(I went back to buy this because I felt bad for reading scans years ago.) I was lured in by the pretty artwork and mermaids and wow I regret it. Moonchild is actually an interesting look at the psycho-dynamics of the trns movement. i.e. if you groom a little boy long enough, he'll become a beautiful, beautiful woman. It's very medieval-Turkish, but offensive to any civilized culture.

It even has mpreg.

IIRC the closest thing to a normal romance is a predatory, hulking older woman sleeping with a sociopathic, murderous teenaged boy.

I honestly think the author read about clownfish gender-changing naturally and rather than thinking "wow, that's weird" like any ordinary person, she turned it into a fetish. (Even the underage-gender-change-grooming is from clowns... I know, I used to breed them. But they also sometimes eat their live eggs and kill relatives who don't leave, and the only effective way to breed predatory Maroons is with semi-pedophilia. They're so emotionally toxic they can only be kept in pairs of two except for Clark's and Ocellaris. For the love of God don't use them for human love advice.)

The story ends with them trying to change history to fix a real-life historical event (after mpreg!) that is offensive to anyone affected.

and this story is flat out weird, but it amused me. There are also a few scenes that I have wanted to see in manga, and I got to see it.

the 'psycho' scenes of the huge lady.. the double suicide

but, I would not say this as a "good" story overall.. my score is because towards the end of the story I had a laugh,..I was amused, as simple as that.

Read at your own risk.

I havent finish it yet, but I can tell you one thing: This sure is really weird.
But once you get use to it and begin to get a beber understanding of these series, you will end up liking it uniqueness.
Its a twist of the mermaid story, but the original one.
Is also very sad, because its obvious than its not going to end with a happy ending for every body.
Specially for one of the twins... I really pity the one who plays the evil. He was smarter, knew how to survive, so he always had to endure and be the strong one, while his brothers could play the innocent role. Such a sad character.

Still, REALLY weird. Im not sure If I dare to read her other famous manga.
And then they say thatuevery shojo is just the same...

This manga features a romance that borders on pedophilia --- in my mind --- and lust. Benjamin in her girl form is too beautiful---so beautiful that men overlooks whatever personality she may have. They all just want to get her in bed, basically. Nonetheless, the plot sucked me in. It's definitely worth a try. READ THIS 🙂

After finally finishing it I'm actually a bit relieved more so than sad that it's over. However, I still did really like it (especially the plot overall). I do think the ending was a bit of a disappointment, but definitely not to the point where I regret reading it. And I didn't think the main female lead was as bad as others were making her out to be. Sure she had her share of flaws, but so did a lot of the other characters. Her strange and child-like personality developed her identity, it made her who she was. But apart from that, all the characters played a big role in the story - they were all important, so for that I think the mangaka did a good job of being inclusive. As for the plot itself, it was really complicated but I guess in a good way. It kept me guessing for a while, however by the end I couldn't help thinking "is that really it?" The whole story was so convoluted and depressing (near the end) so you'd expect so much more, or at least something more dramatic.. Perhaps by the end so much crap had gone on that the element of surprise and romance between the characters had escaped me.

But anyways, I liked the idea of it. It was pretty intricate as a whole. I enjoyed it, even if it had a lot of melodrama. I think what made this story good was that it touched on a lot of abstract ideas - such as the misinterpretation of appearances and personality, and also the plot was just really interesting in itself, though it could get confusing. And the ending wasn't that bad, just not what I was anticipating. It could've been better.

P.S. I may have liked this series more also because I've only read about 1 of Shimizu Reiko's stories. So maybe I had nothing to compare it to that I really liked.

I got mixed feelings as I was reading this story. I read Wild Cats and Magic that both are written by Shimizu-sensei and I expected to have the same emotional impact like the other two.

First of all, it kinda did, but in a bad way. One of my favorite couple that I was rooting for....just made me depressed of how their ending turned out. It wasn't as bittersweet (in a good way) like I felt in Magic, but made me so depressed that I felt a bit regret wasting 4 hours of my life reading this series.

Second of all, the main character, Benjamin (or Jimmy), does NOTHING. Well, he tried, but does't seem it really add up compare to what other characters are doing. Art is pursuing his dreams, Benjamin's brothers are going toward their desire, etc. We can probably blame the fact that Benjamin is too little as a kid to do anything. Even if he is physically incapable of doing many things, at least the author should had done was to let his personality be more mature and become the binding point of the storyplot. So yes, I blame 50% of the story's downfall toward Benjamin.

Considering this is one of Shimizu-sensei's old work, I can forgive her a bit. So I have to give her kudos for the major improvement of storytelling and art.

Recommend to read? If you want to read it to waste time and/or read Shimizu-sensei stories because you like the other 2 mangas that I mentioned above, go ahead. But if you want a really good storyplot that makes you satisfied, don't pick this one up.

Such a crybaby and useless. Only care about herself and her love. Do nothing but make people worry and busy.
The only good thing about Benjamin is her looks. That's all.
For real, until the end of story, she does nothing for the story progress. NOOOTHING.
This story progress because all chara EXCEPT Benjamin make movements.
For me, such a fail epic character for female protagonist for such an amazing story.
Amazing idea as you expected from Reiko Shimizu.
Heufff side-story about Shonach and Seth is more interesting for me.

I'm very disappointed. I expected so much of this manga, and the ending completely disappointed me.

There were so many plot holes, and I feel as though the character development is minimal.

And the plot holes!

For example, what happened to all the amazing monsters that first appeared?

And what significance did "You are my moon child, come back" in the very first pages have at all? The mangaka just dropped the premise.

Didn't Seth and Tert tell Jimmy that him being with Art would kill Art?

How did Jimmy go from a junior high boy to a ten-year old? The triplets were the same age in the beginning of the manga.

What the hell happened to the dropped characters? Holly and Sonach's curly-haired girl just disappeared conveniently when the mangaka lost sight of the plot, just like the first lines of "my moon boy". And the grandma as well.

The entire Seth and Sonach thing ruined it for me. The minute they had sex, I guessed Seth would give birth to his dead child. And yet another plot hole; perverted, but important nonetheless. If two males have sex, that would mean Seth and Sonach conceived Teruto through Seth's anus...

And how disturbing would that thought be?

Amazing premise, muddled, ill-thought-out [is that a word?] ending.

Dropped rating from 10 to 7.