Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Blood, and Dysphoria Moderate: Misogyny, Suicidal thoughts, Transphobia, and Death of parent Minor: Cancer and Medical content

Representations: https://trello.com/c/KDqPb5YE/126-to-strip-the-flesh-by-oto-toda I think saying it's a collection of short stories around the same topic is a little misleading. Half of the book is To Strip the Flesh and the other half is a pretty random collection of shorts (a few 2 page mangas too) which are completely different in tone and none of the rest are about queer identities either. Though, don't get me wrong, honestly I'd say To Strip the Flesh is good enough that you should get this manga JUST for that. And it's worth it as well. This is such a strong story of a trans perspective, and you can really tell it's an important story for the author to tell as well. There's a lovely interview at the back which I highly recommend reading through as well! Honestly, I don't think I can say too much without just detailing everything that happens in the story so I'll just say, if you're trans yourself, questioning at all, a parent to a child who just came out as trans to you or just generally interested in trans lit - Read it. It's short, but powerful. For the second half, the short stories. They're a bit of a mixed bag. I did enjoy them, but I wouldn't say it's a good idea to go straight from the end of TSTF right into... people fangirling over idols lol. They're a completely different tone, and completely different topics to TSTF. Maybe just read the first half, take a break, then come back and read the second half perhaps. There is a right mix in there from the aforementioned idol fans to a living statue to a magical watermelon (that one was depressing and a pretty hard hitting story though weirdly enough!). There's a couple just joke ones which are pretty funny, but again feels really out of place amongst the more serious topics in the other stories. Certainly well worth recommending, it's incredibly solid on the writing, very powerful and you can really tell the main topics are something close to Oto Toda's heart. Very character focused in an excellent way and really makes use of the few pages to fully convey everything. This is an absolute must-read for TSTF alone at least!