Summary
- Gender bender anime explore the shock and personal growth that comes with switching genders.
- Characters in these anime often struggle with societal expectations and mistaken identity.
- Whether through body swap or supernatural transformation, protagonists are forever changed by their experiences.
The best gender bender anime don’t play the magical or supernatural switching of genders solely for jokes. Gender roles and personal presentation form a considerable part of a person’s identity, so a sudden switch from one gender to another often shocks characters to their core. They’re forced to explore another experience of the world and often of another person.
Often, the bending of the gender is not only supernatural but quite out of the subject’s control. However, there are characters who learn to control the transformation, and even some who go back and forth willingly. All these show’s protagonists are changed by their experience whether the transformation is reversible or not.
10 Ranma 1/2 Set The Standard
Based on the manga by Rumiko Takahashi
Ranma Saotome lays the blueprint for many future gender bender anime, something he is not one bit happy about. Stories where the switch happens constantly often have some sort of convoluted condition that sets it off. Ranma’s is that every time he gets splashed with cold water, he turns into a girl.
Rumiko Takahashi wrote and illustrated some of the most influential manga of the 1990s, and Ranma is no exception. Despite wanting very vocally to break it, Ranma adapts very handily to his curse. Much of the comedy of the series comes from cases of mistaken identity and the heavy gender-related expectations from others that Ranma has to juggle.
9 Ayakashi Triangle Is A Popular New Take On Gender-Bend Anime
Based on the manga by Kentaro Yabuki
Suzu Kanade and Matsuri Kazamaki have been best friends since childhood, bonding over their shared ability to see ayakashi. Suzu is able to sense the strange spirits, and Matsuri fully intends to carry on his family tradition of exorcizing them. However, his life takes a turn when the King of Ayakashi transforms him into a girl.
Ayakashi Triangle’s recent anime adaptation was heavily censored for explicit content, just like the original manga. The story has a lot to offer otherwise in the thoughtful way it handles Matsuri’s new state. Matsuri reaffirms that he still feels like a boy, though he appreciates the new friendships he’s been able to make as a girl, and Suzu considers what it means for both of them that she remains attracted to him in a girl’s body.
8 Yamada-kun And The Seven Witches Utilizes Body Swap Magic
Based on the manga by Miki Yoshikawa
By most standards, delinquent Ryu Yamada and brilliant Urara Shiraishi would never make a good pair. However, when an accidental kiss between the two makes them abruptly switch bodies, Yamada is thrown into a whole new world of magic and shenanigans. The more is uncovered about hidden magic, the clearer it becomes that Yamada is much closer connected to Shiraishi than he thought.
Many gender bender anime instigate their premise via body swap. Stories like this force their protagonists to not only experience what life as another gender is like, but life as another person specifically. Later in the series, Yamada starts to jump between several bodies, gaining new magical powers as he does, but the most important thing he gains is friendship with Shiraishi.
7 So I’m A Spider, So What? Reincarnates Characters In Many Forms
Based on the light novels written by Okina Baba and illustrated by Tsukasa Kiryu
When a whole classroom is killed in a disaster, the students are reincarnated in different forms in a fantasy world in classic isekai fashion. The show’s hero was nicknamed Kumoko by fans for her transformation into a measly spider. Her friend Kanata Oushima was at least reincarnated as a human.
Formerly a boy, Kanata lives a new life as Katia, a wealthy duke’s daughter. At first, Katia is uncomfortable with this form, using masculine speaking patterns and pronouns when around her reincarnated friends. However, the longer she spends as Katia, the more her internal identity comes to match her new body, her way of speaking pointedly changing to reflect this.
6 BlazBlue: Remix Heart Is A Gender Bender Origin Story
Manga written by Deko Akao and Toshimichi Mori and based on the video game series BlazBlue
Remix Heart is a manga prequel to the BlazBlue series, one of the video game franchises with the most complicated lore. It focuses on Mai Natsume, who was once a boy that fused with a powerful grimoire that decided she would best fit its magic as a girl, and transformed her accordingly.
