimura. It was originally serialized in Comic Beam from the December 2002 to August 2013 issue, and published in 15 tankōbon volumes by Enterbrain from July 2003 to August 2013. The series is licensed in English by Fantagraphics Books, which released the first volume in North America in July 2011. A 12-episode anime adaptation produced by AIC Classic and directed by Ei Aoki aired in Japan between January and March 2011. Eleven episodes aired on television, with episodes 10 and 11 edited into a single episode, and were released individually on their respective BD/DVD volumes.
The story depicts a young student named Shuichi Nitori, described by the author as a trans girl, and Shuichi's friend Yoshino Takatsuki, described as a trans boy. The series deals with issues such as being transgender, gender identity, and the beginning of puberty. Shimura was originally going to write the story about a girl in high school who wants to be a boy, but she realized that a boy who wants to be a girl before entering into puberty would have many worries related to growing up, and changed the story to fit this model. Wandering Son was selected as a recommended work by the awards jury of the tenth Japan Media Arts Festival in 2006. The series has been lauded for its use of gender reversal as the core of the story, though the emotional realism of the young characters has been called into question.

Plot

At the start of Wandering Son, Shuichi Nitori is a student in the fifth grade who transfers into a new school. Shuichi quickly becomes friends with another student: the tall, boyish Yoshino Takatsuki. Yoshino soon learns of Shuichi's desire to be a girl. In a show of friendship, Yoshino confesses a similar desire to be a boy. Shuichi also becomes friends with Saori Chiba and Kanako Sasa, two other girls in the class. Saori instantly takes a liking to Shuichi and continuously encourages Shuichi to wear feminine clothes. After Shuichi, Yoshino, and their friends enter sixth grade, Shuichi meets Makoto Ariga, another student their age from another class who also secretly wants to be a girl. Shuichi and Yoshino become friends with an adult trans woman named Yuki who is living with a man named Shiina. Shuichi's older sister Maho becomes a model and eventually becomes friends with Maiko, a teen model whom she idolizes, and two other teen models: Tamaki Satō and Anna Suehiro. Maho gets a boyfriend, Riku Seya, and Shuichi confesses a crush on Yoshino, but Yoshino cannot reciprocate Shuichi's feelings. After Saori learns of this, she confesses she likes Shuichi, but Shuichi too cannot return her feelings. This results in a falling-out between Shuichi's friends as they prepare to enter junior high school.
In junior high school, they meet a tall, eccentric girl who befriends everyone, Chizuru Sarashina, and her prickly friend Momoko Shirai, who does not get along well with the others—especially Saori. Eventually, Saori and Yoshino rejoin Shuichi's group of friends, though Saori says she still hates Yoshino and Momoko. Shuichi and Anna start dating, much to the surprise of their friends and Shuichi's sister. Yoshino and Saori manage to halfway repair their friendship, though Saori is still standoffish to others. Shuichi's friends are split up into several classes upon entering their second year in junior high school. Shuichi becomes friends with Shinpei Doi, who previously teased Shuichi about wanting to be a girl. Yoshino attends school in a boy's uniform for a short time, and Shuichi tries to go to school dressed as a girl one day, but is laughed at, and becomes discouraged. Shuichi's friends worry as Shuichi begins skipping school. Although Shuichi eventually starts attending school regularly again, Anna breaks off their relationship. By the time Shuichi, Yoshino, and their friends enter their third year in junior high school, Shuichi's voice is changing. The group of friends start thinking about their future high school plans, and Shuichi and Anna start dating again.
Shuichi begins attending the same all-boy high school as Makoto and Doi, while Yoshino and Saori begin attending a high school where uniforms are not required. Saori starts dating Fumiya Ninomiya. Yoshino starts working at Anna's modeling agency and Shuichi begins working at a cafe, but later quits. Shuichi starts writing a semi-autobiographical novel. Yoshino later tells Shuichi that the former does not think about wanting to be a boy anymore, and also confesses a romantic attraction to Shuichi. Shuichi still identifies as a girl, and even after informing Anna of this, she stays with Shuichi. After graduating from high school, Shuichi moves out and goes to the same college as Doi. Shuichi continues to write the novel, which is given the title The Boy Who's a Girl.

Characters

Protagonists

;Shuichi Nitori

;Yoshino Takatsuki

Classmates


;Saori Chiba

;Kanako Sasa

;Makoto Ariga

; Chizuru Sarashina

; Momoko Shirai

Others


; Maho Nitori

; Riku Seya

; Anna Suehiro

; Yuki

;Shiina

; Fumiya Ninomiya

; Shinpei Doi

; Maiko

Production

In an interview in August 2003, Takako Shimura stated that the theme of Wandering Son is similar to the second half of her previous manga series Shikii no Jūnin. Shimura took the junior high school teacher Kentarō Kaneda from Shikii no Jūnin and inserted him into Wandering Son, where he teaches at Shuichi's junior high school, because she really liked his character. Shimura originally planned to use a female high school student who wants to become a boy as the main character. However, she realized that a boy who wants to become a girl before entering into puberty would have many worries related to growing up, and changed the story accordingly. Shimura used her realization that the boy would go through significant changes as he grew up to deepen the development of the story and characters. The Japanese title, Hōrō Musuko, is a pun on hōtō musuko, meaning "prodigal son".
Shimura mainly found her characters' names by looking through name dictionaries, although she also took the names of acquaintances and slightly changed them, and even used train station names for side characters appearing only once. Out of all the characters, Shimura is most pleased with Kanako Sasa. For the designs of clothes for the female characters, Shimura consulted various fashion magazines for girls in their early teens, especially Nicola. Shimura commented self-deprecatingly in the afterword of volume one that, like her other series, her characters do not look very different from each other, her panels are too white, and there is much pathos.

