ボーイズ・ラン・ザ・ライオット, Bōizu Ran za Raiotto
Genre: Coming-of-age, Seinen, School Life, LGBTQ
Written By: Keito Gaku
Publisher: Kodansha
Volumes: 4
Please hold your tomatoes until after this review. I know I’ve been slacking with my Manga Mondays but I’ll try to stay on top of them! Let’s get back into BRTR!
Summary
Okay, there’s so much going on in this volume, its great! We’re still feeling the effects of Tsubasa aka Wing outing Ryo on their youtube channel. Because of it, Ryo and Co. see an increase in sales but Ryo is more worried about what will happen to him now. There was a lot of “I don’t care, it’s cool’ and the occasional, “It’s weird when you think about it, he’s been in the girls bathroom.” Jin actually goes to ask Tsubasa if the video can be deleted but they have a policy of never deleting a video on their account. Jin was pretty annoyed since it seemed as if Tsubasa was trying to push their choice onto Ryo. He tells him not to expect others to have the same strength as he does. Yutaka states they got sales out of it which is what they wanted and Itsuka just thinks its all wrong.
This seems to annoy Tsubasa after they leave but Yutaka tries to reassure him that he isn’t wrong and the key is for Ryo to just be himself and keep moving foward. In the next page, Chika is seen walking home, pretty upset about not knowing about Ryo since they are best friends. Ryo has been staying home from school and Mizuki decides to pop on over and check on him. Chika sees them together and gets a little shocked. In the next chapter they end up talking and Chika asks why Ryo never confided in her. This leads to her apologizing for not being more understanding and noticing how he felt. Then there’s this awkward moment where Chika admits she saw Ryo and Mizuki and said they “suit each other.”
Chihiro continues to be annoying, trying to say they were using a trick to gain more fans and sales. Jin looks like he’s on his last nerve but he calms down and ignores his words. Ryo ends up finally coming back to school and takes the chance to speak to his class about what’s going on. Surprisingly, they take it kind of okay? Chihiro tries to be annoying again but Yutaka hits him with a pencil bag I believe and tells him to shut up already. Also, Ryo decides to reveal a new design basically describing how he feels when it comes to why he uses clothing to express himself. Ryo, Jin, and Itsuka have a meeting and decide they don’t need Tsubasa’s help anymore and want to try and do their own thing.
The next chapters focus on Tsubasa. We get a little more background on his story. It seems he is genderfluid and feels both male and female but due to sleeping with a woman, she posts a photo of Tsubasa without the makeup and immediately receives backlash for faking! It becomes a whole mess. Thankfully, Ryo talks to him and motivates him to start being more honest with himself and his viewers. This time Ryo designs a shirt inspired by Tsubasa’s story of Yutaka of saying that Tsubasa’s gender was none of his business and that Tsubasa-chan was Tsubasa-chan.
Characters
There weren’t really any new characters introduced this volume.
Conclusion
This volume was once again packed with drama. I really don’t understand what is so hard about not outing someone! It doesn’t matter what YOU think, you need to be comfortable and considerate of the other person. Everyone except Ryou and Itsuka were kind of irritating me. I can also understand why Chika might be disappointed but some of the things she said made me side eye her. I can’t tell if she’s being genuine or really dense. Maybe it’s just me but if a friend of mine came out but not specifically to me, I wouldn’t mind. Everyone has their reasons. It was just giving ‘how can I make this about me’ but I could be wrong!
I’m excited for the next volume and hopefully both Tsubasa and Ryou can overcome the hate. Also, I hope that we get to see more of Mizuki and Shimada in future volumes and I’m also interested to see if they have now caught the eye of that one guy Jin farted on in the first volume 😂
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