Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl

Plot

The story of Kashimashi begins when a high school boy named Hazumu Osaragi confesses his love to his close friend and classmate Yasuna Kamiizumi, only to be turned down immediately. Heartbroken, Hazumu goes up Mt. Kashima, where an alien spacecraft accidentally crashes into and kills him. The alien pilot, Hitoshi Sora, brings Hazumu back to life to fix the mistake, but in the process, Hazumu is regenerated as a girl, all the way down to her DNA. This transformation becomes the driving force for the relationships that develop throughout the series.

When Hazumu returns to school, Yasuna surprisingly admits she loves Hazumu, which only adds to Hazumu's confusion as she tries to navigate life as a girl. Yasuna herself has a peculiar condition: she cannot see males, perceiving them only as a gray, hazy blur. Meanwhile, Hazumu's childhood friend Tomari Kurusu, an athletic tomboy, struggles to accept the change. As Yasuna grows closer to Hazumu, Tomari begins to recognize her own romantic feelings, especially after she catches Hazumu and Yasuna kissing after school. This sparks a conflict between Yasuna and Tomari as they compete for Hazumu's affection, leaving Hazumu unable to choose between them and creating a love triangle among the three female leads. Hazumu's best male friend, Asuta Soro, also develops romantic feelings for Hazumu but tries hard to suppress them. Tomari's intelligent, science-minded friend Ayuki Mari watches the love triangle unfold from a distance without getting involved.

The stoic alien Hitoshi came to Earth to study human emotions, particularly love, in hopes of saving his own species. His people abandoned their emotions long ago, losing their sexual drive and causing their population to steadily decline. Hitoshi moves into Hazumu's home, welcomed by her parents, and brings along an artificially intelligent gynoid named Jan Pu, who serves as his spaceship's autopilot. Jan Pu's body is modeled after Hazumu's female form, and she has an energetic, childish personality.

Production

When Satoru Akahori learned that Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl would run in MediaWorks' Dengeki Daioh, he started thinking about what message he could give readers. He settled on a consistent theme of "true love." Before this project, Akahori's work had little to do with that concept, and he had often filled his stories with ecchi content. With Kashimashi, he wanted to avoid that. He questioned whether a true love story with minimal ecchi or fan service could be interesting, and whether it might surprise both regular readers and fans of his earlier manga.

As he considered how to write about true love, Akahori laughed to himself, noting that in typical boy-girl relationships, things usually lead toward sex. To sidestep that, he decided to make all the main characters female. But he felt audiences had seen that setup before, so it wasn't enough on its own. That's when he came up with the idea of changing the main character from a boy into a girl. Akahori knew this would create problems, because a character who undergoes a gender change would normally want to turn back into a male. He accepted that some complications were unavoidable, but he wanted to remove that desire to revert. His solution was to have the entire world accept the change as fact. So he had the alien that crashed into the character not only revive him as a female, but also broadcast this transformation across the globe—exactly what happens at the start of the story. After that, Akahori felt he needed to expand the alien's role in the plot. At that point, he believed he could finally begin writing the manga.

The title Kashimashi loosely means "noisy, boisterous, or clamorous" and comes from the Japanese saying, "When three women gather, it is noisy." The original romanization was Kasimasi, following Kunrei-shiki romanization, but English adaptations later changed it to Kashimashi to match Hepburn romanization.

Media

The manga series Kashimashi was created by writer Satoru Akahori and artist Yukimaru Katsura, with original character designs by Sukune Inugami and the school uniform designed by the company Cospa. It ran in the monthly magazine Dengeki Daioh from the July 2004 issue through the May 2007 issue, meaning the individual issues were on sale from May 21, 2004, to March 21, 2007. In Japan, MediaWorks' Dengeki Comics imprint published five collected volumes between January 27, 2005, and May 26, 2007, wrapping up the story at thirty-five chapters. For its North American English release, Seven Seas Entertainment picked up the license and used the revised Hepburn romanization Kashimashi rather than the traditional Kasimasi. That publisher put out the first volume on December 25, 2006, and then released the remaining four volumes at intervals of three to four months, with the fifth arriving on March 18, 2008. Later, Seven Seas brought out a two-volume omnibus edition, each roughly 500 pages, with volume one in June 2009 and volume two in December 2009. Elsewhere, Ki-oon handles the French edition, and Kadokawa Media manages the Chinese version in Taiwan. Two Internet radio programs accompanied the series. The first, Kana, Yui, Yukari's Kashima Radio, came from Beat Net Radio and started with a pre-broadcast on September 30, 2005, ending on October 27, 2006, after fifty-six episodes. As the title suggests, the hosts were Kana Ueda, Yui Horie, and Yukari Tamura—the voice actors for Hazumu, Yasuna, and Tomari in the anime. Guests included Yūmao, who performed the anime's ending theme Michishirube, as well as other anime cast members like Ryōko Shintani (Jan Pu) and Daisuke Ono (Asuta). The show's opening theme was Compass: Egao no Yukue, sung by Ueda, Horie, and Tamura. Listeners could send in contributions through an online form. An audio CD featuring episodes from September 2005 to early 2006 went on sale May 24, 2006. The second radio show, Masumi Ryōko's Kashima Radio PC, was also produced by Beat Net Radio but distributed exclusively as podcasts on Bandai Visual Podcast, one of only two programs ever offered on that platform. It ran from December 22, 2005, to April 27, 2006, totaling ten episodes, and was hosted by Masumi Asano and Ryōko Shintani; Asano voiced Ayuki in the anime.

Reception

In July 2007, the English-language edition of Kashimashi became Seven Seas Entertainment's top-selling title. The first manga volume earned praise from outlets like Newtype USA, which named it Book of the Month for December 2006. That review highlighted Seven Seas' fan-focused translation approach, which kept honorifics and much of the original Japanese wordplay rather than adapting the humor for a mainstream American audience. It described the series as a clever spin on the classic love triangle and a charming change from typical boy-meets-girl stories. At Anime News Network, Carlo Santos noted that the first volume's fast pace creates a mix of moods: a gender-bending comedy with sci-fi elements, but above all a surprisingly touching romance that challenges the standard love triangle. IGN's A. E. Sparrow pointed out enjoyable moments like Hazumu's awkward attempt to buy his first bra and the comic relief from the aliens responsible for his situation.

The second volume also received a positive review from Anime News Network's Theron Martin, who said it fully embraces romantic comedy, packed with humorous asides and physical comedy while still tackling the serious, complicated love triangle forming around Hazumu. He added that the story's dramatic side is what truly keeps readers engaged. In his review of volume three, Martin observed that artist Yukimaru Katsura's backgrounds are kept simple, but the strength lies in character designs and costumes. The female cast offers a strong visual contrast, though the male characters, while easy to tell apart, are less distinctive. In a joint review of volumes four and five, Martin called them a solid conclusion to this charming yuri series, noting that the manga handles the ending quite differently from the anime and should satisfy those who were disappointed by the anime's conclusion.