It takes a premise that should be a punchline, a boy flattened by a crashing alien ship on Mt. Kashimayama and rebuilt as a girl, and then refuses to play it for laughs where it counts. Hazumu's problem was never the body, it was that Yasuna literally cannot perceive men, so the rejection that broke him becomes the reason she can finally be seen. Meanwhile Tomari, the childhood friend with the hairband and the fists, has to admit that what she felt didn't change when the pronouns did, and that admission is the most honest thing in the show. Ayuki hovering at the edge, choosing to observe love rather than enter it, is the quiet gut-punch nobody warns you about. It's a 2006 series and it shows, and the way it handles gender will either read as tender or as a dodge depending on who you are. Watch it anyway, then argue about the ending for a decade.

Hazumu has always been quiet, more comfortable tending to plants than people. When the courage finally comes to confess feelings to Yasuna, rejection sends him into the mountains of Mt. Kashimayama, where the two first met. Lost as night falls, he sees what looks like a shooting star, but it turns out to be an alien spacecraft that crashes into him. The aliens save his life by rebuilding his body, and a mishap along the way leaves Hazumu a girl. Returning to everyday life, she finds that her relationships and social world have all changed. Part comedy, part romance, the series mixes slice-of-life moments with drama as Hazumu adjusts to her new self.