Media

Manga

The manga Wandering Son is written and illustrated by Takako Shimura. It was serialized in the monthly seinen manga magazine Comic Beam from the December 2002 to August 2013 issue. The individual chapters were collected and published in 15 tankōbon volumes by Enterbrain from July 25, 2003 to August 28, 2013. Wandering Son was one of several manga titles included with the launch in December 2009 of the manga distribution service of the PlayStation Store for the Japanese PlayStation Portable handheld game console.
The series is licensed in English by Fantagraphics Books, which began releasing the series in North America in hardcover format starting with the first volume on July 5, 2011. Gary Groth of Fantagraphics Books said in an interview he licensed Wandering Son because "it's not a typical choice for a manga title published in the U.S. and it's not typical subject matter for comics in general," saying that the subject is "perfectly legitimate... for literature—or comics." Although Fantagraphics Books released eight volumes by June 2015, the release of further volumes was hampered by low sales. The series is also licensed by Ever Glory Publishing in Taiwan and by Haksan Culture Company in Korea.

Anime

A 12-episode anime television series adaptation produced by AIC Classic and Aniplex aired in Japan between January 13 and March 31, 2011 on Fuji TV's Noitamina programming block. Crunchyroll simulcasted the anime on their streaming website. Aniplex released the anime on six Blu-ray and DVD compilation volumes in Japan between April 27 and September 21, 2011. Of the 11 episodes to be aired on TV, episodes 10 and 11 were edited into a single episode, and were released individually on their respective BD/DVD volumes. Following the arrest of Ai Takabe, the voice actress who played Maiko, for drug possession in October 2015, Bandai Channel removed the series from its streaming catalog. The anime adapts the story from the point where the characters enter junior high school.
The anime is directed by Ei Aoki and the screenplay was written by Mari Okada. Chief animator Ryūichi Makino based the character design used in the anime on Takako Shimura's original concept and the main animator is Michio Satō. The music was produced by Satoru Kosaki and Keiichi Okabe, both from Monaca, and the sound director is Jin Aketagawa. The anime's opening theme song is "Itsudatte." by Daisuke and the single was released on March 2, 2011. The ending theme is "For You" by Rie fu and the single was released on February 16, 2011. The original soundtrack was released on August 24, 2011.

Reception

It was reported in June 2013 that approximately 1.05 million copies of the manga are in print in Japan. Wandering Son was selected as a recommended work by the awards jury of the tenth Japan Media Arts Festival in 2006. The Young Adult Library Services Association nominated Wandering Son for its 2012 Great Graphic Novels for Teens list. The anime was awarded the honorable mention prize for technical achievement in broadcast animation at the 65th Motion Picture and Television Engineering Society of Japan Awards in 2012.
In a review of the first volume by Rebecca Silverman of Anime News Network, she praised the slow pace of the storytelling, which "gives it a more realistic feel." Silverman praises Takako Shimura for making Shuichi into a "human protagonist", but notes that "most of the children act much older than they are." The second volume was featured in ANN's Right Turn Only column in March 2007 as the Import of the Month, where Carlo Santos lauded the series for using gender reversal as the "actual heart of the story" in contrast to "every other series" involving cross-dressing, which use "gender reversal as a goofy plot device." The art was praised as "simple few lines, but incredibly expressive" which Santos claimed is a "style that's the most difficult and beautiful of all." Santos criticized the "emotional realism" of the work for having the young characters' "unrealistically mature attitude" towards "issues above their grade level."
Rachel Matt Thorn, the English translator of the manga, wrote that fans of Anne of Green Gables or The Rose of Versailles would also enjoy Wandering Son, and Silverman compared Wandering Son to Mizuiro Jidai. Thorn described the art as "clean and lovely" and went on to cite Wandering Son as "sweet, thought-provoking, funny, and moving, and I think it will resonate with readers regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation." The first manga volume as translated by Fantagraphics Books had an early debut at the May 2011 Toronto Comic Arts Festival and sold out within the first two hours of the event.
In a 2019 Forbes article about the best anime of the 2010s decade, Lauren Orsini considered it to be one of the five best anime of 2011 and called it "A breakout show in the transgender drama genre". Orsini praised the "delicate, watercolor-like art" and how the story is "treated with empathy and kindness", but "at the same time, it's far from a lecture; its focus on characters keeps it as entertaining as it is enlightening".