I had found this pretty good joke while I was digging around in some old reddit threads about boyshorts, and I had planned to have marisa say it somewhere. but then I forgot. well whatever.
The girls discovered some more new tech over the past few updates, so once again the peanut gallery has some tips and comments. ningyo-chan cheeeeckkkkk~!
sorry you got the boring gender mr. asakura san. better luck next time, I guess.
Welcome back, aspiring nee-sans and baa-sans. Last time, Shina went out in girl mode for the first time, and she and Mizuho got a lead on a part time job that was only kind of sketchy. This time, they head off to the local tennis courts to investigate whether it’s possible for the girlies to be tomboys too.
By the way, did you know that the japanese word for ‘tuesday,’ kayoubi, is spelled with the character for fire? This is of course representative of the burning passion of tomboys across the globe.
This time we’re starting off with good ol BGM 02
“I’ve never come here, even as a boy,” Shina thinks to herself. She’s been dragged here by Mizuho, the perpetual sporty one.
It’s not just about the tennis itself, of course. Mizuho brought along some tenniswear to play with. Shina says she would have thought it impossible, but Mizuho assures her:
“What’s impossible? You’re a girl right now!” She continues, “you gotta wear a skort!”
They get changed.
“This is really short... is it okay to move?” Shina wonders.
“It’s cute, Shinobu, I might end up seeing your panties,” Mizuho remarks.
Shina tells her to cut it out, and Mizuho assures her it’ll be fine since she’s wearing a skort and not a regular skirt. If you think about it, the skort is the substrate modern tomboyism is built upon. Well, that and bike shorts. Shina complains that it’s embarrassing. But Mizuho is a girl of action and wants to get started doing tennis already.
They do so. Mizuho asks how Shina is doing, since she’s barely moving her legs. Shina reiterates that it’s embarrassing to wear a super short skirt. “And anyway,” she thinks, “what am I supposed to do against a well rounded athlete like Mizuki??”
“Come on Shinobu!” Mizuho shouts, “if you’re gonna squirm around that much, the spectators are gonna leer at you~! If you act too embarrassed it’ll end up being a turn-on!”
Shina protests, but Mizuho just reiterates that she’s a girl right?
Mizuho: “If you’re too focused on onlookers and something gets going down there or whatever... we can’t have that, right?”
Shina: “But you’re the one making me think about them!”
Mizuho: heheh, I ended up teasing you.”
Mizuho continues, “you’re just too cute not to. Okay! Here comes the next ball!”
Shina groans.
Those two. The scene fades out and they’re on to the next day.
There’s quite a few options we have open from here- the amusement park and the french restaurant are still open, and we opened up the cafe subplot, another town event, and the at home marker too... the world is so much busier when you’re a girl huh? I’m not sure where we’re going next, but idk if I want to leave it up to a poll this time... I’ll probably mess around with some different combinations of things and see what looks like good routing.
It's kind of strange that the trans'2 soundtrack is as laid-back as it is. like there's peppier songs we'll get to shortly, and there's one in there that samples some kind of spooky creature sfx (which might be the bad end theme furi-nyan had mentioned), but like, most of it is similarly low-key.
I don't dislike the music, and it's very non-distracting when I'm trying to read or make write-ups, but it does feel like they left something on the table. like, if I'm someone who's into crossdressing, and I'm playing a game about that, a big selling point in my eyes is if it can make me feel girly, yknow? it's gotta peel the veil back and provide opportunities to submerge yourself in all the forbidden girl things you don't get to touch as a boy.
and it's not like the game doesn't do this elsewhere, there's clearly lots of thought put into the clothes you can play with, for instance. but like music is a very gendered thing! especially in 200X! and this is almost certainly a me thing but 2000s era pop rock was 100% an enticing forbidden gender thing for me as a kid, and is something I get euphoria from to this day. I gotta get my fix, girl!
Welcome back, josou enthusiasts. Last time, Mizuho and Shinobu picked up some women’s underwear (known to some as the foundation of crossdressing) to round out Shinobu’s first girl mode outfit. This time, we’re going to take Shinobu out on her first adventure en femme.
