Nononono

A sports manga by Lynn Okamoto, the creator of Elfen Lied.

Nono Nonomiya's father was a skilled ski jumper, but never won an Olympic medal. His dreams of his children winning one were destroyed when Nono inherited all his ability and not her brother Yuuta, as women are not allowed into the sport. After the death of both her father and Yuuta, Nono decides to honor their memory by taking on her brother's identity and enrolling in a college famed for producing winter sports athletes. But she quickly discovers it will be very hard to keep her secret, let alone earn the respect of her fellow students while aiming to become the school's best jumper.

Tropes used in Nononono include:

• Abusive Parents: A flashback reveals Yuuta suffered physical abuse due to his lack of ski jumping skills from his Serious Business father.
• Accidental Pervert: Played with; more than once Nono seizes on the assumption that s/he's a pervert transvestite rather than a girl.
• Afro Asskicker: Shiriya, before he switched to a more normal hairstyle.
• Alpha Bitch: Kourogi
  • Lovable Alpha Bitch: Despite the first impression she usually makes, deep down she is actually quite a decent person that cares about others deeply.
• Attempted Rape: Ogata was fooled by his new roommate 'Yuuta', but that was the problem.
• Attractive Bent Gender: Nono looks decidedly feminine but still attracts female admirers.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: Averted when Kishitani "helps" dress 'Yuuta' when she is sick and bedridden.
• Berserk Button: Amatsu will let any and all personal insults slide off his back, but anyone who insults his family (due to their earning several silver medals but never gold) earns his eternal enmity.
  • Do not call the First Emperor Shiriya-san (Shiri for butt, ya for shop). He will pulverize you just like what he did to Ogata.
  • Nono is usually pretty cool, but does not take kindly to people insulting her father or brother.
  • Terashi and his love of cats. Do not insult cats and do not imply that he rapes them, if you know what's good for you.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: All that ski jumping has given Nono incredible leg strength, allowing her to beat up people twice her size if need be. Later, she casually Wall Jumps to catch a young girl's balloon. Even better? swinging a barbel one handed.
• Chick Magnet: Yuuta, and Nono has to deal with the consequences.
  • Nono, after she takes Yuuta's place, starts to attract girls. Also, when she's not crossdressing she's the inverse.
• Did Not Do the Research: "The autopsy said the the body was of a girl" (even though it was Yuuta - a boy's). Even if only the skeleton remains, the shape of the pelvic girdle clearly gives away the real gender.
  • However, for the actual focus of the manga (ski jumping), the author DID do a lot of research.
  • Given the huge amounts of Notice This in that particular scene, it may also be setting up for some kind of reveal.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: That girl in chapter 102 who could tell that Nono is a girl? That's a dude.
• Gratuitous Norwegian: In chapter 3 page 9 are some guys talking Norwegian. Norwegians use å, not ä. So the correct spelling would be forstått not forstätt. And it's one word as you can see. Forstått means understood.
• Easily Forgiven: Shingu sabotages Shiriya's run in revenge for being sabotaged, and also to be allowed into a prestigious training institution. It turns out that the revenge was purely a very bad misunderstanding and that Shiriya purposely ignored the fact that Shingu sabotaged his skies for Shingu's sake, and to challenge Nonomiya and Amatsu to stretch themselves (they had to make up for his fall in their own jumps). Shingu breaks down, admits his crime, and says he will turn himself in to the police. The team manager and his associate interrupt him and ask him not to do that. Whilst not exactly forgiving him, they understand his anger, and they do not want to disrespect Shiriya's decision.
• Extremity Extremist: Nono will always kick people when they start irritating her. Since she's actually female, can also count as a Kick Chick.
• Even Jerks Have Standards:
  • Terashi may be incredibly arrogant, as well as being possibly the biggest jerk in the series, but he loves cats and will not tolerate any negative remarks towards them.
  • Negita may be a borderline sociopath, but even he finds the jury's attempt to rig the inter-high competition to be over the line.
• Even the Guys Want Him: At least one guy has an erotic dream about Nono without knowing that in reality he is a she, and that isn't counting the one guy that tried to rape Nono because he thinks she's a boy.
• Flash Back
• Half-Identical Twins
• Hard Work Hardly Works: Yuuta.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: This is from the author of Elfenlied, so go figure. While this isn't meant to be a theme of the manga, there are enough assholes, (pseudo)rapists, and off-putting scenes that you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise.
