An elementary student takes a red backpack to school one day simple believing it to be pretty, until she realised the colour was gender specific and coded as male, beginning a sense of disharmony. The protagonist of this documentary is diagnosed with gender dysphoria at age 14, and based this diagnosis she wins an appeal for her middle school to accept her as a male student by the name of Takamasa. The film then follows Takamasa for 3000 days as he attempts to find and build his own identity. At this point the film may seem like another addition to the FTM (female to male) or MTF (male to female) transgender identity quest category, but Zero As You Are takes things a step further. The hint lies in the original Japanese title, translated into English as Sora and Konomi, which indicates the protagonist’s gender transition symbolically. However, Sora is the pronunciation of 空 (one of the Kanji characters in the protagonist’s name), which the protagonist chooses to be read differently as Taka, and combine it with another Kanji 雅 (Masa). Now the shift from being called Sora to Takamasa seems to complete his journey. However, he adapts to a new self with the name Konomi (木の実, the fruit of tree) and the new gender identity of Gender X. [HWANG Miyojo]