Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl
Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl is a Japanese yuri manga series written by Satoru Akahori and illustrated by Yukimaru Katsura. The manga was originally serialized in Dengeki Daioh between the July 2004 and May 2007 issues, and later published in five bound volumes by MediaWorks from January 2005 to May 2007. The story focuses on Hazumu Osaragi, a normal, albeit effeminate high school boy who is killed when an alien spaceship crash lands on him, only to be restored to health as a girl. This results in a same-sex love triangle that Hazumu finds herself in with two of her best female friends.
A single light novel written by Mako Komao and illustrated by the manga's artist was published by MediaWorks under their Dengeki Bunko imprint in January 2006. The manga series was adapted into a twelve-episode anime television series plus a single original video animation sequel by Studio Hibari. The anime aired in Japan on TV Tokyo between January and March 2006; the OVA was released in October 2006. A visual novel was created based on the series for the PlayStation 2 and was released in March 2006. Seven Seas Entertainment licensed the manga series for English-language publication in North America and released the five volumes between December 2006 and March 2008. Media Blasters licensed the anime series, including the OVA, and released three DVD volumes between June and October 2007 with English-subtitles. Media Blasters re-released the anime with an English dub.
The manga has been given positive reviews by the popular anime and manga magazine Newtype USA, and at the online resources Anime News Network and IGN. The first manga volume was Newtype USA's Book of the Month for December 2006, and Newtype noted Seven Seas Entertainment's "fan-focused" translation without an effort to localize the humor for the mainstream American market. In July 2007, Kashimashi was Seven Seas Entertainment's best-selling title. The anime has been likened to Rumiko Takahashi's Ranma ½, though only as far as the gender-swaps themes. Critics of the anime praised the down to earth characters, and the generally great animation quality with its soft and detailed art style.
Plot
At the start of Kashimashi, a young high school boy named Hazumu Osaragi declares his love to classmate and close friend Yasuna Kamiizumi, but she quickly rejects him. Dejected, Hazumu climbs Mt. Kashima and is killed when an alien spacecraft accidentally crash lands on him. To rectify this, the alien in the ship named Hitoshi Sora brings Hazumu back to life, but inadvertently regenerates him as a female right down to the DNA level. This change in Hazumu serves as the catalyst for the development of character interactions for the remainder of the series.After Hazumu returns to school, Yasuna unexpectedly professes her love for Hazumu, but this serves only to confuse Hazumu as she adjusts to her new life as a girl. Yasuna, a rather feminine girl, has a unique affliction which makes her incapable of seeing males, and instead sees males as covered in a gray, hazy blur. Hazumu's childhood friend Tomari Kurusu, an athletic girl and tomboy, finds Hazumu's change difficult to cope with. Tomari starts to realize her own romantic feelings for Hazumu as Yasuna starts becoming closer to Hazumu, especially after Tomari witnesses Hazumu and Yasuna kissing one day after school. A conflict arises between Yasuna and Tomari who fight for Hazumu's affection while she is unable to choose between them. This results in a love triangle emerging between the three female main characters. Hazumu's best male friend Asuta Soro also starts having romantic feelings for Hazumu, but tries his best to repress them. Tomari's good friend Ayuki Mari, an intelligent girl interested in the sciences, continuously observes the ongoing development of the love triangle while keeping a stance of watching from afar.
The very stoic Hitoshi originally came to Earth in order to study human emotions, especially those related to love, in an attempt to save his species from extinction. His species has long-since given up their emotions resulting in a loss of their sexual urges and thus a continuously dwindling population. Hitoshi moves into Hazumu's home where he is warmly welcomed by Hazumu's parents. He brings with him an artificially intelligent gynoid named Jan Pu which serves as the automatic pilot for his spaceship. Jan Pu's body is modeled after Hazumu's own female body, and possesses an energetic and childish personality.
While initially citing Hazumu's change as an accident, Hitoshi later realizes this was an unexpected result of the regeneration process. By the time Hitoshi becomes aware of his mistake, he tells Hazumu and her friends she has only one month left to live. Hitoshi explains to Hazumu's friends how someone very close to Hazumu has to donate "life grains" to Hazumu to sustain her life. While unaware her friends know about her impending death, Hazumu continues to live her life and comes to fully accept her fate. The day Hazumu is appointed to die, she falls off the school's roof and Tomari jumps off the roof in an attempt to save her. While in mid-air, Hitoshi interferes by transferring the necessary "life grains" to Hazumu, and both survive the fall. When they later wake up in the infirmary, Hazumu confesses her love to Tomari, effectively choosing her over Yasuna.
