by Lesbiyankin on February 19th, 2021, 2:19pm

---

User rating of this review - N/A out of 5
Story/Plot - 5 out of 5
Characters - 5 out of 5
Drawing Style - 5 out of 5
Enjoyment - 5 out of 5
Overall - 5 out of 5

Click here for series information

Plot/Story
After completing another school English test, a pretty but successful high school student Marie, suffering from a hard day, is about to return home. Suddenly, her classmate, a beautiful but careless Akko, calls her to have a snack. Despite the fact that Akko causes Mari a lot of suspicion by her sudden appearance in her gray life, Mari cannot resist the charm of this attractive long-haired blonde with a smiling face, and even entrusts her to cut her hair by shortening her hair. The girls grow closer and soon become friends. Akko introduces Mari to his other girlfriends Tamamin and Sugiyama. Marie is amazed at the way they dress, how they have fun and how unusual they are after school. But, mentally looking at herself and her life, she suffers from the fact that she is not at all like them. Noticing this, new friends decided to help her start a new, bright, funny and joyful life. Struggling between shame mixed with fear, and joy close to happiness, Marie is more and more closely included in the circle of her new friends and does not cease to be amazed at what free and spontaneous personalities they are, as well as how bright and stylish women they are. But time passes, Marie begins puberty - and at some point she begins to feel her sexual attraction to Akko: she is visited by sudden shameful fantasies with her participation, including in the form of bestiality. And Akko herself, from time to time, accidentally or deliberately, demonstrates to Mari that she desires her as a sexual partner. Remaining a timid and shy girl, Marie suffers from her shameful thoughts and is tormented by the fact that she cannot admit her attraction to the beautiful Akko, whose body is becoming more and more adult and sexy. At some point, a chance meeting with an unfamiliar guy makes Mari want to try to love a man and try to build a heterosexual relationship with him, but ... something unexpected happens, causing their disagreement, and Mari starts to improve her relationship with Akko again. Soon their mutual sexual attraction becomes obvious to both of them, and at some point the girls retire in the apartment of one of them - after which they have a little awkward, but passionate lesbian sex. But, in addition to physical love, they also confess their spiritual love to a friend, and Mari promises to take care of Akko's health, while she prepares herself for a career in the beauty industry. And when they leave school and attend the prom, their parents meet and get to know each other.
Characters
Since there are so many characters in this manga that there is enough for an entire pop or rock group, I will limit myself, as always, to those of them who most often (according to my observations) appear on the pages of this epic new-Japanese monochrome canvas ...
Mari-chan (Mariko or Kumakura-san)
A modest and shy girl who is used to hiding her feelings and holding back her emotions. Each new person in her life causes a real explosion of feelings and thoughts in her, and when there are many of them, then also a whole brain storm. Trusting, naive, easy to follow people pleasant to her. He suffers terribly, falling into hysterics if he cannot quickly, simply and clearly express his thoughts and feelings to a loved one. She is cowardly and fearful, with a feeling of shame or disgust, she can begin to hide from even the closest people and shirk her duties under all sorts of excuses. But when the time comes to support and help, Marie behaves like a wise and mature woman: she limits herself and others to earthly pleasures for personal and common good. At some point, experiencing difficulties in a relationship with Akko, she tries to become a heterosexual woman, but the behavior of her friend ... again leads her to the idea that Akko is dearer to her, and blush, and whiter.
Akko-chan (Atsuko-chan or Oohashi-san)
A bright and stylish girl who adores fashion and sweets. A very feminine and cheerful character - everything you know about the entertainment of the modern urban average high school student has been invested by Morinaga Milk in her actions and behavior. She loves to dress her curvy body in beautiful and stylish clothes, to put on herself (and others too) a variety of cosmetics. A beauty and fashionista, she loves shopping (apparently, this explains her lack of any stress, hmm?) And hanging out with friends. But when she has to put on a bikini swimsuit, she can suddenly start to feel embarrassed and timid in front of others, even if he looks great on her. Very friendly and sociable, she seems to be always ready to gather around her a whole crowd of friends, friends and even ... lovers. She was originally a heterosexual woman, but heh, her sexual partner's erection accident apparently caused her a bitter disappointment in men.
Sugi-san (Sugi-chin or Sugiyama)
