Makoto

Makoto is repeatedly described within the story as a foolish child.

His lack of intelligence is treated as an established character trait.

This is emphasized even in the original comic, where in Chapter 48 of Volume 3 he is shown wearing a shirt labeled "Stupid."

The image makes his role in the series especially explicit.

He is usually called Makoto, and Yuka Uchida and Yoshino generally call him Makoto-kun.

When he appears in his female presentation, he is generally called Makoto-chan.

Makoto is not known for good judgment.

He is simple, impulsive, and easily swept along by other people's schemes.

At the same time, his awkward sincerity makes him memorable.

Much of his comedy comes from how seriously he commits to increasingly absurd situations.

When Makoto visited the Minami household, he fell in love with Haruka Minami at first sight.

That attraction became the starting point for many of his later appearances.

On one occasion, Makoto happily made sweets together with Haruka.

Seeing this, Chiaki Minami became jealous.

After that, Chiaki stopped inviting him to the Minami house.

This shut Makoto out in his normal identity.

Later, Kana Minami encouraged him to cross-dress.

Under that setup, he began visiting the Minami house as Makoto-chan, introduced as a junior high school girl who was Kana's underclassman.

Because of this, Makoto-chan had to act as a completely different person from Makoto.

From there, he gradually became more and more deeply involved in cross-dressing.

Makoto has an older sister, and he sometimes uses her clothes for these disguises.

What begins as a temporary trick turns into a recurring part of his identity.

Chiaki treats Makoto and Makoto-chan very differently.

When he appears as Makoto, she handles him rather coldly and dismissively.

When he appears as Makoto-chan, however, she is fond of him.

This contrast is one of the running jokes surrounding the character.

In a drama CD, Chiaki even comments that Makoto is not manly, while Makoto-chan is manly.

The remark humorously reverses expectations.

Only three people know that Makoto and Makoto-chan are the same person: Kana Minami, Yuka Uchida, and Tōma Minami.

To everyone else, the two are treated as separate individuals.

Makoto feels a strange sense of solidarity with Tōma Minami.

The reason is that both of them have someone around them from whom they are hiding their true sex.

This shared situation gives their relationship an odd feeling of comradeship.

It is an unusual but fitting connection within the series' identity-based comedy.

According to what Kana Minami says in a drama CD, Makoto has declared 56 times that he will stop being Makoto-chan and return to being a boy.

Kana remarks that it is normal for him to remain Makoto-chan in the end anyway.

That repeated back-and-forth captures one of his central jokes.

No matter what he says, he keeps getting pulled back into the role.