At the end of the previous update, I put up a poll to help decide where to have them go next. The results were:
Town: 2 votes
Amusement park: 2 votes
French restaurant: 1 vote
Tennis court: 2 votes (including mine)
A 3 way tie is tricky to resolve, but town introduces some important things, so let’s take care of that first. Tennis is short and it’s got a special outfit so I’ll try to squeeze that in soon too.
Incidentally, I obtained the music through a bit of exploring, so let’s ease into the update with the main title theme:
First things first- we gotta equip the underwear. What had Mizuho picked out for us last time that had the two of them so flustered, I wonder, I wonder?
Music: BGM 11
A jra and joyshorts. I believe the flavor text describes them as something to the effect of “denim-like” or “with the vibes of denim” so I don’t think they’re actually junderwear but I could be wrong. Anyway I do like that they specifically start Shina here off with boyshorts instead of regular panties, I suppose that staple of the culture hasn’t changed much in 20 years. Equipping both gets Shina down from 109 bpm to 103.
Important to note- if you don’t equip the underwear, Shina doesn’t pass and the events seem to mostly end with the two of them getting harassed and going home early. So put on the underwear. It’s the foundation of crossdressing, you know!
I also want to make a quick note about progression too. I tried out a few combinations of things, and it seems like the first time you visit any of these places you get the same event regardless of order. I’m not sure if your outfit or base stats influence things though, so getting access to clothes shopping is pretty important. This all feels very similar to messing around in first cycle termina or something though. Hard to tell how much is really accessible or what’s worth doing.
Well, that’s enough dillydallying, I’m sure Mizuho is getting impatient.
Music: BGM02
We’re out in public. Shina is visibly (and understandably) extremely nervous. Mizuho assures her that if she acts confident it’ll be fine. Shinobu mumbles in agreement and thinks to herself that it’s unbelievable that she actually went out looking like this.
“But when you crossdress and go out, the world is different, right?” Mizuho says.
“Yeah,” Shina agrees, “it’s like you’re not yourself.”
Mizuho says she remembers the feeling of going out for the first time well. Everything around seemed like it was brand new. She wondered why she’d never done it before, why she’d never gotten to know the world of crossdressing. Shina says she understands that feeling well. Just by dressing up it’s like a different world out there.
Nearby they hear a solicitor passing out tissues. This is (was?) a common occurrence overseas similar to the american tradition of making someone stand out on the street and twirl signs. Mascot costume optional. They’re being kinda pushy.
The ad on the tissues says “recruiting: tele-club part time job.” Tele-club apparently being a term for phone sex hotlines. Shina muses that the two of them should probably think about looking for some part time work too... but working for a tele-club sounds like a bad idea. She also corrects herself from saying ‘boku’ to ‘atashi.’ They grow up so fast!
Mizuho agrees. She says it’ll help Shina with collecting new clothes and cosmetics and such.
“I guess with crossdressing you also need money, huh,” she considers.
Ah piss and shit and fuck the tissue guy overheard. Damn it. Now they’re stuck talking to him. He’s asking them if they’re job hunting. God- god damn it. Come on man. He’s recommending they take a look at the tele-club job. What a hassle. Shina tries to politely turn him down. He’s disappointed but offers them a more regular part time job at a cafe instead. Well that’s very nice and not at all shady. He says cute girls like them would be well received, since they don’t have any waitresses.
“I wonder whether we’d get to wear a cute uniform or something,” Shina thinks to herself. But, she also figures that getting a part time job while crossdressing sounds like a terrible idea. She asks if they’re recruiting men for the job too, and-
“Men?!” he’s totally flabbergasted. He says, well, we’re accepting anyone, but why? “Did you want to get a job with your boyfriend?” He asks if they have boyfriends.
Man this guy is shady. But Shina is also not playing it off well at all. “Well, I don’t have a boyfriend, but, uh, what do I say-” she stammers.
Mizuho asks for directions to the cafe. He explains the route. He also gives his name: Jin Asakura. “Let’s be friends, okay?”
You may have guessed from his severaltitude of sprites, but you can fuck that guy down the line. If you want. From what I understand there’s a few different jobs you can get, each with a handful of associated romanceable characters. I think you also meet the green haired girl through the cafe job, and maybe some others, but I’m not sure how the progression works out yet. More investigation to come.
“Jeez, you went and said something weird and that guy got confused,” Mizuho accuses. But she also agrees that crossdressing at work sounds awful. She also says she wants to see Shina as a waitress though. Much to consider, huh?