A gorgeous woman, a poet's dream and, as far as I understand, the oldest character from all this school glamorous four. She is so beautiful that in a romantic and erotic relationship with her (from time to time or in the order of the queue?) 5 men at once (at the very end of the manga another one was added), and this feature of her, as for me, Morinaga Milk tried to make satirical side of this manga, ridiculing such sexual behavior of people as harem and polygamy vice versa (that is, when one woman has love relationships with three or more men). But when on the train she was grabbed by the legs by a former teacher whom she had once fallen in love with as a child, she could not share her embarrassment and indignation with anyone other than Tamamin, “her own on the board”. Sugi, apparently due to her sexy appearance and free upbringing, loves to undress to underwear here and there, shocking everyone around and showing her charms. She is already an adult, and, being a cheeky and hedonistic young woman in her 20s, she loves to drink alcohol and have fun crazy. Looking at her, you understand that the propaganda phrase of the leftists and believers “the corrupted West” is just about girls like her. But, nevertheless, almost always she is calm and balanced, looks at the other characters over her head and generally loves to share the secret and explicit knowledge of the inhabitant of the Japanese urban "jungle". Oh yes: and always strives to "make you beautiful", which sometimes pisses off his friends.
Tamamin
A cheerful and cheerful girl who loves cosplay. Perhaps the most wonderful and interesting character in this manga, because the idea of Morinaga Milk to weave into the storyline a cosplay girl who loves to dress up and apply makeup to characters from manga by completely different authors is truly brilliant. She is very lively and vigorous, always reacts emotionally to outstanding events. Despite the fact that she is good in herself (both physically and spiritually), she simply adores in her free time to transform into fictional characters from the manga, which she is engaged in at the school anime club (in connection with which, of course, I do not understand, how much Morinaga Milk and her publishers paid royalties to all the other manga artists whose work (and the costumes Tamamin wears) are mentioned in this manga). An immediate artistic personality striving for theatrical creativity. Kind and friendly, almost not aggressive, but very intrusive and annoying, for which she often flies away from the blow of her outraged girlfriends. Despite all her amorphousness and frivolity, she is merciful and compassionate, ready for a serious relationship built on loyalty and devotion.
Drawing Style
Background Graphics Quality:
The background in this manga is just gorgeous ... It's such a high level of detailing of lines, gradient fills of objects and bodies, so spectacular and excitingly traced graphic special effects that you are simply amazed: well, why the artistic handwriting of Morinaga Milk is not elevated to the standard, and some authors on - they still draw backgrounds in their works so badly that you don't want to read their works even for only uneven, open or out-of-bounds lines and fill. Yes, of course: the crowd and people in the background, as a rule, look like circles hovering over ovals or rectangles for her, but if you consider that Morinaga is more a caricature than a picturesque mangaka, then she can be and forgive. I was particularly impressed by the house where Akko lives with his abandoned and busy single mother. It's just a ship, a yacht, a cruise ship! Just fantastic architecture that makes it clear what kind of people live in it, heh.
Character graphics quality:
The Morinaga Milk characters she portrayed in this manga are even more attractive, even more than the background. Of course, you shouldn't expect any anatomical correctness from Morinaga: anime is anime, his canons require stylization of the human body, its "pupation" and transformation into a kind of caricature of reality, and even hypertrophied. But, with all that, Morinaga has created a number of such attractive female characters in this manga that just remembering how they look, I, as a heterosexual man, turn on. Of course, the undisputed leaders in their beauty are the female characters Akko and Sugi, and Sugi is many times more attractive than all the female characters put together. This woman is simply gorgeous, her body excites and attracts at first sight, her hair is so beautiful and cute, and her wardrobe is amazing with gorgeous, beautiful outfits. But Akko, clearly being younger, is able to look cute in school uniforms, streetwear, and even pajamas. True, one of the features of Morinaga Milk's graphics is that she really loves to drop a large fly in the ointment into a barrel of milk and honey. Some of the characters are deliberately ugly and deliberately ugly: the girlfriends of the cosplay fan Tamamin from the anime club, the husband and child Naru are the teachers of all the friends ... Apparently, she did it deliberately, realizing that you shouldn't go too far with sugar, syrup and chocolate ...
Enjoyment
