Girl Friend (manga)



Girl Friend (Japanese: ガールフレンド) is a five-volume Japanese Seinen manga written by Masaya Hokazono and illustrated by Court Betten. The manga is serialised in Shueisha's Weekly Young Jump, its original run lasting from June 2004 to June 2007. The manga is licensed for a French-language in France by Delcourt and is notable for being frank with its take on young love in its various forms.

The series contains a collection of short stories about romantic relationships of high school girls and other youth. Things however, aren't always what they turn out to be.

Not to be mistaken for the Yuri manga series Girl Friends.


 * Anthology Comic: The manga as a whole consists of various one-shot short stories, though a number of them either follow the same characters over time or are in some manner interconnected.
 * Book Ends: The first and very last stories (the latter being a Time Skip) are this, as they both involve the same characters.
 * Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: A number of the female characters are shown to be this, either masking their true selves in a more "pleasing" facade or using their partners to get what they want while still acting demure.
 * Bittersweet Ending: Many stories tend to end like this. An actual, straightforward "good end" is relatively rare.
 * Childhood Friend Romance: Deconstructed in a couple of stories, in which the childhood friend in question is only being used for sexual satisfaction or experimentation.
 * Cliche Storm: Played with. Some of the stories either seem straight out of an usual high school drama or look like a typical erotic premise, complete with many of the same archetypes. Only to show instead how they would actually play out.
 * Creator Provincialism: The mangaka makes no qualms about how the stories relate to young love in Japan.
 * Extreme Doormat: Some of the characters, particularly a number of the boys, are this. Even worse is that they're generally aware they're such doormats, which in turn feeds on both their lack of confidence and resentment even towards their supposed "lovers."
 * Friends with Benefits: Brought up in a number of the stories. Though more often than not, not everyone in the relationship is really happy with the arrangement as it can tend to be either out of peer pressure or plain desperation.
 * Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The manga has something of a following in France.
 * Love Hotels: A relatively frequent setting, especially given how the manga's set in Japan.
 * Maybe Ever After: Sometimes, it's left open whether the relationship between one young couple is really going to begin or last.
 * Mood Whiplash: The tone can jump all over the place, going from comedic to raunchy to melodramatic in the course of a few pages at times.
 * Not Blood Siblings: Deconstructed. One small arc focuses on a brother-sister pair who find themselves attracted to one another. But even with that clause, it's shown how stigmatizing and plain complicated it can be when out in the open.
 * Occidental Otaku: The American schoolgirl in one of the later stories, which is strongly implied to be a facade for her to hide how alone she feels as a gaijin. To the point that her Japanese boyfriend wonders and eventually outright asks whether she would have still gone out with him back in America.
 * Otaku: In one story, one girl tries to attract the affections of a handsome if nerdy guy in school by feigning to like the same interests as him, only to become an otaku herself.
 * The Pollyanna: Some of the girls are shown to be this, putting up a facade to mask a rather different persona.
 * Porn with Plot: With a lot of emphasis on story, though there's also much in the way of eroticism.
 * Radio Drama: An audio CD came with the Japanese releases of the manga.
 * Reality Ensues: One of the major points of the manga, depicting young love in a more realistic light. More often than not, the relationships shown don't always seem to work out in the end or are doomed to fail, if not lead to unintended consequences.
 * Slice of Life: Many of the stories focus on snippets of high school life or the love lives of young people in general.
 * Teens Are Monsters: To a rather jarring degree.
 * Time Skip: The last chapter takes place some seven years after the stories in the first volume.
 * Will They or Won't They?: At points, it's deliberately left vague if the couple in the story actually will.
 * Women Are Wiser: Averted. More than a few of the female characters are shown to be as manipulative, selfish and debased as some of the male ones.
 * Your Cheating Heart: Another recurring motif in some of the stories. In one particular arc, it's both the boy and girl doing that at once.