Thus ends the day. We’ve opened up a few new events by talking to that guy. For starters, there’s a new “your house” option on the map in girl mode, and it also adds the cafe on the map in boy mode. Like I said, I think I want to do the tennis court event next, but after that I might take suggestions about where to go again.
Welcome back, girls. Last time, Shinobu moved in with his long-time friend Mizuki, and found out that he had taken up crossdressing. With suspiciously little prodding, Shinobu also agreed to give it a shot, and they went clothes shopping. However, Shinobu got spooked before they could finish and they had to go home.
This time, we’re going to get Shinobu some girl underwear. As Mizuho said, the josou lifestyle starts with the underwear!
...That does bring me to a bit of a conundrum though, with a story like this there’s necessarily going to be a lot of fuzziness around things like names and genders and identities, so hopefully I can narrate things in a way that doesn’t get too convoluted. Although depending on how things go in the story there’s pretty good odds that I’ll end up prioritizing girl mode eventually. Anyway.
“Okay, today for sure we’re gonna go shopping for underwear!” Mizuho begins excitedly. Notably, the text box here is still identifying her as Mizuki, but...
I mean she went through all the trouble of picking out a girl name, it’d be a shame not to use it yknow? And we wouldn’t want anyone around to overhear, right?
Mizuho asks Shinobu whether she wants to go in girl mode or boy mode. The game gives us a quick tutorial about the map screen- basically we have this option at the start of each day, and different activities and scenes will be available depending on which gender we’re going with.
If we want to visit a point of interest in girl mode, which I certainly do, we have to hit the “get changed” button. This brings us to...
...The dress-up mode screen. It’s telling us to press the crossdressing button.
In the top left we have our base stats, which I don’t fully understand the uses of yet, our cash on hand, and our heart rate. It looks like there’s some inventory slots or something there too, but Shinobu is not currently making use of their convenient and deep men’s pants pockets. There’s also the heart rate meter, which will start gradually ticking up once we hit the crossdressing button. Per the original twitter thread, it sounds like in the first game the amount of things you can do in a day is limited by how stressed out the protagonist is, so I assume that holds true here too.
Below that, we have our current loadout. There’s space for a couple layers of tops and bottoms, and other types of equippables if you scroll down. Currently we’re wearing the men’s sweatshirt, men’s pants, men’s sneakers, and “your own hair” in the wig spot. I’ve already expressed my thoughts about this outfit.
Along the bottom we have inventory tabs for (left to right) care items, makeup, underwear and camisoles, crossdressing goods, stockings, shoes, western clothes, accessories, and wigs.
We don’t have any new stuff to equip from here, so let’s just hit the button and head out.
Shina lacks confidence in her outfit, and locks up on the way out the door. Mizuho can tell that she’s nervous, and tries to encourage her to go out. However, Shina is still frozen, and she starts getting impatient.
Shina reflects that just a bit ago, she had no connection at all to the world of crossdressing, but, well, here she is about to go outside in girl clothes. “Is this really okay?” she wonders. She worries, with a flat chest, slapdash makeup, and an unnatural bulge in her lower quarters what people around her will think when they see her. She starts trying to explain herself, but:
“Don’t say ‘boku,’ it’s ‘atashi,’ remember?”
Shina starts apologizing. “Just like I thought, it’s impossible,” she says, “I’m so stressed out my legs won’t move.”
Mizuho grumbles in disappointment, and Shina says she’ll swap back to boy mode. She does so, and they head out.
At the store, Shinobu marvels at how many kinds of women’s underwear there are. Mizuho recommends going with something basic to start with, but the main thing is that Shinobu like it.
There’s another path to this point we could’ve taken, one which I’m not going to consider canonical to the playthrough, where Shinobu decides to go shopping in boy mode from the beginning. Instead of having a panic attack at the door, he asks Mizuho to pretend to be a couple again, and they head out. Mizuho seems very happy about this, but when they get there she does tease him about it. From there everything seems to proceed the same way.
They’re back home again. Shinobu reports that in the end he couldn’t decide what to get, so Mizuho picked something out for her again. Thanks Mizuho.
“Okay, how about trying them on and showing me?”
