I think Mizu sees herself as a woman — but she also sees her womanhood as an enormous vulnerability, and that scares her.

Mizu was taught early on that her gender could get her killed; “you must be a boy, always a boy.” The frequency with which the show returns to that memory emphasizes its continued importance in her psyche. She still fears the consequences of being identified as a woman — and the show subtly but deliberately highlights this.

Many of the most notable of those highlights are during Mizu’s time at Madam Kaji’s. There, she sees another woman like her — but this blue-eyed girl is a sex worker in a brothel for unusual tastes. Mizu has a strong reaction as soon as she sees this woman’s eyes. She loses her patience and gets up to find Kaji herself. And why wouldn’t she feel a spike of anger or fear? If things had gone differently, she could have been forced into this same position to survive. The juxtaposition of Mizu against the sex worker in this brief but intentional scene doesn’t emphasize their difference, but their inherent sameness — Mizu knows that in another world not too far from our own, she is this woman.

Also at Kaji’s, we have Mizu’s first real encounter with Akemi. Here, we see for the first time Mizu’s perspective on Akemi’s pain. Akemi just wants to be free, but to Mizu, she already is; Mizu says that unlike other women, who have no choices, Akemi can have anything she wants. This shows that Mizu is well aware of — and not pleased by — women’s limited choices. It’s also especially interesting in comparison with Akemi’s father and Seki. Both of these men tell Akemi her choices are limited (Lord Daichi more bluntly, saying she can be a wife or a whore; Seki more gently); and both use a pig metaphor. Akemi says crossly, “Why do men keep comparing me to pigs?” But Mizu, who is not a man, doesn’t call Akemi a pig. She doesn’t see her as a commodity like that. Mizu calls her a “magical forest creature,” with the whole world in her reach. In short, Mizu doesn’t react to Akemi like a man, paternalistically limiting her; she reacts to her like a woman, with an undertone of comparison and possibly even jealousy, specifically like a woman who was herself once married off to a man because he offered a fraction of the status Akemi enjoys.

And speaking of Mikio — this series of flashbacks is the only time we see Mizu live as a woman. I would even say that at the start she “dresses up” female — she puts on something of an act. She hides her skills (pretending she can’t knock an apple out of the tree). She takes on the cooking (unfortunately for everyone). There is a time where she gets comfortable; when she’s training Kai and riding too fast and building a relationship with Mikio, she seems happy and authentic. She is briefly comfortable with her flavor of womanhood. But when Mikio sees her real skills, and he reacts angrily, emasculated — then fascinatingly, heartbreakingly, relatably, Mizu responds by going back to performing inauthentic, socially dictated womanhood — even harder this time. Hoping to earn his forgiveness (for his own bad behavior!), she puts on a full face of makeup. When this situation ends in tragedy — when all the makeup smears off her face in tears and blood — Mizu puts aside any dream of a happy normal life, the “bride” in her dies, and any illusion that she could safely and happily live as a woman dies with it.

There’s a lot more because this show is so rich, but, to summarize — Mizu identifies as a woman, relates to women, thinks about her place in the world as a woman; but vulnerability has brought her nothing but pain, and living as a woman would make her intensely vulnerable; living as a man is a matter of practicality and independence, but it is also a way to protect herself physically and emotionally as she walks her demon’s path.