Short forHanazakari no Kimitachi e ("For All of You in Full Blossom").
Mizuki Ashiya, a Japanese girl who is living in the United States, develops a interest in track and field athlete Izumi Sano after seeing him on television. She becomes so infatuated that she decides she will go back to Japan and attend the same school as he does, just to meet him and become his friend. She is so determined that she doesn't care that the private boarding school Sano goes is an all-male one.
Mizuki enters, and luck is with her: she is not only assigned to the same class as Sano, she becomes his roommate! Unfortunately, she soon discovers that Sanohas abandoned the field after a lesion, and his athletic career has become a touchy issue.
She is soon discovered, first by the gay school doctor (but he agrees to maintain her secret), andthen by Sano himself. Fortunately, she doesn't notice this last, and Sano decides tomaintain and protect her secret until he discovers her real intentions or she tells him directly. That turns to be the best decision, since she isn't very good maintaining theBifauxnen facade, and if no one discovers her by her slips it is because the rest of the students are victims of aSomebody Else's Problem field mixed withClark Kenting.
Soon, Mizuki is slowly involved in the school customs and the little intrigues between her classmates, while at the same time she gets involved in the difficult situations around Sano and his family, helping him to overcome his problems and return to the track.
Since this is aShoujo manga, there are also a lot ofromantic entanglements, but the most notorious is the one between Mizuki, Sano and Shuichi Nakatsu, a boy who is in love with Mizuki but ignores her real gender and wonders whether he is really gay....
Beautiful Dreamer: Sano to Mizuki and vice-versa. They actually end up sleeping in the same bed quite a bit, resulting in Sano having long nights of trying to control his libido.
Cast Full of Gay:*Inhales* Umeda, the many unnamed lovers of Umeda, Nakao, Kujou, Kadoma, Mizuki(the male one from the early 1900s), Satoru, Himejima (questionable, but the level of campness is not),Akiha, Ryoichi...
Actually,Word of God says that the only gay character in the series is Umeda, so the others are either Bisexual, have aSingle-Target Sexuality, or are just really, really close friends.
First-Name Basis: Nakatsu calls most people be their first name. Oddly enough, he doesn't call Kayahima by his name, despite being roommates and seemingly close friends with him.
Green-Eyed Monster: There is a lot of jealously going around. Nakao attacks anyone who goes after Nanba, Nakatsu gets jealous when Mizuki is given attention, and Sano and Mizuki get jealousa lot when the other is being flirted with.
No Periods, Period: An aversion, which acknowledges the fact that the heroine must hide this important sign of her femininity, and even promotes the advantages of Japanese feminine hygiene products in contra-position with their American counterparts.
UST: You have a girl disguised as a boy sharing a room with a boy that knows she is a girl but she doesn't know he knows, and they each have a crush on the other. There's a lot of this.
Where Are They Now? Epilogue:Though Mizuki decides to leave Osaka High when her secret's in danger of being exposed, she and Izumi do manage to become an official couple during their college years in the epilogue.
Yaoi Guys: Several, but most notably Dr. Umeda and his various lovers. Apparently his gayness even allowed him to see through Mizuki's disguise. Apparently being gay means you can do that, somehow.
It wasn't actually his gayness, but more his profession of, you know, being a school doctor. Somehow when you open a shirt to stop breathing constrictions and see boobs wrapped under a shirt, youknow that it's a female you're dealing with.