Shinobu is astonished at this request. He asks Mizuho not to look while he’s changing. Again, this is another case where it’s unclear the extent to which Shinobu understands that he’s being flirted with. I do also think that it’s really funny that Mizuho establishes an ironclad rule of no peeking and then immediately wants to see Shinobu change.
In any case, Shina tries on the new underwear. It’s very soft. She sticks her legs through.
“I- it feels good...”
She muses that women are always wearing stuff like this. She thinks it could be habit-forming.
Mizuho wants to see, and catches Shina by surprise.
“Wow! Cute, isn’t it!” she remarks, “and that reaction was totally girly, huh?”
Mizuho reminds us again that underwear is foundational to crossdressing. So always wear it.
“Shinobu, you kinda got a bulge in an odd place, don’t you!” She teases.
“Huh? Oh, that’s uh,” Shina stammers.
“Did you start feeling weird?” she asks, pointedly, “That’s a feeling I understand, though.”
Shina asks her not to look again.
“Girls definitely don't have anything like that there, you know~!”
Shina complains that she’s being bullied. She turns around and tries to distract herself and settle things down.
She does this by reciting a song about multiplication tables. “Let’s see, 2 and 2 is 4, 2 and 3 is 6, how did ‘let’s make a good country’ go again..?” I believe it’s the title of a heian era poem, but the intertextuality of this gag is already going way over my head. Shina also worries that since the underwear is kinda small if she’s not careful it’ll end up sliding out.
Is now a good time to point out that Mizuho has also been letting it rock this whole time anyway?
From here things seem to open up a bit more, and we’ll have a few points of interest to choose from on the map screen each day. I’m not sure exactly what the flow of things is going to be, but for now things seem pretty low stakes, so I’m open to suggestions.
while I was doing the day 1 writeup I ended up deciding that as long as I'm looking all this shit up to make sure I'm understanding things correctly I might as well bite the bullet and start compiling an anki deck with all of it
so depending on whether I can keep at it I might have a crossdressing eroge themed flash card deck to post at some point
despite playing a fashion oriented game, I don't actually know that much about fashion. so in order to comment on the looks these dolls have played with thus far, I've asked some of the local dolls for their opinions.
hm, maybe that was a little harsh. well, reimers does tend to see things in black and white. which this image is notably in.
I should also mention that one of the bgm themes that was playing during that whole sequence has one of the fuckin super mario 64 soundfont instruments in it I think, a fact I became hyper-aware of over the course of several hours of reading and screenshotting and flashcard making
Welcome to the map screen. Usually there’s various points of interest to choose from, but for now it’s just our apartment.
Back in the house, mizuki proposes they go clothes shopping for shinobu. He’s kind of trying to rush him out the door, probably before shinobu has time for second thoughts. But it’s too late. Shinobu wonders if it’s gonna be suspicious that two guys are buying women’s clothes. Mizuki retorts, well do you see anyone else here? Mizuki’s solution to the problem is obvious: crossdressing! Certainly it’ll be less embarrassing to go if it’s with a girl. Mizuki says he’ll go get changed, and breaks out the feminine-sounding sentence ending particle wa. Shinobu wants to watch but mizuki adamantly refuses.
While waiting, shinobu tries to imagine what girl mode mizuki will look like, but comes up dry. He worries what to do if he has a bad reaction to seeing her. Or what to say either way. But surely someone with a pretty face like mizuki should be pretty good at looking girly.
“Sorry for the wait,” Mizuki says.
Shinobu barely recognizes her. She’s so pretty he’s barely able to string a sentence together. He also comments that her way of speaking is more typically feminine too, though whether this is just down to phrasing or if mizuki has mastered the art of Up Voice is unknowable in this medium.
“Mizuki, you look just like a real girl,” shinobu commends.
“Shinobu... I’m not ‘like’ a girl, right now I really am one!” she says, having swapped to using the feminine first person pronoun atashi.
After shinobu bashfully offers some more superlatives, they head out. Shinobu feels tense. He’s trying to square the experience of being around someone that pretty but also knowing it’s mizuki. That, and he also gets the feeling people are staring. He asks mizuki what happens if they get caught, and mizuki brushes it off. If anyone’s watching, it’s because they look like an attractive young couple. This flusters the shinobu.
They get to the store and shinobu feels weird being the only guy around.
