Volume 2 of Kämpfer deals with Natsuru having the honor of attending the girls’ side of the school. It was dealt with in episode 3 of the anime.

Although the anime doesn’t really diverge much from the novel, the fact that there’s more space in the novel to deal with it means that there’s more fun. There is also a minor battle between the Natsuru/Akane duo against a minion of Shizuku who was actually betraying her, and a fairly major development which I don’t remember actually being dealt with in the anime when Natsuru is starting to be able to control when he turns into a girl, but the plot mainly dealt with Natsuru’s life as a girl, which I have to say was pretty fun.

The newspaper club actually made up a story portraying Natsuru not only as a lesbian like in the anime but also like almost a sex maniac (something like B Gata Yuri Kei), who ravishes from primary school girls to the nurses that, according to the story about Natsuru being sickly to justify her long absences from school, looked after her when she was in hospital.

Rather than reacting negatively, it actually creates a lot of excitement amongst the girls who want Natsuru to become their “oneesama” or their “imouto” (à la Marimite) or just to touch her breasts.

Isn’t it obvious that it’s written for us males? A lesbian paradise! I mean, lol! But this actually leads to what I commented the other day on Twitter, that in my opinion there are elements of parody of feminism in Kämpfer – admittedly, it is not a satire of feminism, and of course there being a boys section and a girls section is just a device to allow Natsuru to be both a boy and a girl, but whether the author is consciously or subconsciously satirical or if it’s just my own interpretation, this reading is possible.

For example, the school used to be an all girls school, and even if for financial reasons it is now a mixed school, the old guard (i.e. staunch feminists who don’t want to be near any male) keeps them apart. Natsuru often refers to them as the “Gestapo”, or the wall between the schools as the “Berlin Wall”. The obsession coming precisely from the girl’s side of the school with not letting boys and girls interact with each other even outside the school doesn’t fall short of some forms of feminism, does it? In fact, most girls would want to interact with the boys as well; it’s only a small élite that wants them to be like that – which sounds like the obsessed feminists who have nothing to do with the way normal people act.

But the most interesting aspect, used for humor of course, is when the school newspaper makes up a statement by Natsuru saying “because I don’t want to have to regret that I was born a woman” [implying that because of that she has sex with as many females as she can]

OK, in principle this is just something funny because the newspaper girl didn’t know she’s actually a guy. But I think it sounds pretty feminist, doesn’t it?

Speaking of Natsuru, some bloggers have said that they didn’t like him, that he was too bland. I gotta say he’s quite funny, interesting, and often sharp as a narrator in the novels. Although he doesn’t often externalize it -which can be the reason why he looks more bland in the anime-, he is often pretty aware of what’s going on -except for the fact that Akane and probably Mikoto are in love with him- and well, it’s funny when he starts speaking about the school’s feminists being the Gestapo or after waking up that he was dreaming he was a soldier during the Normandy landings, or making some ironic comments about the three girls in his class who try to earn money with him, making the girls who want to say something to female Natsuru pay – in the anime, however, he’s all flustered and doesn’t say anything.

On the other hand, I gotta say I prefer the anime version of Akane, because in the novels she just becomes foul-mouthed when in kämpfer form, and is a shy girl in love with Natsuru in her normal form, but in the anime, to top it all, she’s quite a pervert - which doesn’t seem to happen in the novels, at least so far.

Other than that, I like the style it is written in. The critics often spend too much time focusing on why a work such as Kampfer is not a masterpiece about how evil patriarchal structures give rise to demoniacal capitalism that oppresses the individual who must survive in a hostile neo-noir environment with naturalist undertones that shape the postmodern existentialist anti-hero, but you have to admit that writing a novel in a simple, fluid, lively style also requires skill, and Kämpfer is a quick, fun read indeed, and despite everything else, that is a nice quality.