Love Me For Who I Am- Acceptance And Understanding 9- It succeeded at getting its ideas across and I connected with it to the point that I will remember it forever - - - I'm not someone who's read all the LGBT manga there is to be experienced, but at the same time I'm also not completely in the dark. That may be why for the first 16 chapters, Love Me For Who I Am wasn't clicking with me. Don't get me wrong either, I didn't dislike those chapters. They made up a concise and enjoyable story about coming to understand oneself and finding people who are willing to understand you. It's also not like I can't see a story using elements I've seen done a lot in other stories as incredible in their own rights. A very derivative story like A Silent Voice is still an incredible manga that I enjoy greatly and connect with deeply. I just didn't find myself connecting deeply with the way this manga chose to tell it's story in those first 16 chapters. It felt like a well told derivative of many stories I'd seen before or situations I'd heard of, and I was perfectly content with giving the series a 6 or 7 and saying that I enjoyed my time with it if the story had stayed that way.

So, what exactly led me from that state of mind to struggling between giving this series an 8 or 9 rating instead? The story in Chapters 17-28 feels very much like something I've wanted to read for years now.

Spoiler, click to view

The focus it takes on the genuine pain of not feeling understood for years of one's life, how that bubbles up and expresses itself until it eventually explodes is a feeling I can't say I've seen handled in the media I've absorbed so far, and in a way I could so viscerally understand. That moment in which Mogumo held the knife up to their Adam's apple and proclaimed if it were gone, they wouldn't have to be a boy reminds me of all the times I've had to stare at myself in the mirror and wanted to peel the fat and muscle from my torso, crack and reglue the bones in my face, anything to make my body look more feminine.

Just as well shown are the effects such desires and such outbursts have on those you care about, who truly don't understand and yet still do love you in their own ways. How this manga managed to make me understand Mogumo's father's emotions for what he sees as his child destroying their life when he believes he's done all that he can to give them a good one, questioning what he must have done wrong, without villainizing Mogumo for just trying to be themself is genuinely praiseworthy storytelling.

It's because of that last stretch that I believe I won't be able to forget this manga. While it hasn't changed me as a person, or my outlook on life, what those final chapters did do is give me a reflection of myself that I have been searching for for so long, without dropping the series' positive outlook. While I don't connect with all of it, I connect so strongly with what I do that it makes what I don't a moot point. It also helps that the series is only 28 chapters, so It's a slim read regardless.

If this is your first LGBT manga, you're getting a good one. If it's not, and you feel like me, stick through it, cause you may find yourself feeling something special when it's over.