HEN

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
8
RELEASE
January 1, 1997
CHAPTERS
94

DESCRIPTION

Despite the title, Hen is NOT Hentai. It does have sex, strong language, yuri, and other elements that might make you think "Hentai".

Chizuru Yoshida is not your typical high schooler and she's all too aware of it! She has a talent with getting what she wants from her male lovers and often comes across as cold and manipulative...

In truth, despite her experiences with guys, she has never been in love. That's until the fateful arrival of newly-trasferred student, Azumi Yamada, at her school. It was love at first site for Chizuru--indeed an unexpected turn of events for the story's vixen!

Not only was she in love but with all things another girl. Chizuru goes through a brief stage of anger and denial and tries to convince herself that she couldn't possibly be attracted to such a simple-looking, shy, and naive girl! To her despair she finds herself constantly thinking of Azumi, so she finally resolves to become friends with her, but it's not too long when she starts to push things along with Azumi...

(Source: Manga Project)

CAST

Chizuru Yoshida
Azumi Yamada
Hiroyuki
Sushiaki Karasawa

CHAPTERS

RELATED TO HEN

OVA ComedyStrange Love

MANGA ComedyHen

REVIEWS

RaphaeI
0/100
Nah please don't waste your time reading Hen, i feel bad for myself
SPOILERS ALL AHEAD, BEWARE!!

Yesterday i was searching funny to read but after some minutes i found myself reading this and i just can't recommend this to anyone.

I read several things that i'm not proud of but i really can't remember something that make me that bad in so much time.

Yoshida (main character) is just a complete sociopath, that can lie or hurt anyone feeling's without any hesitating and he makes it from the start to the end catching me sometimes thinking if what she said really happened or if she's just inventing that shit out of nowhere.

Azumi (main character) is the new student and after a while Yoshida found that she is the love of her life.

I could point how the teacher from the early chapters is just completely forgotten and everything but what i really want you guys to know how i was feeling while reading this.

Like i said before, i've read a lot of things, some good, some bad, but overall i kinda feel passionate on reading teen stories. From everything i've read in a while, i really can't remember a story that almost catch me mentaly ill like this one. I feel uncomfortable reading the major part of the manga and i feel grateful that i could end this in one day.

The way Yoshida just harass everyone she wants and everything she gets in return is people feeling bad and doing nothing because they "kinda like", that shit really made me bad fr. She's just an complete sociopath sixtheen years old that don't care for ways if in the end she can stay with Azumi. Kobayashi, an boy from Azumi and Yoshida class is presented to us as someone interested in movies and shit, he is an interesting character and they could be an interesting love triangle but the way he is just tortured by Yoshida just left a feeling of sadness in me.

In the middle of the manga completely from nowhere new characters is presented to us, i could say that basically they are Yoshida and Azumi but with reverse genres but actually the tall actor boy (which i really don't remember the name altough the manga have like 40-50 chapter focusing on him, mb, i'm really bad with names) really loves her boy friend (that actually is a girl) and it me he feels strange in relation to himself, asking himself if he's actually gay or not, and it could be further explored but unfortunately wasn't.

Yoshida in the beginning have an rockstar boyfriend that i will not talk about 'cause actually is just another of his victims, altough he knows Yoshida is just lying and make a fool of him.

After all, it was very torturous but i can't say that I didn't find some things interesting because if I hadn't I wouldn't have read it so quickly.

Sorry for any writing errors and the poor way i constructed the review, it's my first time, i just wanted to share my feelings about this one, hope to do more, was funny.

It's just my opinion, all due respect to the ones that like this manga.
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Punnchy
50/100
A train wreck (spoilers ahead)
A train wreck from beginning to End. I can't recommend this manga for the plot, the nudity and the implied sex are nice if youre into that type of thing, but they don't make up for poor writing. If your looking for an older fan service manga that's barely digestible, this might be one of your tickets (I'm sure there's others that are better than this one).

This ended up being a hard story to follow and it doesn't feel very well constructed. There's confusion with the introduction of new characters midway through and the size of the cast leaves little depth to be explored in any of the interactions. While there's something to enjoy with the big breasted mc Yoshida, her overall attitude is crap and how she treats everyone around her, including Azumi..Having her gain a love interest in the opposite mc Azumi at least gave her character some depth until after the midpoint when things had to be turned on their heads. WhileI was hoping for a lovey dovey MC goes strictly lesbian romance but that didn't happen. The feelings that Azumi had for Yoshida where the only things that really had any depth to them. But even she can't find a steady closure with Kobayashi's addition and then subtraction from the series, he comes back to create a what if and then we get to the final chapters and it's time for another table flip.

The amount of time skips and curve balls with no meaning is just asinine. As soon as you get used to one pairing or something going the way you expect, it's turned on its head without a proper explanation. Why did we need a Yoshida clone? Was it to keep Azumi busy while the wrapped up the I'm actually a lesbian yoshida arc. Using the Suzuki hero of the day in the building collapse to get pregnant with a child while also being a well known model/actress for her relationship with Azumi was just dark. Why didn't she stay with Suzuki, his entire dream of being with? We never got to see how she went from female to male to female love interest, just the end results

Almost everyone appears to be is air headed and having a hard time communicating with each other. Except the short stack Ozu. He knew what he wanted and Yuzu. If Suzuki would have gotten to actually have a free will before the last 10 panels that would have been nice, i'm glad that things where left with that glimmer of hope that Suzuki gets with Yuzu.