Mizuki takes point. “Obviously since it’s your first time, I should be the one to pick things out right?” she aks what kind of vibe shinobu would want to go for. Shinobu protests but mizuki just starts browsing.
He sticks to her as if his life depended on it. He feels totally out of place. Even though mizuki said they’d just scan as a couple, it’s kind of embarrassing. More than anything he just wants to go home. “Just pick whatever, let’s get out of here,” he pleads.
Mikuki brushes him off and keeps browsing. It’s important to choose the right thing for your first time. They keep wandering around. Shinobu is curious about everything too of course, but worries that something really bad will happen if he touches anything. But like, there *is* a lot of cute stuff.
Eventually they decide on some things and check out.
“Ehehe, thanks for buying everything, darling~!”
Shinobu becomes flustered. It’s unclear the extent to which shinobu understands that he’s being flirted with through all this but being omega dense in that way is par for the course sometimes.
“Anyway, next up is underwear,” Mizuki declares.
Shinobu stammers in protest.
“Crossdressing starts from the underwear, yknow!” She professes.
Shinobu really just wants to go home though, he was already feeling weird in the regular clothes store, but if he goes lingerie shopping she might faint. Mizuki agrees to call it a day and head back.
Back at the apartment, mizuki is excited to see shinobu try everything on. He does. Compared to men’s clothes the new stuff has a much more pleasant texture. And the skirt is kinda breezy. “So this is what women are always feeling.”
Mizuki yelps when shinobu finishes putting everything on. “I knew you’d be cute.” she urges shinobu not to look in the mirror yet, and offers to loan her a wig and do some makeup. But after this, she says, shinobu’s gotta do it herself. When she finishes, Mizuki admires her handiwork, and tells her it’s okay to look.
“Cute! Is- is that... me?”
Mizuki promptly chides her for saying boku while being a girl.
Shinobu thanks her excitedly.
Mizuki tells her to look forward to the next step: going out in girl mode. Shinobu is nervous, but mizuki assures her that she’s even cuter so it’ll be totally fine.
“You’re still looking in the mirror! Did you fall in love with yourself?” Mizuki jokes. She says that she has a present ready for shinobu once she’s finished. It’s a makeup kit. Just a little something to welcome her to the world of crossdressing.
Mizuki has one more thing to say: “If we’re out and we meet someone we don’t want to catch us, call me mizuho.” She continues, “you should come up with a girl name too.”
After thinking for a suspiciously short time, our hero comes up with “紫乃” which can be read a few different ways. Until the game makes it more obvious, I’m going with “shina” as the reading, but “shino” and “yukarino” are apparently also options.
“Shina? Well, nice to meet you, shina.”
Shina stays up late imagining all kinds of different personas she could adopt, and eventually drifts off to sleep.
Okay, as long as I’m dealing with a setback I might as well spin this into an opportunity to take some more detailed notes. Once more from the top:
Shinobu hazuki and his friend mizuki tachibana are moving in together ahead of their first college term. Their apartment is pretty small, but with just the two of them it should be fine, right?
While toiling away unpacking everything, shinobu comments that it’s kinda like their own private castle, and mizuki responds with a joke along the lines of, well, if this is a castle, then I guess that makes you the princess right?
Shinobu has a funny gender moment and freaks out a bit, and mizuki doubles down. Well of course, he says, shinobu’s the cutesy one so it’s obvious.
After some further complaining they get back to work unpacking. Shinobu comments that mizuki brought a mountain of boxes marked as clothes. Welp, no time like the present! Shinobu starts opening them up and a look of panic crosses mizuki’s face.
"Whu- ho- hold on a second, shinobu!"
But it’s too late. The scent of women’s perfume emanates from the open box. Inside there’s a bunch of clothes.
“Those are for women, right..?” Shinobu wonders. He’s very confused about why his number one bestie would have a box of things like skirts and bras.
“They’re for you,” mizuki explains.
Shinobu freaks out. A mechanical thing to mention that really isn’t going to come through via text is that there’s a heart rate monitor for shinobu in the corner of the ui, and it speeds up or slows down based on various things. When it passes 100 bpm there’s a heartbeat sound effect that plays, and speeds up if it goes higher. This is one such time.
Mizuki continues. “Obviously you were always the cuter one.”
