Milk Morinaga

Girl Friends is super cute, and echoes my own experiences, and I love it when I want to indulge in a sweet f/f romance story.

One of the problems with the f/f manga imported to English is that so much of it is that weird "onee-sama" fake lesbian thing - Maria Watches Over Us is probably the one that a lot of people know, or at least, it was when I first discovered Girl Friends many years ago. There's something about the f/f where the girls are sort of put on these pedestals of purity for male show more readers, I guess, and there's this feeling that their relationships are different than "real" relationships. Girl Friends avoids a lot of that - while Akko and Mari are in an all-girls' school like many of the other stories back in 2012, it's normal for the girls to have boyfriends or want boyfriends, not to have romantic relationships with each other.

I've read the series several times since I first discovered it in fan-translation, before the English licensing by Seven Seas, and even after I bought the official translation. The girls here are a little bit idealized, but they still feel like they could be real - just extra sweet/cute. It's almost funny the way Morinaga inserts brand names into the dialogue and art, and her inclusion of so much current fashion for 2008, or whenever the series was originally published. But that makes the girls feel more real to me, by grounding them in actual pop culture instead of some remote place.

This first omnibus volume covering chapters 1-18 is about Mari becoming friends with Akko, then realizing that she feels something different and more than friendship. The major dramatic turns include being overcome by a sleeping Akko's cuteness and kissing her; kissing an aware Akko who has just told Mari that she should confess to the boy she likes - and Mari crying that it's impossible; and after agreeing to go out with a boy who has liked her since 6th grade, the volume ends with an upset Mari telling Akko that they're the same now (ie: not virgins - a sad misunderstanding).

The plot/drama summary is that Mari is trying to figure out what separates a romantic relationship from best friends, and frankly that speaks to me on a high level, and I love reading this story and watching her resolve the problem. Also, all the girls are super cute. show less

I've had this book for years and never managed to get into it... turns out my copy has a printing error that replaced the first two chapters with the last two! No wonder I felt lost!
Anyway, after getting over that hurdle, I enjoyed the story a lot. The art is really cute, especially the clothes and accessories. It's a very classic and heart-wrenching story about falling in love with your best friend (and you're both girls!). I'm a real sucker for shoujo manga, so even the plot points that show more stemmed from misunderstandings had me hooked. 
I was surprised at the mature route that things took in the book (sexual content, underage drinking). I haven't read a LOT of yuri but it seems like those are unusual in a story like this! I'll admit they do add to the drama of it all. The main thing that put me off was the focus put on dieting (there's a whole chapter dedicated to it, which I mostly skipped). It's especially egregious given how the characters look.
Despite being spoilered by the misprint issue, after seeing everything that lead up to the ending, I'm desperate to find out what happens next! I want Mari and Akko to be together! I'm very glad past-me had the foresight to buy both collections at the same time! show less

When she was a child, Miu's mother told her that she needed to be cute all the time, because she could meet her prince at any moment. Now that she's in high school, Miu understands that her mother's attitude is a bit old-fashioned, but that hasn't stopped her from taking her advice to heart. She really wants to meet her prince someday and get married.

However, she's currently attending an all-girls school, so it's unlikely she'll meet her prince anytime in the near future. The person she show more meets instead: Fujiwara, a popular member of the volleyball club. When Miu witnesses Fujiwara accidentally break the principal's expensive vase, Fujiwara begs her not to tell, saying she'll do anything Miu wants. Miu sees this as an opportunity. She asks Fujiwara to go out with her, explaining that it would be good practice for when she finally meets her prince - she'd already know how to be a great girlfriend. Fujiwara agrees because the activities Miu says they'd be doing - walking home together, eating lunch together, texting each other good night, etc. - sound like exactly the kind of friendship activities she has always felt she's been missing out on, due to the way all the other student put her on a pedestal. But what happens when their fake relationship starts to feel real?

I went into this expecting ridiculous and adorable fluff and was a bit surprised when it got a little heavy at times (content warning: attempted suicide - a character threatens to jump off the school roof). Considering the premise, I thought some of the implications would be flat-out ignored, but, oddly, Morinaga opted to bring some of it up but just...not fully deal with it all?

I'm torn on this volume. Miu and Fujiwara were cute together, and I loved the way Miu struggled with her gradually shifting perception of her own sexuality after years of her mother's heteronormative pep talks. Her journey from viewing her and Fujiwara's relationship as practice for her eventual "real" relationship with a guy to realizing that she was in love with and attracted to Fujiwara, and that romance between two girls was real and valid too, was nice.

Unfortunately, there were too many details that I didn't think Morinaga properly dealt with. For example, I initially rolled my eyes at the premise, wondering why it didn't occur to Miu that her practice relationship might get her a reputation as a lesbian and hurt her chances at eventually getting a prince. Then there was the possibility of homophobic reactions from others. I figured that Morinaga was just going to ignore those possibilities, and I'd actually have been fine with that. Sometimes it's best if cute, fluffy fiction ignores uglier realities.

Homophobia came up, however, after Miu made her and Fujiwara's relationship public. At first it appeared to just be slight jealousy - Miu's friends viewed Fujiwara as an untouchable idol, and Miu was breaking unspoken rules by actually dating her. Eventually, though, it became clear that jealousy wasn't the only issue. Several of Miu's friends announced that they were no longer going to be Fujiwara's fans because, well, it was a bit weird now that she was publicly a lesbian (those weren't the words they used, but that was the implication - my guess was they were worried they'd be viewed as lesbians too). I'd have expected Miu to be hurt and taken aback, because their rejection of Fujiwara for being a lesbian also indicated, on some level, a rejection of her as well, even though they continued to speak to her and be friends with her. I found it odd that this implication was never addressed or dealt with.

There were a few other little annoying things that weren't really dealt with. For example, one of the maids at Fujiwara's house indicated that she'd been worried when Fujiwara announced that she was bringing a friend home. If the person had been a guy, she wouldn't have allowed him in, but Miu was fine. There was no indication that her view of Miu changed after Fujiwara and Miu went from being in a fake relationship to being in a real one and it made me wonder, a little, if the maid and possibly others were still viewing Miu and Fujiwara's relationship as something less real than a similar relationship between a boy and girl. There was also the implication, in another part of the volume, that romantic relationships didn't really count unless they included physical components, like kissing and sex.

I don't know. It was nice and sweet overall, but there was so much that I felt needed to be properly addressed that wasn't. I wish Morinaga hadn't brought some of that stuff up at all if she wasn't going to do anything with it.

Extras:

"After School Girl," a short manga about an all-girl chemistry club with one particular member who looks a bit like a stereotypical juvenile delinquent and doesn't seem to care about chemistry in the slightest. This isn't explicitly a yuri story, but it could be interpreted as the beginnings of one.

There's also a 2-page author afterword comic that includes a sweet little story from the author's time at an all-girls school.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

Okay, so we have a couple of women who have remained roommates after college. Rena has a secret crush on Yuna that comes out when the other brings home a stray kitten. Sure, that sounds odd, but the dominoes do fall in a logical manner. The ostensibly straight Yuna isn't averse to a same-sex relationship but her acceptance is tied to some dark emotional issues around abandonment and rejection that are alluded to, so the consent gets a little murky and the rom-com tone from Rena's perspective show more is constantly undercut by what's going on in Yuna's head.

I'm curious to find out if this undercurrent is heading toward an explosion or a more internalized epiphany sort of thing. show less