Kata Konayama

Tetsu invites his non-binary classmate to come work in his family's maid cafe, which bills itself as a cross-dressing experience with wait staff who are gay, trans, and straight wearing maid costumes. What seems like a perfect fit quickly becomes an internecine battle about gender identity as the maids clash over the inclusivity of the language in the script they use to introduce themselves to customers.

The concept and cast are intriguing but I never quite synched up with presentation. First, the ages of all the characters are ambiguous, with some being obviously adult while others are drawn as if they were elementary school students and definitely still in some level of secondary education. That ambiguity becomes unsettling when realizing that the cafe they work -- and really, the manga itself -- is obviously intended to serve as a venue for people who sexually objectify or fetishize what they perceive as guys dressed as girls. It's not a strip club or burlesque show, but it is basically an equivalent to Hooters.

There's a homophobic slur uttered by a main character and the pronouns are all over the board with misgendering that is hard to tell is coming from the characters or the writer. The original Japanese writer in an afterword states that they were unaware of the concept of non-binary people until partway through developing this series and plugged it in after some internet research to solve some plotting problems they were having with the original pitch. That feels like a math teacher working out how to do algebra the night before class. At least Seven Seas has hired a non-binary writer for the adaptation of the English version, but that leaves me wondering how much spackle had to be layered over the original work to fill holes and cover jagged ends.

I'm just going to set this series aside.… (mais)