There’s an exchange that I believe is something like mizuki saying “haven’t we always been close enough that we could bathe together?” and shinobu saying “well that’s just something men do!!!” my impression is that overseas, communal bathing is generally more of a familial thing that we might see it as in the states. But I think the implication is that mizuki is implying something else.
“Haha, just kidding! Your face got so red!” Mizuki says. “They’re actually mine.”
Shinobu replies, “Well yeah I know they’re yours! I’m asking why the hell you have them! Do you think I’m stupid?” despite lashing out, he seems to be calming down. The heartbeat fades away.
Shinobu continues demanding to know what’s going on and mizuki keeps repeating that they’re his clothes and getting increasingly insulting about it.
“But surely you don’t actually wear them,” Shinobu wonders.
“I do,” Mizuki says.
“Crossdressing is... a hobby of mine.”
The heartbeat thing goes fucking ballistic.
“Don’t tell my mom and everyone, okay?”
Shinobu continues demanding explanations and mizuki keeps repeating himself. He can’t believe it. Sure, ever since they were little mizuki’s particular androgynous charm was always popular with the girls, but even if he was pretty, he’s an all-around great athlete, and his personality is manly and passionate. And he always uses the most masculine first person pronoun “ore!”
“It’s- it’s surprising,” shinobu stammers.
“Yeah I guess it would be.”
Shinobu asks why he does it. Mizuki doesn’t really have an answer, but after further pressing settles on “well, it’s fun. turning into another self, or something like that.” he also suggests shinobu should try too!
Shinobu goes quiet for a while, but eventually agrees. And there begins the first day of shinobu’s adventures in the world of crossdressing.
a minor annoyance this game keeps visiting upon me is that the space bar fast forwards text super fast, and also the text rewind feature is kinda janky, and also the window is always in focus so if I tab out to type something half the time I completely lose my damn place
I do think they're kind of burying the lede with mizuki in those graphics though, right? like, finding out that she crossdresses is literally the first thing that happens in the story, just use the girl mode portrait! that's what we're all here for!
but looking through the sample CGs on the site it looks like shinobu does have sex with her while they're both in boy mode at some point so whatever. if that's like the culmination of their route I'm gonna be kinda disappointed though tbh
while I'm replaying the demo portion of the game to see if I can finesse it so the girls get harassed less, here's some supplementals: graphics from the trans 2 site's quiz thing. ideally these help with figuring out how to access those characters' routes & good endings.
as usual I can't really offer complete or especially accurate translations but I think the gist of these is... under the break
top: your suggested coordination
under the portraits: good compatibility character
from top left to bottom right
tachibana mizuki
today's vibe is "sporty casual!" simple clothes that don't leave out sex appeal is a great way to coordinate. try getting the most from denim and sneakers!
misaki sumino
today, try going for erotic-cute appeal! maintain girlish vibes while experiencing beauty in the way only an adult woman can with translucent camisoles and colorful fishnets!
hirosawa yuu
todays theme is: romantic maiden! lace, frills, pin tuck... incorporate taste that makes you think "girl." gentle and sweet, express the purity of a maiden's heart.
asakura jin
for today, let's be a cute little seductress ☆ don't just be cutesy, try incorporating a premeditated sexiness too. be a little adventurous, with a miniskirt you might just tempt someone!
minami kasumi
for today, go with sweet and casual! with orthodox items, achieving a cute balance is the way to go. these are the clothes everyone is anticipating, so show off your fashion sense. keep your hands off!
shiboura minato
today, dress like your womanhood is a weapon and attack! create a strong bodyline and show a glimpse of cleavage. and of course, use your makeup wisely as well. effectively show off the appeal of bare skin, and speak with what you've naturally got. do your best!
shiraki miho
today, let's be honest about what you like! you've always been longing for them, those costumes... sailor uniforms, nurse outfits, gothic lolita dresses, and so on. whatever the case, try dressing cute to your heart's content!
kasuga rei
today, aim for "cool young lady" (cool oneesan)! when you combine pretty and sexy clothes with harder edged items, the result will be spicy and effective. employ a strong posture without forgetting the feminine. you just gotta pair your clothes with carefree gestures!
origamiaround
izzy806
annaxmalina
discoholicmusic
blakekathryn
ellievsbear
jbbartram-illu
germansingergirl