An outgoing high school girl draws an introverted girl out of her shell. It's all Best Friends Forever with shopping and study dates until a developing crush complicates matters. There are some consent issues and wholly unnecessary fan service of teen characters, but I found myself breezing through this thick collection and am ready to tackle the conclusion next time.

FOR REFERENCE:

Omnibus edition containing Girl Friends Vol. 1, Vol. 2, and the first half of Vol. 3.

Contents: Chapters 1-18 -- Extras [Afterwords for Vols. 1 and 2] ( )

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 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. ( )