"The Change" is a work by Naomi Yamauchi, the artist person who did Princess Bride. She seems to like historic fiction romance type things...like Japanese princesses and emperors. I think she does a pretty decent job with her artwork (though I can't say I really love this cover art I scanned in), and the characters in her stories seem really modern (though the scene is set in ancient times) which helps the reader identify.

Okay..."The Change" is about this brother and sister, both named Kira. Their father is an official of high court standing and he has two wives. The first one he married because she seemed very quiet and ladylike; after he married her, he realized that she was quiet, sure, most of the time, but she has this weird obsession with all things mystical and claims to have visions. She spends a lot of her time chanting and praying. He gets really freaked out by her continual tarot-card reading,etc., so the second time around he picks as wife a princess who seems very energetic. Well, Wife #2 is energetic all right. She runs around knocking things over, throwing temper tantrums, getting up at night to catch thieves, etc. She wears him out.

Wife #1 and Wife #2 both conceive around the same time, and have children within one day of each other. Wife #2 has the child first--a girl, Kira, who grows up to be tomboyish and energetic, like her mother. Kira excels in all outdoor sports, in mathematics and other "boy" subjects, and has no liking for anything girls are traditionally supposed to do. She likes to dress up as a boy when she goes out, because boys are allowed to roam around much more freely than girls. Meanwhile, Wife #1 goes through a long and strenuous labor to produce Kira, the boy. From the beginning he is weak and can't keep any milk down; in a "vision," Wife #1 claims that her son Kira will die unless she raises him as a girl. So she raises Kira, the son, as a girl and everyone refers to him as a girl. He doesn't even discover that he is a boy until he sees some little boys bathing outside, and notices that, well,...he has what the other little boys have, even if he has been brought up a "she". !!! So anyway, Kira the boy is very weak and fragile and faints at the slightest disruption.

Both Kiras look almost exactly alike. (Mirror image.) Both supposedly have very "pretty" faces, so that people, on seeing the girl Kira (who they all think is a boy) immediately begin sending love letters and requests for the "girl" (actually a boy) Kira's hand in marriage. They've heard that the Kiras look exactly alike, so if the "girl" (actually a boy) Kira looks anything like the "boy" (actually a girl) Kira, she must be very beautiful.

Of course, the Kiras' father wishes that the girl Kira had been born a boy, and that the boy Kira had been born a girl. Both wives and their children cause him no end of grief throughout the story.

So anyway...Kira (girl) challenges some guy to a fight because he tries to seduce her attendant. Kira gets really angry because everybody always makes fun of her, saying she's "just a child" because she hasn't gone through the coming of age ceremonies (girls and guys both had to do it...for girls, it was a robe-changing ceremony, and for guys...well, i guess it's something similar.) yet. She kept begging her father to let her, but he wouldn't (she wanted to go through the *male* coming of age ceremonies...). She went swimming one day to relieve stress, but heard someone coming. She was just running around the brush trying frantically to find her clothes when this guy walked in on her. She couldn't let on that she was swimming (girls didn't DO that), and he didn't seem to want to leave her alone until he knew why she was naked next to a river, so instead she made up this long sob story about how she was trying to commit suicide by drowning herself because her father was forcing her to marry against her will. The guy, sincerely touched, gave her lavender rosary beads, and insisted earnestly that she continue living (she was trying hard not to laugh because he believed her story).

It turns out that the guy was the emperor! He fell in love at first sight with Kira, and wanted a way to get close to her. He found out through connections who the drowning girl could have been, and since her father was a really high ranking official in his court, he talked to her father and insisted that both Kiras go through the coming-of-age ceremony. (Which meant that the "guy" Kira had to come to court (court position) and the "girl" Kira had to become a marriageable woman and endure a ton of proposals, etc.) The Kiras' father couldn't go against the emperor's wishes, so it was all done. And that's where all the trouble begins....because the emperor thinks the same as everyone else--that the girl Kira is a guy, and that the guy Kira is a girl...and since he's in love with who he thinks is the "girl" Kira,....

Go read the series yourself! It's rather funny. I haven't found any sites about it online...if you have one, please email me!

Now...go back to the anime/manga page...