Half Half is one of the very few manga that actually attempts to have an openly transgender character. I myself am a trans woman so I was hoping this to be somewhat meaningful to me. Sadly this manga while expressing some good ideas is held back far too much by its shortcomings. The biggest downfall of this manga is its dialogue and paneling as both of which are to be quite frank pretty awful. Lets start with the paneling. Often times while reading I would have no clue what order to read the different panels. This isnt helped by there often times being a LOT of text on each page making this feel like a complete slog to get through. The reason for this insane amount of text on each page is due to the fact that this manga is allergic to show dont tell. EVERYTHING that happens in the story is said out loud or in a characters head. Even if the manga decides to visually convey a plot point it will usually just have a character repeat exactly what the reader just saw. This unnecessarily bloats the amount of text that must be read all of which being in an incredibly confusing manner due to the poor paneling. Finally the mangas dialogue which as stated before it uses to describe everything just flat out sucks. This might be due to a poor translation as only one exists online but it was almost unreadable. Nothing really makes much sense and none of the characters ever seem like they are actually talking. The conversations jump around a ton without any flow and even the internal thoughts of characters are stated at strange times often not making much sense anyway. The art certainly does not help this as the author has awful same face syndrome making everything even more confusing as some characters almost look alike. So this manga is pretty bad on a technical level but can it make it up with story and representation? The story for Half/Half is... not the best... It is very short and doesnt fully explore all the themes it seemed to attempt to tackle. I really wish Marus story was finished but sadly we dont get to see where she ends up. There are some very stand out chapters such as the marriage one and the chapter where Itsuki helps out another trans girl. However there are also some very bad chapters such as the finale. The first half of the story is pretty alright the way it establishes Hina and the other characters support of Itsukis Identity is very well done. What is not well done however is the way it handles Itsuki and Hinas relationship. Both Hina and Itsuki believe that they like men but end up falling in love with each other. This is a very delicate subject matter and could be a very interesting dive into sexuality but it is not handled well. The finale handles Hina and Itsukis very delicate relationship in a very... strange way. It doesnt really resolve the main issue sexuality and gender between them and just kind of puts them together. As a trans lesbian this just doesnt at all feel like a way to explore the relation of gender being trans and sexuality especially involving a lesbian relationship. The author could be going for describing CompHet but it doesnt really come off that way and instead chooses to be more like some shoujo bullshit of I dont care about gender as long as its you teehee. The end was also quite annoying to me personally as I have never liked this kind of drama on top of its already poor execution. Overall It has some good moments and some bad ones but the story isnt all that terrible. What is terrible however is the representation. I will overlook the constant referral to Itsuki as he as it is likely due to the poor translation of the series rather than the writing itself. What I will not overlook however is the actual constant misgendering of her as a gay man. She herself along with almost every other character constantly calls Itsuki a gay man. Not transgender or transsexual or even transvestite but a fucking gay man. The worst part is that she herself does not give any push back for this whatsoever and even calls herself that. While you could say that this is a product of its time I think what is more likely is that a cis person wrote this without proper understanding of what a trans person would feel. Whats also bad is that Itsuki plays into some harmful trans stereotypes such as hitting on dudes a ton and being overly sexual at times. Thankfully these are few and far between and really arent as bad as other stuff from this mangas time. Despite these bad things there are some things done right. Everything involving Itsukis family and Maru was handled incredibly well compared to the rest of the manga. These were also some of the few times when the trans characters were actually referred to by their preferred gender. I also like the way that Itsuki doesnt back down on being a woman before adversary and the only time she does she is picked right back up by those dear to her. The worst part of this rep is with Hina and Itsukis relationship. We see Hina portrayed as a straight woman throughout the entire series so her ending up with Itsuki without any exploring of her sexuality shows us exactly what this author sees trans women as: men. If this manga had gone a LITTLE bit in depth with the leads sexuality this would have been avoided but sadly that is not what we ended up getting. Overall I would not at all reccomend this series. You wont really get much out of it no matter what youre looking for. Its not even entertaining bad its just... bleh.