The anime ends differently, with no life-threatening situation and Hazumu choosing Yasuna in order to help cure her worsening sight problem as it begins to degrade so she can no longer see girls as well. Afterwards however, Yasuna, who becomes able to see all people again, decides to break up with Hazumu, saying she can stand on her own, and in the follow-up original video animation episode, Hazumu confesses her love to Tomari on Christmas and the two get married in a ceremony held by Hitoshi.
Production
When it was decided that Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl would begin serialization in MediaWorks' manga magazine Dengeki Daioh, Satoru Akahori wondered what kind of a message he could send to the readers, and eventually decided he wanted to write a steady message of "true love". Akahori noted that up to the creation of Kashimashi, the works that he created were far apart from the concept of true love, and much of his previous work involved a lot of ecchi content which Akahori was attempting to avoid in Kashimashi. He wondered if the story would be interesting, and if he could surprise normal readers and fans of his previous works, if he wrote a true love story without much ecchi or fan service.When thinking on how to write about true love, Akahori considered laughingly that in normal relationships between boys and girls, it eventually tends towards having sex. In order to avoid this, he chose to have a cast of female main characters, but he felt that audiences have experienced this before and that it thus would not be enough. This is when he thought up the idea of changing the main character from a boy to a girl. Akahori knew this would be a problem, since normally changing a person's gender would cause complications, one of them being that the now-female character would invariably want to return to being male. He knew that there were a few problems that could not be avoided, but he wanted to remove the desire to turn back into a male. For this reason, Akahori devised that the character would not want to turn back into a male if there was the impact of the entire world already having accepted the fact that his gender had changed. To do this, Akahori decided to have the alien who crashed into the character to not only revive the character as a female, but to broadcast this over the entire world, which is what happens at the beginning of Kashimashi. Afterwards, Akahori felt it necessary to expand on the alien's role in the story. At this point in the development process, Akahori felt he could now begin writing the story.
The title Kashimashi loosely translates as "noisy, boisterous, or clamorous" and is derived from the Japanese phrase, "When three women gather, it is noisy". The main title was originally romanized as Kasimasi in accordance with Kunrei-shiki romanization, but this was later changed in the English adaptations to Kashimashi in accordance with Hepburn romanization.
Media
Manga
The Kashimashi manga is written by Satoru Akahori and illustrated by Yukimaru Katsura. The original character designs were created by Sukune Inugami and the school uniform was designed by the company Cospa. It was serialized between the July 2004 and May 2007 issues of the monthly manga magazine Dengeki Daioh, sold between May 21, 2004, and March 21, 2007, respectively. Five bound volumes were released in Japan between January 27, 2005, and May 26, 2007, published under MediaWorks' Dengeki Comics imprint, concluding the series at thirty-five chapters.The manga was licensed for an English-language release in North America by Seven Seas Entertainment using the revised Hepburn romanization of the title, Kashimashi, unlike the traditional name of Kasimasi. The first volume was released on December 25, 2006, with volumes released every three to four months until the fifth volume was published on March 18, 2008. Seven Seas re-released the manga in a two-volume omnibus collection of roughly 500 pages each; volume one was published in June 2009, followed by volume two in December 2009. The series is also licensed in French by Ki-oon and in Chinese in Taiwan by Kadokawa Media.
Internet radio shows
There have been two Internet radio shows for the Kashimashi series. The first show, entitled Kana, Yui, Yukari's Kashima Radio, was produced by Beat Net Radio beginning with a pre-broadcast on September 30, 2005, and concluding on October 27, 2006, with fifty-six episodes. As implied in the title, the show was hosted by Kana Ueda, Yui Horie, and Yukari Tamura, who voiced Hazumu, Yasuna, and Tomari in the anime, respectively. Multiple guests appeared on the show such as Yūmao, who sung the anime's ending theme "Michishirube", or other voice actors from the anime such as Ryōko Shintani, who voiced Jan Pu, and Daisuke Ono, who voiced Asuta. The radio show's opening theme song was "Compass: Egao no Yukue" sung by Ueda, Horie, and Tamura. Listeners could submit contributions to the radio show via a form online. An audio CD containing the episodes between broadcast September 2005 and early 2006 went on sale on May 24, 2006.The second Internet radio show, entitled Masumi Ryōko's Kashima Radio PC, was also produced by Beat Net Radio, but was only available via podcasts on Bandai Visual Podcast. This show was one of only two radio programs ever distributed on Bandai Visual Podcast. The show was broadcast between December 22, 2005, and April 27, 2006, concluding with ten episodes, and was hosted by Masumi Asano and Ryōko Shintani; Asano voice Ayuki in the anime.