Some people actually just started reading this on Discord using the unofficial WaniKani book club server. They are only three chapters in at this point. I’m also taking this opportunity to reread the series.
ぜんぶきみの性 (series) | L22 is literally about two main characters who switch back and forth between male and female. It can be a tad ecchi, but I’ve been able to bear that part and have enjoyed it overall. I still have to get back to it to read the last few volumes.
I recognize the title (and the concept), yet the book isn’t in my TBR. Your comment makes me suspect that there’s a reason for that, but I’ll still tentatively wishlist it.
Edit: otherwise, I’m already behind on almost all the book clubs I joined, adding more doesn’t seem like a good idea right now 
I’m almost certain you’re already familiar with らんま1/2 (series) | L23, but I feel like it has to be mentioned here in case anyone hasn’t heard of it yet. I’ll have to check out some of the other recommendations from the last few posts too!
Edit: just realized I didn’t actually explain anything about the series I’m recommending, whoops .
らんま1/2 is a 1987 manga by legendary manga author Takahashi Rumiko (めぞん一刻、犬夜叉、うる星やつら、MAO) where the main character turns into a girl when splashed with cold water and back to a boy when splashed/soaked in warm water. Also other people turn into other things and there’s a lot of ridiculous fighting and shenanigans and a panda.
I have watched the whole anime as a kid and read the manga series in French, so I would say yes 
I’m thinking of re-reading it in Japanese someday.
No worries, even the ones you mentioned there are useful to know. I think I’ll start keeping a note of all the ones I can find so I can try to compile a list. Might take me a while though. 
ボクガール, has some stuff that goes well beyond fan service. (I actually appreciated the fan service parts tho, because it felt appropriate for the series… normally I dislike fan service b/c it feels disruptive or out of place). It definitely gets very ecchi tho, not always in a good way.
ぜんぶきみの性 I liked, but not as much (more serious, and some things hit too close to home), but of the two, I would more readily recommend it. It’s pretty boring for the first 2 volumes, imo.
Re-reading/watching らんま1/2, and really enjoying it (mixed feelings about the anime as an adaptation). In contrast to the other 2, Ranma isn’t really thematically about gender. It also doesn’t rely on an interfering 神様 to move things forward. I’ve been enjoying it the most of the 3, so far! enough to impulsively order a set of all 38 volumes
There isn’t any switching back and forth but 天使な小生意気 is kind of genderbender-y.
The main character was a boy who was turned into a beautiful girl when they were young. It’s a comedy, delinquenty sort of manga, but also romance, and the main character being sort of split between whether they are a boy or a girl.
Also, 放課後保健室. Its set in a weird kind of school and the main character has a male top half but female bottom half. They struggle with their identity.
Seconded, that one is one of my go-to recommendations for that genre. The themes discussed are a bit heavy at times, though, possible trigger warnings.
I am looking for a novel wit a great relationship between guys (bromance vibes) no bl please
books I already read and is fav of mine
I would prefer it if it wasn’t light novel
@omk3 Are you still collecting prefecture books? I just found out that 後鳥羽伝説殺人事件 「浅見光彦」シリーズ | L30?? is set in Hiroshima prefecture (and features some Hiroshima-ben for those keen on dialects). Can’t say much about the book itself so far other than my guess is that it’s a bit harder than L30 and that it features a lot of policemen 
(Also I think that series does a lot of sightseeing around the country, so you might be able to fill some more slots with it.)
Using series whose gimmick is being set all over the country feels a little like cheating 
I didn’t say “you have to use them” though
(and yes, it crossed my mind as well that it’s a bit like cheating 
but the first volume should be ok, I guess?)
So my mom and I are doing our own little mini book bingo, and one of our squares was “translated into English”. I thought it’d be a fun idea if I read something in Japanese while she read the translated version, so I’m looking around for suggestions. Requirements:
I’ve been looking through @Naphthalene’s fantasy list, since I figured there were a few things I could investigate there, but I wanted to see what else was out there I could consider.
how fast paced are you looking for exactly? Some possibilities:
Unfortunately most of what I’ve read so far is manga or slower fantasy. Hopefully other folks have more useful suggestions!
