Girl Friends (manga)

Girl Friends (ガールフレンズ) is a yuri manga series by Milk Morinaga. It has been serialized bimonthly by Futabasha in the seinen manga magazine Comic High! since October 21, 2006, and collected in three bound volumes as of September 2009. The manga is licensed in Taiwan by Sharp Point Press.

According to the author's afterword to volume one, she based the story on her own experience in high school (and based the school on the school she attended) but had to update it with such details as ubiquitous cell phones.

Plot
The story revolves around the quiet Mari Kumakura whose only noticeable quality is her top of the class grades, enter the cute and friendly Akko Oohashi whose goal is to get to know Mari and become best friends with her. With Akko's help she quickly transforms into one of the more fashionable girls in school and becomes good friends with Akko, Sugi and Tamami. The group get into all kinds of situations; boys, diets, fashion, friends and studies.

However as the plot develops Mari and later Akko realize both have deeper feelings for each other, feelings that eclipse friendship.

Characters

 * Mariko Kumakura (熊倉 真理子)
 * The protagonist, whose nickname is Mari. She is a shy and polite person who always sits during lunch breaks and read books by herself. When Akko befriends her, Mari starts to change and her personality starts to develop. She has recently become less shy and more socially-aware. In an effort to distance her feelings for her friend, she gains a boyfriend (despite having growing feelings of romantic love for Akko). Her resolve to remain "just friends" with Akko conceal her true desires did not hold for long; tormented by the then unaware Akiko's kindness and care, she kissed Akiko on the lips by impulse on one occasion, but then chooses not to speak of it anymore (on the realization that her love will never bear fruit).


 * Akiko Oohashi (大橋 亜希子)
 * Second protagonist, known to her friends as "Akko". A confident and attractive girl that befriends Mari at the start of the story. She displays many attributes of a stereotypical teenage girl, such as being knowledgeable about dating, fashion and diets. She claims to know a lot about guys despite interacting with them on limited occasions and even less so when she becomes friends with Mari. Recently she had started to develop feelings for Mari; it is at first debatable whether or not she is aware of them or in denial, however, her increasing jealousy of Mari's boyfriend begins to put things into perspective for her. Akko realizes eventually that she is deeply in love with her best friend.


 * Satoko Sugiyama (杉山 里子)
 * Sugi-san (as she is nicknamed) is an outgoing playgirl who makes lots of boyfriends and dates them all at the same time, she likes to go to mixers and drink a lot. It has been mentioned that she and Tamami kiss quite often (though only as a sign of girlish-friendship intimacy). She often is seen as the most promiscuous and party-loving of the group and tends to strip her clothes off when she is drunk. She is surprisingly a light-weight when it comes to drinking. She sometimes is embarrassed to be friends with Tamami whenever the latter girl is publicly cosplaying or engaging in her geeky hobbies. Sugi is often viewed and revered as the "grown-up" in the group (in terms of her attractiveness, allure and knowledge about male-female relationships, and Akiko has consulted her several times when it comes to issues involving Mariko. She is quite perceptive; she is the first and only person to figure out that Akko and Mari are in love with one another. She seems a bit wary of this, as she is concerned about their well-being, but chooses to watch over them from afar. In an omake chapter dedicated to her, she even envies how the both of them can retain their innocence and purity.


 * Tamami Sekine (関根 珠実)
 * A cute and funny girl who is best friends with Satoko. She is an otaku and often buys or talks about anime, manga and video games. Contrastingly, she also likes nightclubs, drinking, food, and partying. When the original group is split up, Tamami and Satoko grow apart despite promising to stay in touch and be good friends but with help from Mari and Akko they are reunited. They have since been extremely close despite no longer being in the same class.