• Idiot Ball: Yuuta grabs it big time toward the end of the backstory arc. Realizing he'll never be any good at ski jumping, he burns the house down and kills himself while wearing Nono's jacket so she'll be considered dead and can take over his identity. Apparently he never considered simply switching places with her.
  • Besides, how could he know that his body would burn beyond recognition?
• Important Haircut: "Goodbye, Nonomiya Nono."
• It Got Worse: At first it looks like the manga is just about a girl cross-dressing to enter the olympics. From there on the story slowly ups the rape, violence, and asshole antes.
• Jerkass: Many, many characters, ranging from the violent assholes to the snobby elitists.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: The Emperor is a violent asshole, shameless pervert to boot, and is quite possibly psychotic. However, he is eventually shown to genuinely care about his teammates.
• Love Dodecahedron: Nono likes Amatsu, who likes Kourogi, who likes Yuuta (Nono). Kishitani likes Nono after finding out she's a girl, and the Emperor falls for her as well after seeing her dressed as a girl named Noriko. Komachi, the Emperor's sister, has a crush on Nono's disguise as Yuuta. There's also Satou, a side character, who has his fascination with "Yuuta" explored in a chapter of the manga.
• Near-Rape Experience: Nono has near rape moments, uncomfortably sexual personal space violations, creepy stalkers, and gotten felt up.
• Pet the Dog: The Emperor gets one of these moments shortly after it is revealed that he purposely took a dive in a ski-jump competition to help out Shingu.
• The Pollyanna: Nono was like this in the backstory until her father shut her down.
• Power Trio: Nono, Amatsu, and Kishitani are gradually forming this dynamic.
• Recursive Crossdressing: Kourogi "forces" Nono to wear a maid's outfit while they're living together, which she secretly couldn't be happier about.
  • Of which fact Kourogi is fully aware.
• Replacement Goldfish: Yuuta chose to have Nono become him, committing suicide by causing the fire.
• School Idol: Kourogi, a national figure skating champion.
• Serious Business: It makes sense that the practitioners of ski jumping take their sport seriously, but it's still a relatively minor sport in Japan—which makes the response to Nono's father losing the Gold medal rather excessive, but also more understandable.
  • The measures and plans that some of coaches lay out are pretty underhanded and unnecessary, but it's taken to the next level when a juryman tries to rig the Inter-High competition in a team's favor by giving other teams absolutely unsafe conditions to attempt a jump in.
• Shown Their Work: Okamoto did quite a bit of travelling to study ski jumping rules and techniques, and shows great attention to detail with each jump the characters make.
• Slasher Smile: It's from the creator of Elfen Lied, what do you expect? The Emperor gets the best ones by far, but Nonomiya of all people gets plenty of good ones too. Mostly when she's trying to play it up for intimidation.
• Spit Take: How Kourogi reacted to Nonomiya asking her what "jerking off" means, the fact that Kourogi thinks Nonomiya is a man made the question all the more awkward to her.
• Start of Darkness: Chapter 52 to 57 describes how Nono's father goes from a respectable guy into one of the most Abusive Parents in the series. He's got a problem with his left knee costing a critical loss for the Olympic Gold Medal. Also where Nono herself gets an Important Haircut.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Kourogi does this whenever anyone catches her training.
• Sweet Polly Oliver: Nonomiya.
• Took a Level in Badass: Kishitani who pretty much was just in the middle rank does a Big Damn Heroes when Nono was about to be raped by a sore loser. Feet meet face.
• Unwanted Harem: Yuuta left several girlfriends behind, who Nono now has to deal with.
  • Nono herself seems to be getting one of these whether disguised as Yuuta or just being herself.
• The Watson: Every ski jumping scene has someone around who doesn't know anything about the sport, just so they can have the statistics of each jump explained to them.
• Training from Hell: Shiriya's ski jumping practice.
• Tsundere: Kourogi, after the first few chapters. Unusually, she is not Oblivious to Love, confessing (and being rejected) at their first meeting, and continuing to declare herself his girlfriend throughout the series. Also unusually, the boy she is tsundere for (Yuuta) is actually a girl (Nono).
  • Also possibly Nono herself occasionally, though the "dere" is sympathy rather than actual attraction, and the "tsun" is a justified response to perverted behavior.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Nonomiya.
• Wig, Dress, Accent: Inverted, in that Nonomiya is actually a girl in the first place. When Nonomiya wears the dress that Kourogi left out, she takes a trip to Nagoya so she can be a girl for once with Sora, who knows her secret. Two of her teammates turn up unexpectedly, including her rival... but no-one recognises her. Except Amatsu.
• You Bastard: Yuusuke was endlessly scorned by every single person in Japan after "stealing" the gold medal.