Tomoko Yamashita is adept at writing stories that explore humanity. Although not many of her works have been translated into English, the two anime adaptations she's garnered – The Night Beyond the Tricorner Window and Journal with Witch – both amply demonstrate her thoughtful exploration of identity, gender, and sexuality alongside complex emotions and neurodifferences. (The Night Beyond the Tricorner Window's original manga is available in English, while Journal with Witch's is available in French.) Both of those are longer series, giving Yamashita ample space to explore, but White Note Pad, quietly released by Shodensha as chapters rather than a collected volume, is only six chapters long. This makes it an excellent example of Yamashita's skills in a story that is much more condensed.

We don't see the start of the story, which is an interesting choice. The series opens with protagonists Hana and Shogo having already undergone the inciting incident: that one day, they woke up in each other's bodies. That means that seventeen-year-old high school girl Hana is now a thirty-eight-year-old man, while the reverse is true for Shogo. They have no contact with each other until a year later, when “Shogo” shows up at “Hana”'s workplace and they recognize each other. Both immediately notice changes: Shogo, in Hana's body, has a more confident bearing and has become a fashion model, while Hana, in Shogo's body, has lost “his” job as an auto mechanic and is now making deliveries, and Hana's defeated body language has transferred over to her new body. Both are shocked, and “Hana” quickly works to get “Shogo” a better job at the magazine "she” models for, concerned that “Shogo” is doing so poorly.

While at first this looks like a typical gender swap story, wherein one party does better than the other for various gendered reasons, in this case, it comes down to the basic personalities and situations they find themselves in. Shogo, as Hana, gains a built-in support system – Hana's a child attending high school and living at home with her parents. But Hana, as Shogo is dropped into a world of adult responsibilities she can't handle: a job that relies on skills she doesn't have, an apartment where she lives alone. She's lucky that Shogo's friends from work step up to help, which is, frankly, the only reason she's still functioning when she meets “Hana.” Simply put, Shogo was handed the freedom to make something different and better in his life, while Hana was dropped in at the deep end.

The idea hinted at in the text is that, as a man, Hana was also given an advantage, but she doesn't see it that way. Even in Shogo's body, Hana thinks of herself as a girl, and she's aghast at her new form. When “Hana” tells “Shogo” that “she” had sex, there's a major disconnect that opens up. Hana can't imagine ever using her own body that way, and when Shogo remarks that Hana must have been playing around with his body, she tells him that she hasn't – she finds his penis repulsive and has even been sitting down to urinate. Meanwhile, Shogo is very much enjoying sex in a female body, even though he doesn't fully recognize the risk of pregnancy or understand the menstrual cycle. That makes this story not just about gender, but about sexuality – Shogo is allosexual while Hana is recognizably asexual. (That doesn't always translate to sex repulsed, but in Hana's case, that does seem to be at least a little true.) Shogo can't begin to fathom that Hana hasn't even been masturbating, while Hana can't quite grasp that Shogo wanted to sleep with someone. At one point, “Hana” tells “Shogo” that it doesn't matter if “he” wants to sleep with a man, but “Shogo” repeatedly denies having any sexual attraction to anyone.

This becomes an interesting statement on gender in and of itself. In a female body, Hana's asexuality might not have been remarked upon quite so strongly (although there are always people ready to tell you you're somehow wrong for it), but in a male body, it's seen as odd, if not wrong. While Shogo does eventually more or less come to terms with it, his attitude does make Hana recall feeling like she was missing some essentially human part, which is not uncommon in people grappling with their asexuality in the face of an aggressively allosexual world. There's also an implication that it's Shogo's masculine confidence that allows him to forge a career as a fashion model in Hana's body, while Hana's feminine lack of confidence forces her to leave the stereotypically masculine sphere in which Shogo was employed. There's a lot to ponder, and Yamashita doesn't just hand us the answers. We have to interpret things as they best make sense to each of us individually as an outside viewer of the story.

White Note Pad is a story that demands introspection. It asks us to think about the nature of gender and sexuality, and how both of those interact with the world at large. It points out the issues that both genders face, albeit with a focus on some of the unique ways female bodies are vulnerable. It isn't an easy read, and it should stick with you long after you close out the e-reader. But it's a story that's worth reading, even if it never fully resolves in your mind.