Honey & Honey: Onnanoko Doushi no Love Couple

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Story: The story is a real story about the author and her love life. It's written like an autobiography in manga form. It's a realistic look into lesbian life in Japan. The stories go over everyday things they do together, like going shopping and going on dates, to more important moments in life like when they realized more about their sexuality and when they came out to their friends. The story also focuses on not just lesbians, but all "sexual minorities"( lesbians, bisexuals, gays, FtM(female to male), and MtF (male to female). Overall the story is entertaining and funny, also it is quite informative!

Art: ... Okay, now I know this manga gets a lot for the art in it, but I actually don't mind it. At all. It's different and unique which to me just goes along with the rest of it. So definitely you should not get too hung up on how different it is, it's worth reading!

Characters: The manga contains all different types of characters and does a god job of giving a good look into each of their personalities and lives. Because it is based on her real life, the situations and how the character handle them are very realistic and easy to relate to.

Overall: I really enjoyed this manga. Each chapter held my interest and kept me reading (and giggling). I haven't read a yuri/shoujo-ai like this before. If you love yuri manga, this is really something you should give a chance. I'm glad I did!

This work is primarily meant as a didactic look into the world of real-life women-who-have-sex-with-women (and of some trans men) in Japan in the early 2000s. It is, by design, a slice-of-life which is intended to teach people about the world of what Japan calls "sexual minorities".

If you want to know more about the real lives of LGBT (well, LBT) people in Japan, it's a great read. And any straight or male person with a serious interest in yuri ought to read this, as a good corrective to thinking it's all endless sighs and blushing in girls' schools.

However, it suffers from:
- Not having much ... of a plot (it's real life, life doesn't have a plot)
- Being somewhat dated (it's around 10 years old, and it's been an eventful decade)
- Being somewhat remedial for people who already know a thing or two about LGBT communities
- A rather unconventional art style for people who are used to typical manga

All that said, I did come away feeling like I had a strong sense of the author as a person and liked getting to know her a lot, and I enjoyed reading about her and her friend's experiences. Those character moments are probably the best part of the book--character moments when her relationships can just be relationships without being Representatively Queer, and moments about the ways that two different people learn to be closer to each other and love each other. It works best when it shines as a biography rather than a lesson-book.

Which means, ultimately, that this book suffers from the society that created it. It's wonderful to learn about someone's experiences, but (at least at the time the book was written) the general public was sufficiently ignorant about LGBT people's lives that the author had to be a guide and representative and standard-bearer, instead of just a person speaking from her own life. I'd be curious to see what this book would say if it were written today, or ten more years down the road; but what I really hope is that ten more years from now, there won't be a need for a lesson book--people will already know.