Similar to Katia, Mai comes to be happier with a female identity than a male one, after initially viewing herself as a boy putting on an act. When her new friends discover her past, it’s a shock, but they are quick to accept her as she is and certainly don’t love her any less. Mai returns their feelings, completing the fusion and making the transformation permanent to become strong enough to protect them.
The manga, serialized in Age Premium, is still not available in English
5 Le Chevalier D’Eon Is A Historical Murder Mystery
Original story written by Tow Ubukata
Siblings D’Eon and Lia de Beaumont are both prized agents of King Louis XV’s police and intelligence forces. When Lia is murdered on a job, D’Eon is determined to bring her killer to justice. To his surprise, he’ll have a partner on his hunt: the soul of Lia, who possesses her brother’s body to help avenge her own death.
D’Eon and Lia don’t so much adjust to their new state as both gradually lose their own identities the longer they share a body. The show borrows the title and name of the real-life Chevalier D’Eon, but bears near-zero resemblance to the life of the actual spy, who many historians agree was one of the first recorded instances of a transgender woman seeking legal gender transition.
4 No Doubt In Us Brings A Distant Couple Together
Based on the manhua by Lu Ye Qian He and You Zhi Jiaozi
Many manhua and donghua also employ the gender-bender plotline. In this rom-com, Emperor Xiao Jinyun and Empress Xu Yu accidentally fall into a pond in the garden of their palace. As it happens, the pond holds magical properties, and when the royal couple emerge, they have swapped bodies.
Plenty of stories follow the plot of a distant married couple learning to truly connect and love again. However, adding a body swap into the mix makes it much more interesting, as Xiao Jinyun and Xu Yu are forced to learn more about each other very quickly to successfully pass for one another. Through experiencing them, they discover that each other’s lives have far more depth than they thought.
3 Kokoro Connect Brings Friends Closer Together
Based on the light novel series written by Sadanatsu Anda and illustrated by Shiromizakana
The five members of the Student Cultural Research Club spend their days pursuing their individual interests. But one day, the group attracts the interest of supernatural creatures called the Heartseed who decide to play games with them. One game involves body-swapping the teenagers over and over, putting each of them through a different experience each time.
As in No Doubt In Us, Kokoro Connect’s body swap puts exploration of identity front and center. One of the best supernatural slice-of-life anime forces all five kids to confront hard truths about themselves and each other. The anime adaptation covers only the body swap arc, which results in the club all starting to reveal deep secrets and grapple with their individual identities.
2 Ouran High School Host Club’s Heroine Joins The All-Male Club
Based on the manga by Bisco Hatori
Haruhi Fujioka, the only scholarship student attending the wealthy Ouran Academy, has a whirlwind of a first day at school. After wandering into the wrong room, she not only meets the overwhelmingly dramatic Host Club, but accidentally breaks an eight million yen vase. To pay off her debt, she has to join the club, acting as a male Host for the female student body’s entertainment.
More like a gender blender than direct bend, per se, Haruhi specifically nonetheless goes a step further than simply pretending to be a girl for the sake of the club. By her own admission, she doesn’t care whether she’s thought of “as a guy or a girl.” The Host Club quickly pegs her as the natural type of host: she isn’t putting on an act, she genuinely is that comfortable as a boy charming the girls.
1 Your Name Saves Thousands Of Lives Through Gender Bender Magic
Original anime film written by Makoto Shinkai
Taki Tachibana, of bustling Tokyo, and Mitsuha Miyamizu, of rural Itomori, both wish they could live completely different lives. When a stunningly beautiful comet passes over Japan, it grants their wishes, but not at all in the way they thought. They wake up in each other’s bodies over and over again, and have to get to know each other fast to live their lives properly, soon sparking one of the best supernatural romances in anime.
The tone of the pair’s body-swapping changes distinctly between the first and second halves of the movie. The first half is largely comedic, as Taki and Mitsuha frantically try to figure out how they’re supposed to communicate with one another and act in their new bodies. The second half emphasizes the mechanics and sudden dire necessity of their body swapping, and they quickly have bigger things to worry about than how a boy or girl should act.
