My absolute favorite anime is Cowboy Bebop, and my absolute favorite game is Megaman X. Together, these form the "Cowboy-Bebop-Megaman-X-tier", a title only bestowed upon something so enjoyable, so smart, and so amazingly mind-blowing that it's my most favorite thing of all time in its category.

Girl Friends is the fourth addition to this tier, just after Firefly/Serenity.

I'm not even sure I recall exactly how I came across this gem. I think it was suggested to me in passing by someone I barely knew online. Or maybe I found it randomly searching around for yuri manga on the old manga reader app I used to use. Little did I know just what I was getting into by reading it.

Heads up, if you're looking for an ecchi yuri romp, you have come to the wrong place, mate. There is one sex scene in Girl Friends, but it's way in the back, and it's a few pages long. Not that it's not good, it's pretty nice in of itself, but that's not what I read this manga for, and neither should you.

It's not very long, just five volumes (split into two omnibuses for the physical copy here in the 'states), but it's a long enough story to hold some real weight. Girl Friends is like a really good romance novel in that way, not to mention its absolutely wonderful pacing and realism. These are the two great things about Girl Friends.

The manga doesn't try to lure you in with gimmicky plot constructions, where everything is set off by some pure-coincidental event like they accidentally kissed or one of the main characters broke a vase. Neither does the plot get all dating-sim-y with the progression; there's no "flags" or "events" between the main characters, just time spent together as well as time spent with their own thoughts is what causes the plot (and their feelings) to develop. Not only does this add to Girl Friends' already outstanding realism, but because it's done so well, it sets the manga's pacing off just right, without feeling forced or dragged on.

Its realism is another great point, too. Nowhere does it feel like the manga is forcing these two characters together; their feelings develop very naturally and just as how one would expect them to if they knew a shred of how real life people work, heh. The characters are believable and very likeable; from the teasing yet sincere Sugiyama, to the eccentric anime geek Tamamin, and especially the main characters, Akiko and Mariko. The story even goes beyond your expectations of it being innocent fluff, covering very mature topics like dealing with men, sex, and womanhood.

The art has a very cute edge to it and is enjoyable most of the time, and the characters are designed pretty well. However, it's not the most perfect part of Girl Friends, and later on in the manga, the art gets a little short-cut at times. It doesn't detract from the rest of the manga enough to really go on a tangent, however, I just wanted to give you a heads up that there's plenty of cheap moments late in the game. Asides from that, the art's really good though.

...Alright, so that's it. Just go on eBay and...and buy a copy of Girl Friends...unless you already h--*burp* have one...ah fuck...JUST GO. JUST READ GIRL FRIENDS, alright, it's good. I swear, it's fucking good, if this makes me that excited, if I can...if I can tear down Sakura Trick, which is people have been like "Oh, it's a good yuri." *dumbass look on face* and I'm like, "Girl Friends is the best yuri ever." then you better fucking read this manga because it's...IT'S GOOD.

RIDIN' ON CARS.

(because of guidelines I should mention that that last bit was a parody of Egoraptor's Megaman X Sequelitis ending and was not entirely written by me)