Miao Morinaga Miruku Milk is one of the most prolific yuri manga authors in modern Japan, alongside Kodama Naoko. Starting her career with one-shot manga, which I would define as "art house" (by analogy with "auteur cinema"😉, Morinaga for a long time published only short graphic stories about the joyful and sad life, as well as the sweet and bitter love of Japanese high school girls ... These stories, for the most part, were filled with light sadness over the edge, beautiful art was combined in them with a thoughtful author's statement. And, apparently, a strong melancholy and longing for everything that happens in them, and even at times with an unhappy end (or even an understatement, Japanese manga artists love it so much - they always end up unexpectedly in the most interesting place, rather than encouraging readers to do heaps of fanfiction with alternative stories), too clearly demonstrated the deeply depressive nature of Miao Morinaga herself Miruku Milk. In her extra chapters, she appeared more than once, not twice in the form of a pathologically drunk cat with spider legs (a terrible sight !!!), and at the same time, like all mangaks, she complained about the editor with the publishing house, but somehow very much piteously and tearfully. Seemingly realizing that she shouldn't put pressure on her reader with her depressive state, she followed the path trodden by many more rock musicians from the sixties and seventies: discarding exaggerated sentimentality and the desire to write "about high", she created ... "Girlfriends." This new Japanese epic is a comic pop. A whole crowd of beautiful women, one more beautiful than the other. Lots of vulgar humor, pulled here and there from North American sitcoms and serial cartoons. Bold eroticism and blatant sexuality ... These are all hallmarks of any manga-pop we all know. This is visible to anyone who appreciates such thoughtful works of her competitors, such as "Dark Forest, White Path" by Yoshida Chiyu or "Epitaph" by Shouoto Aya, which are orders of magnitude more profound and serious and, in fact, resemble the realistic literature of European writers IXX -XX centuries. But, nevertheless, following the path of least resistance, Miao Morinaga Miruku Milk has created ... a masterpiece. She managed to make a real hit, beloved by many readers of literary and graphic work, which gave her a great impetus to work on her other, albeit controversial, but magnificent work: the yuri manga "The Secret Recipe". However ... Miao Morinaga Miruku Milk fell into the real state of Pygmalion, that is, an artist who fell in love with his characters as living women. It started with her one more shots with short-haired brunette Nana and long-haired blonde Hitomi. Feeling that the audience liked these types / images very much, Miao Morinagi Miruku Milk began to "move" with them, like a director with favorite actors, from one job to another. In The Secret Recipe, they were already named Black-browed Horikawa and Golden-haired Wakatsuki. Well, in "Girlfriends" Miao Morinaga Miruku Milk named the character with a short black hairstyle (which she, by her own admission in one extra chapter, adores the most) Marie, in the French manner, and the character with a long blonde hairstyle - Akko ( or Akiko). At the same time, I note as a man, Akko stands out noticeably against the background of all the other characters of Miao Morinaga Miruku Milk with her sensual, almost adult body, more or less rational behavior and feminine inclinations (as a result, she chooses, albeit an artistic, but prestigious profession) ... What do we have in the end? .. A real novel about how a girl's friendship turns into lesbian love. A tale full of joys and sorrows, about the importance of having a friend in a modern western city full of temptations and dangers. The tale of two still very young female souls who came to a deep feeling of great love and lust through the mutual and sweet friendship of two high school girls who met at recess. And all this with beautiful graphics that induce an erection, clear and even lines of everything, and ... a rather convincing picture of being.
Overall
If you do not pretend to be an evil and cruel snob or a warlike esthete, burning with infernal fire of righteous anger, then the impression of this manga is very, very good. Morinaga is a true mangaka pastry chef who bakes delicious, juicy, sweet and mouth-watering paper and ink sweets in his bakery for the eyes and mind (and hands, if you also do "self-service" while reading it). When creating this epic New Japanese painting, she did not try to appear very smart ... very wise ... very sophisticated and understood only by those 25 percent of the population who are always considered avant-garde in any, even totalitarian society. Take it below, her goal in creating this manga was not a picturesque spectacle, striking with realism ... Not moralizing and not teaching ... Not an attempt to create something great (in a value, not a physical sense) ... She just tried to tell the story of two friends. Two young Japanese cute girls suffering and enjoying, sad and happy, thinking and talking, fearful and acting boldly. This is not just another pop manga, no: this is one of the best pop manga I have read in my life! For she gave me a fantastic opportunity: every evening, for several months, to live the life of two friends, learn in great detail the life and customs of modern Japan (which, alas, leave much to be desired, for the men in this manga are deservedly depicted as cattle) and become a witness how ... they ... had a sudden feeling of friendship, which grew into a great feeling of love ... For which, Morinaga, thank you very much from the poor and unfortunate people around the world, who so far cannot survive both. But this manga seems to be prophesying: people of the whole earth, do not despair and do not be discouraged - sooner or later your own Akko (and after her, perhaps, Sugi, huh) will come to you. And all that is required of you is to accept it and not let go ...

---