Inside Mari

What happens when you become the girl of your dreams?

Inside Mari starts innocently enough: a down-on-his-luck boy seemingly bodyswaps with the beautiful yet mysterious Mari. This familiar premise leads to the social gaffes and curious discoveries one might expect, but what sets this story apart is how much deeper it goes. The fear and uncertainty that most bodyswap stories gloss over is treated with a justified gravity, and a sense of shame pervades through all of it, transforming the bodyswap story into a bona fide body horror. 

Inside Mari is a story willing to explore obsession, lust, control, everything in the seedy underbelly of love. Its central question of what happened to Mari is not just a metaphysical question about a consciousness in a body, but an inquiry into the person inside her soul. Who is Mari, really--now, and before?

This is an obvious recommendation for anyone interested in other bodyswap stories such as "Your Name". I also highly recommend this to anyone with an interest in the experience of gender dysphoria, which is a theme the story explores in a unique perspective without stepping over into allegory. Lastly, anyone who is prone to romantic obsession will find a lot to relate to here.