Back Street Girls: Gokudolls

Gokudolls is a comedy anime about a group of yakuza dudes that get forced to do a sex change in Thailand and become idols.

For all intents and purposes, the sex change these guys go through is treated as an actual magical physical sex change, because these 3 formerly manly yakuza become women looks and voice wise, in addition to becoming capable idols through some cartoonishly exaggerated training.

Despite being really unserious, the anime unexpectedly manages to provide some I think pretty decent commentary on how women are treated in predominantly male environments. A lot of the humor comes from this discrepancy - formerly male yakuza are now met with the difficulties of being a woman (in the underground idol industry). Particularly what stuck with me was a moment in the second episode, where one of the Gokudolls, Chika, meets with a former kohai that used to look up to Chika when she was a yakuza. They used to be friends, but now the kohai fervently insists he sees Chika as her old self and that nothing has changed between them, that he's different from everyone else that now sees Chika sexually. There's an added layer to it as well - Chika is the most childlike and cutest looking member, therefore she gets the most male attention out of the three. After a night of drinking, the kohai drunkenly takes off his clothes and reveals Chika themed underwear, proving how he doesn't view Chika as his former buddy at all anymore, instead sexualizing and dehumanizing her like everyone else. It's all played for comedy of course, but there's several moments like these that manage to portray these issues through humor - such as the Gokudolls never getting taken seriously by male authority figures, or the men they admire trying to take advantage of them sexually. Sometimes however these dynamics get contrasted with how male gangs exploit men as well, just in a different manner. And as an extra layer of silliness, the Gokudolls manage to turn their former Yakuza experience into their strength, by applying their gang knowledge into the idol industry.

One thing this anime gets flack for is... the transphobia lmao. While I mentioned the 3 main characters are perceived by everyone as women, they're still men internally (but also, they're not trans really). Their inner dialogue is voiced by male VAs, and internally nothing about them has really changed. And despite them being perceived as women the sentiment that they'll never be real women is shared both by them, and other characters in the show. Pretty interesting... The sex reassignment surgery they went through is both very fantastical and unrealistic in but also implied to be very dodgy, botched and weird, such as due to them not really being able to feel any arousal physically anymore. Pretty common issue with the ""barbie pouch"" to be fair ha ha...

The animation really sucks, but I expect that from low budget comedies done by jc staff. The comedy was pretty good for the most part, but the first episode or two had me feeling bad for the gokudolls due to their insanely abusive boss. I'm glad he got some character development early on and became that sort of crazy bipolar character you sometimes see in comedies, where everything about him is extremely contradicting and illogical. At first he just came across as extremely violent and nothing else lmao. I loved his relationship with his wife and everything that ensued from there on, very out of nowhere. All in all the comedy is very vulgar and raunchy, similar to Detroit Metal City.