As a school girl, she thought she was in love with Them, her dashing, female classmate. But they weren’t a girl at all, so what does that mean for her love?
Published in Japan as a “yuri” work, that designation might come as a surprise given that “They” (no formal names are given for either of the characters) is clearly not a woman. When the two meet again, the first time in years since they left school, They is on testosterone and says that they feel like a boy now, although that might change in the future. Isaki Uta explicitly calls them nonbinary in the author’s note and, given that the Irodori page identifies them as a trans man, I think this is the first time I’ve come across a trans nonbinary character in manga (in real life, some nonbinary folks use the trans label in order to convey how they approach their feelings on gender but not everyone does). Irodori does list this comic under both the yuri and LGTBQ+ tags which I thought was the right call since, in a sense, this is still a “yuri” comic.
Much like one of Uta’s previous works, Mine-kun Is Asexual, Silkscreen is more concerned with the unnamed female partner in this past relationship and how they are struggling with understanding the other person, not the struggles of the other person themselves. I do think it’s an odd choice that Uta keeps writing romance stories from the “outsider” perspective, and not from the inherently more interesting perspective of the “other” character, but looking at Silkscreen by itself I do think the set-up works this time. Our female lead hasn’t seen Them in years but still struggles with working out if she was truly in love with Them and she also finds herself struggling with re-finding the passion and creativity she had for art during those same school days.
By tying those two bits together, the female lead gets an actual arc of coming to understand herself and I think it works well as a messy story about the messy emotions you don’t expect in adult life. It’s not my favorite of Uta’s works so far but I do hope we get some kind of print release of their works someday, I’d hate for these stories to be ephemeral, digital-only copies forever.
Title: Silkscreen
Genre: Romance
Publisher: Irodori Inc
Creator: Isaki Uta
Localization Staff: Itsuki (Translator), Time Sun (Letterer), CC Sū, Katarina Kunstelj (Compilers), Zhuchika, On Takahashi (QA)
A review copy was provided by Irodori Inc.