I haven’t read either but perhaps “Brave Story” or “The Book of Heroes” by Miyuki Miyabe could be what you’re looking for? I think they are on the YA/middle grade side, but look like nice immersive fantasy reads.
I am planning to read that book soon ™ as well. I made a reservation at my local library about a month ago, but I’m still third in line.
From the list, I would recommend 西の善き魔女/The Good Witch of the West. It is YA, and fairly predictable in terms of plot if you have read any number of YA fantasy, but I liked it.
I have read all of those (well, the original version in the case of SAO, but still) and I wouldn’t recommend them in this case. Both 痛いのは嫌なので防御力に極振りしたいと思います。 | L28 and SAO are video games, so the fantasy world building is very lacking (or straight up makes no sense in the case of BouFuri). ダンジョンに出会いを求めるのは間違っているだろうか 1 | L33 also has a video game-like system, although it is justified in world, but the main problem is that it contains women with absurdly large breasts that make squeaky noises when pressed against a hard surface (which seems to happen unreasonably frequently). Re:ゼロから始める異世界生活 1 | L37 maybe, if you can stomach the annoying main character. He quickly becomes unbearable as the series goes along, but at least there is some decent world building (although not really in the first volume).
Progressive is reaaaally different than the originals. I also wouldn’t recommend the original series here.
One of the things I like with Progressive is that there is a lot of world building. While it truly kicks in starting in book 2, there’s still a decent amount in book 1.
Boufuri is kinda funny… Like the author clearly has a really solid understanding of MMOs, yet made an MMO that’s ridiculously implausible.
Agreed re: DanMachi. For Re:Zero - I didn’t think Tsubasa was so bad in the anime… But then again sometimes mildly unbearable anime chars become much more unbearable in the LNs. Now that I think about it, he is kinda annoying at the beginning… But that’s also sorta the point
かがみの孤城 could be a good choice. It’s definitely reads like YA to me. I think it meets most of your criteria, including the mystery elements (with the caveat that some of the mysteries are easy to guess while others are less so). The only thing it doesn’t clearly hit is “fast-paced”. While I personally found the pace perfectly fine, some people have complained that it’s slow. Another added bonus is that it has an excellent audiobook if you’re into that. The English translated title is “Lonely Castle in the Mirror” when you go looking for the English version.
Ah, fair enough then. I guess I can’t comment on it in that case.
To be fair, it does remind me of Ragnarok Online in the way that you have a bunch of completely unrelated environments somehow melded together. That being said, RO is the only MMO I have ever played in my life, so I might be biased here (when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail…). That being said, SAO also had superposed levels that were completely independent from each other, so I just thought it was a standard thing in (Japanese?) modern MMOs. I guess the weird combination of skills the main character has in BouFuri should have been immediately nerfed if that was a real world game, but whatever.
My main issue with the series is that there’s no real plot per se. The main character just gets stronger (and so do people around her) and battles just end up being increasingly longer lists of skill activations…
That being said, while I don’t want to make any assumptions about @eefara’s mother, I don’t think I would recommend either to my own mother (who also likes fantasy).
I have been told that, and that’s how I kept going way past my breaking point with this series (I read up to volume 14, plus a summary of volume 15 to finish the arc because I just couldn’t bear it anymore). I was told that he grows as a person, but then, he didn’t? If anything, he just gets worse after the witch trial thing around volume 12-ish.
Oh, true. That’s a good one too. It really feels like a YA novel to me as well.
I also think the pace is fine, but I read the book in 2 or 3 days, I think. I guess it might be much more annoying at a slower pace, especially if you figure the trick early on (which is honestly hard to avoid if you have any knowledge about [something] in Japan… which would be pretty much everyone in the original audience? But could still delay guessing for people abroad who are not familiar with it).
Could be part of it. I read it in about two weeks which, given the length of the book, was a pretty fast pace for me. But I could certainly understand it feeling slow if read over 3-6 months in a book club.