Overall, I'm trying to find nice things to say about this series but I'm not, there wasn't enough depth and it shows. If you're going to spend time making something, don't make this, please.

A train wreck from beginning to End. I can't recommend this manga for the plot, the nudity and the implied sex are nice if youre into that type of thing, but they don't make up for poor writing. If your looking for an older fan service manga that's barely digestible, this might be one of your tickets (I'm sure there's others that are better than this one).

This ended up being a hard story to follow and it doesn't feel very well constructed. There's confusion with the introduction of new characters midway through and the size of the cast leaves little depth to be explored in any of the interactions. While there's something to enjoy with the big breasted mc Yoshida, her overall attitude is crap and how she treats everyone around her, including Azumi..Having her gain a love interest in the opposite mc Azumi at least gave her character some depth until after the midpoint when things had to be turned on their heads. WhileI was hoping for a lovey dovey MC goes strictly lesbian romance but that didn't happen. The feelings that Azumi had for Yoshida where the only things that really had any depth to them. But even she can't find a steady closure with Kobayashi's addition and then subtraction from the series, he comes back to create a what if and then we get to the final chapters and it's time for another table flip.

The amount of time skips and curve balls with no meaning is just asinine. As soon as you get used to one pairing or something going the way you expect, it's turned on its head without a proper explanation. Why did we need a Yoshida clone? Was it to keep Azumi busy while the wrapped up the I'm actually a lesbian yoshida arc. Using the Suzuki hero of the day in the building collapse to get pregnant with a child while also being a well known model/actress for her relationship with Azumi was just dark. Why didn't she stay with Suzuki, his entire dream of being with? We never got to see how she went from female to male to female love interest, just the end results

Almost everyone appears to be is air headed and having a hard time communicating with each other. Except the short stack Ozu. He knew what he wanted and Yuzu. If Suzuki would have gotten to actually have a free will before the last 10 panels that would have been nice, i'm glad that things where left with that glimmer of hope that Suzuki gets with Yuzu.

Overall, I'm trying to find nice things to say about this series but I'm not, there wasn't enough depth and it shows. If you're going to spend time making something, don't make this, please.
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Cyvass
30/100
hard to read this, it has all the stereotypes of why anime is disliked in general
I only picked it up to see the first of Hiroya Oku, after reading Gantz, the art is weird, the writing is non-sensical, it touches subjects it doesn’t really seem to understand, lesbiansm, transgenderism, STDs, sexual assault, abuse of minors (wtf man) all of that with a careless lens or w/o nuance and an underaged hypersexualized main character. really did not age well, and im not certain this made sense to read even in the early 90’s hard to imagine why it was popular.

characters get forgotten, new ones are introduced to be forgotten again, then more characters come in that aparently come from a previous run, no explanation of where they come from. ending was somewhat ok i guess.

==================== hard to say more about it w/o spoilers ======================

I only picked up HEN out of curiosity—I wanted to see Hiroya Oku's early work after experiencing the wild, bloody ride of Gantz. Where Gantz was chaotic but had a certain grim momentum, HEN feels like a draft that somehow got published. The art is undeniably Oku in protoype —clean lines, glossy character designs, that distinct 90s sheen—but it's also weirdly anime-core, almost amateurish compared to his later work. Panels feel static, expressions lack nuance and body proportions are really out there.

But the art isn't the real problem. The writing is where things fall apart completely. This manga tries to be edgy, provocative, and "adult," but it handles its subject matter without any grace. We're talking about lesbianism, transgender identity, STDs, sexual assault, and the abuse of minors—all thrown into a blender with zero apparent research, empathy, or even basic narrative purpose. It feels like Oku was checking off a list of "taboo topics" without understanding why they matter or how they affect real people. The lens is careless, often exploitative, and the underaged female protagonist is hyper-sexualized in ways that made me physically uncomfortable. Scenes that were presumably meant to be shocking or transgressive just land as tasteless and dated.

And this was 1995. I genuinely struggle to imagine this reading as anything other than messy even back then. It's not that dark topics are off-limits; it's that Oku seems to have no interest in the emotional or psychological weight behind them. Characters are reduced to their trauma or their sexuality, and the narrative treats both as mere spectacle.

The structure is a mess. Characters are introduced with fanfare, given a few chapters of focus, then completely forgotten. New faces appear out of nowhere, only to vanish again. Midway through, we're suddenly introduced to a cast that, apparently, came from a previous storyline—but there's no explanation of who they are, where they came from, or why we should care. It's like reading a sequel to a series that doesn't exist. Plot threads are started and abandoned. Motivations shift arbitrarily. The pacing lurches between glacial and frantic.

The ending was okay, with a bittersweet note that almost felt earned. But one decent finale doesn't save the preceding 100+ chapters of confusion, tonal whiplash, and questionable choices.

I can see why some might call this a cult curiosity, but "good"? No. It's a historical artifact—proof that even future legends can stumble hard. Read it if you're an Oku completionist. Otherwise, save yourself the headache.
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