Middle School. The threshold to puberty, and the beginning of the end of childhood innocence. Shuichi Nitori and his new friend Yoshino Takatsuki have happy homes, loving families, and are well-liked by their classmates. But they share a secret that further complicates a time of life that is awkward for anyone: Shuichi is a boy who wants to be a girl, and Yoshino is a girl who wants to be a boy.

Wandering Son has a story and art by Shimura Takako. Translated by Rachel Thorn. Published by Takumigraphics ( ‎September 15, 2026). Rated T.

Erica Friedman
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Shu-chan knows, in his heart, he wants to be (is) a girl. Everyone has always told him he's like a girl, and he finds himself looking at pretty dresses with longing. And loathing. And fear. And desire. When he meets Yoshino, a girl who wishes she were a boy, his life becomes in many ways more complicated. Together, paralleling each other, they will begin to forge new paths for themselves.

What Wandering Son does well is showing how complicated tween life is. Many adults tend to look back on those years with a blank slate mentality. It was so simple! We say, when in reality, early adolescence is a mire of changing relationships and responsibilities, navigating bullies, and other class weirdoes, while your own body gets weird, and adults are weird, and it's all so freaking annoying. We see Shu trying to keep his head down, while other classmates make it harder by trying to help or hurt.

When Yoshino introduces Shu to an adult trans woman, Yuki, he sees an example of what his life might be. Whether it is a good or bad example remains to be seen, assuming that you have not yet read this series. Takako Shimura is well-known for her sensitive takes on gender and sexual minorities. I've been following her since her first story about a trans kid, Boku ha Onna no Ko, and, in all that time, I have had a complicated and somewhat uncomfortable relationship with her work.

Shimura's takes on queer lives are nuanced and thoughtful. It is also true that I and many other queer folks feel uncomfortable with a person who does not identify as queer spending so much time digging into queer lives for “content.”

Shimura's art and storytelling have evolved significantly over the years, from her breakout hits Sweet Blue Flowers and Wandering Son, both of which had anime long before a significant western audience was really ready to appreciate them, through her recent fabulous series Even Though We're Adults, which was adapted into a live-action series. Wandering Son is early enough in her work that the narrative feels bumpy, uneven, sometimes random, shoving characters in and out of the story, which works as a facsimile of middle-school life with changing schools, meeting and losing people in your orbit, and growing into a whole human being.

Shimura's art here is already fully formed, with often sparse panels and clean lines. She hasn't yet leaned into the watercolor pens she later will, to create the color art that punctuates her manga.

This is Fantagraphics' second attempt at this series, and while this doesn't have the color art of the covers, it is overall a much better edition. The double-volume setup allows the story much evener flow.

Wandering Son is a unique and sensitive look at gender identity in early adolescence.

Rebecca Silverman
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Gender, if you think about it, is really very silly. Just because you have this set of genitals means that you have to like that specific thing? Or have particular skills that are in no way tied to your hormones? Because your body is capable of something, that means you need to do it, if not build your identity around it? Even cisgender people can feel this disconnect, but I imagine it's many times worse if you're trans.

Takako Shimura's Wandering Son is a deceptively quiet examination of realizing that you're not who the world expects you to be based on your body. Its greatest strength is that it treats the inner lives of pre-teens with respect. Shu and Yoshino are young, yes, but that doesn't automatically make their lives easy. They're trying to find their way, to reconcile what they want and who they are with society's strictures. Shu at one point expresses jealousy of Yoshino, noting that it's in some ways easier for them to express their gender because girls can go both ways – they can wear feminine and masculine clothes and be accepted either way. But for boys to wear skirts or dresses or ribbons is frowned upon, making Shu's journey feel more fraught, at least in her own mind. Shimura shows this discomfort through her simple art style in ways that are impressive. Whether it's just Shu sitting all curled up, trying to take up as little space as possible, or the scene during the school trip when all the boys are comparing penises in the bath and Shu just looks down and away from her own body, the small gestures shine through. This also contrasts well with Yoshino's blunt words about menstrual cramps; Yoshino has a very different relationship with their body than Shu does. It's not a happy relationship, but it is a frank one.

I've always enjoyed Shimura's work. Wandering Son is one of her more emotionally fraught stories, and I really can't say how accurate it is, since it's about a branch of the LGBTQIA+ tree I don't live on. But if you missed it the first time it was released in English, I do recommend picking it up. It's not perfect, but neither are people, and that's something that she captures alongside the crystallization of just how hard it can be to be in the sixth grade and be different.

Caitlin Moore
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Somehow, I have ended up in a position where most of my friends are trans. It probably stems from a combination of living in Seattle, being a fan of Homestuck, and spending a lot of time on Tumblr. Either way, it puts me in an interesting position when it comes to reading a story like Wandering Son, a coming-of-age story about trans youth written by a cis woman.

Shuichi Nitori is only in elementary school, but he can already feel a shameful desire unspooling in him: he wants to be a girl. He quickly makes friends with some of the girls in his class, including Yoshino Takatsuki, a girl who wants to be a boy. (This is where I switch pronouns.) Many of the situations and feelings Shuichi experiences track with what my friends have described: spending a long time looking in the mirror because something as simple as a headband gives her gender euphoria, a mixture of excitement and shame at being able to dress as her real gender, feeling alienated in single-sex groups, and so on. Shimura centers these feelings alongside all the usual pangs of early adolescence and the change that brings along with it. It's lovely, sensitive, and written with the utmost sympathy.

Unfortunately, there is one glaring issue in the form of Yuki, an adult trans woman who takes interest in Shuichi and Yoshino. I wish I liked her; she plays the role of a mentor to the two children, a sympathetic adult who has gone through something similar to them as a happy, self-actualized adult living life on her own terms. On the other hand, she's a sexual predator who picks up Yoshino at a fast food joint and tries to kiss them. Her boyfriend grabs the children by their groin. It adds an icky cast, and it undermines the manga's thesis about living one's truth.

Still, nobody does it quite like Takako Shimura. Both her art and her storytelling are simple and understated, but still expressive. It's efficient, in the best meaning of the word.

Wandering Son has developed somewhat of a fraught reputation: when it debuted in 2003, it was genuinely ahead of its time, and spoke to something inside people that little media had the courage to at the time. However, its most glaring issues reinforce some of the nastiest cultural narratives that are gaining prominence in many parts of the world. Wandering Son may be worth a read, but please proceed with caution.