English Dub Review: Hana-Kimi “Because I’m a Guy!”

Overview:

Dorm 2 is being renovated, so Mizuki needs a place to stay for 2 weeks. Desperate, she turns to Umeda…

Our Take(Spoilers):

With her dorm being renovated, Mizuki has to find somewhere to stay. Umeda ends up accidentally coming through when his sister, who runs a boarding house, needs help for the summer. Mizuki, Sano, and Nakatsu all join her as well. But it’s Mizuki’s interactions with another member of the staff that raise some interesting questions about gender identity. It’s another example of how adapting a story from thirty years ago can have some issues.

We know Mizuki is a girl; she views herself as a girl, but she’s pretending to be a guy to get closer to Sano. This employee doesn’t know that, though, and the fact that he keeps insisting that she is leaning to disrespect because he doesn’t know her at all. I am fully aware it was a different time, and that’s how a lot of male characters act in a story like this back then, but that doesn’t make it any less of a problem. I’m going to give the character the benefit of the doubt, and maybe as things progress, he won’t seem like such a dick. After all, we need to give people chances, but it was something that added to my dislike of this show.