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Hanjuku Joshi just might be changing the face of what we think is perverted and what is actually a portrayal of physical expression of passion.

I've never read ecchi manga before, but after hearing good things about Hanjuku Joshi in yuri circles, I thought I would give it a go. What I was expecting was lame fanservice and ugly, unromantic sex scenes full of shallow girls just doing it for doing it's sake and to titillate the audience.

How wrong I was.

What Hanjuku Joshi paints is a lovely story about two girls who fall in love with one another, and explore both sex and sexual desire with ... one another. They don't launch into bed with one another off the bat, nor do they wait about five years to express their wants and desires from the other person.

It is very refreshing to see that people do want to have sex with the person they love, and that is a natural and wonderful thing to experience. And scary, too.

Yae and Chitose go through the motions of every sort of first time/losing your virginity story, but you hardly see manga take this route and portray it this beautifully. Yae is a cute, soft, girly girl and Chitose is the rough, loud, athletic tomboy. The perfect idea of the traditional "princess and prince". But they don't fall into deep cliches or anything like that. No, they manage to have personalities, insecurities and quirks to them. More importantly, watching their relationship is utterly entertaining. When they take those steps to get to first base, second base, and beyond, they don't do it to please US the reader. They do it to please themselves.

Which makes Hanjuku Joshi so good to read. Even though it is so very ecchi with lots of nudity and sexual situations, it feels more like art than porn.

I highly recommend this title. It is just shy of getting a better score because it is so short. The ending makes you feel like you build up and build up all this tension, and you only get...well, read it and see!

But it is very much worth your time. A lovely ecchi yuri manga. Who'd have thought! Considering my favorite manga is Aoi Hana, it's a big difference, and someone like me would be extra skeptical. But it proves in the end to be a wonderful tale of two girls loving each other emotionally and physically. Now what more can a guy ask for?

If there is ever a manga that knows how to play with your heart, it would be Girl Friends.

This manga is a beautifully illustrated, enjoyable and emotionally involving chronicling of the lives of Mari, a young girl with a girl friend who she starts to wish was more like a girlfriend instead. And yes, the space does make all the difference.

For that is Mari's dilemma. She falls for a friend. A girl friend. This manga covers all the drama, feelings and confusion that one feels while falling in love. What is worse for Mari is that she is in love with not only someone who ... doesn't know it, but with her best friend. And to top it off, that friend is a girl.

Issues of sexuality are perhaps hard to deal with. It's scary enough to fall in love, and sorrowful enough to be in love who doesn't return it - but then there is being in love with someone who you cannot afford to lose.

The writer of this manga is brilliant. The scenes are never dull and every scene packs a punch.

Mari and Akko are excellent characters. Mari is our voice, and she feels all that insecurity and fear we would feel. Akko is just a fun, awesome, cool girl with a loving side and a silly side to her. She really makes you fall in love with her, and it's easy to see why Mari'd fall for her too.

This is an absolutely brilliant yuri manga. It is cute, the characters are lovable, and the situations are all too relatable, even if you're not gay or lesbian.

Love is love, no matter whether you are a guy who is in love with a girl, a guy who is in love with another guy, or a girl who is in love with another girl.

And I think that's the important message that an anime like Aoi Hana tries to show us: no matter what your sexuality or even who you fall in love with, nothing is more sweet and lovely than falling in love and being in love.

It may seem a bit much giving an anime a score of 10 so easily, but let me justify: an anime like Aoi Hana makes ... it easy for you to just fall in love with it and its brilliance. Honestly, I can say this is one of the few romance anime I have seen that qualifies so thoroughly for the term "masterpiece" simply because it is so earnest, sweet, romantic, dramatic and does not fall into the typical cliches and tropes you find for other romances. Yes, even though it's an anime about girls who love other girls. The portrayal of it in this anime is something beautiful and not something to be used for a fetish or for fanservice.

Or should I say, about a girl, really. Yes, Aoi Hana is mainly about a girl. And this girl is Fumi Manjoume. Fumi is a tall, shy bespectacled girl whose pivotal moment in her life lies in her move back to her old home town. She does not seem happy about this since she'll be leaving her cousin (someone the anime hints that "something more" was happening between them) and starting life anew. But things don't look down for long as Fumi reunites with her childhood best friend, the childish Akira Okudaira, a short, spunky, excitable girl.

Aoi Hana's strong point in its story is the focus on the truly beautiful friendship that these two girls share. It deals with serious issues like coming out of the closet which is something I hear is not quite common in anime at all. Heck, it's not common in real life for some people! The moments that Fumi and Akira confide in one another, whatever insecurities and pains and secrets, are all heartwarming moments. I cannot think of another anime that portrays female friendship so well. Most of the time, girls are pitted against one another like Roman Gladiators, but in Aoi Hana, the real nature of a good, strong friendship are examined.

Fumi neither dumps nor forgets about Akira when she gets a girlfriend; her best friend remains an important part of her life. Akira never brushes Fumi off when she needs a shoulder to cry on (and trust me, Fumi cries a lot!), but she always bravely and strongly holds her handkerchief and hand out to comfort her best friend. I think anime girls can learn a lesson in friendship from this show.

Aoi Hana has its ups and downs like any drama but the nice thing about it is that they never shove things in the viewers' faces and nothing is forced. The story and characters develop smoothly WITHOUT the usual screaming, backstabbing, crocodile tears and dramatic music.

Speaking of music, the Aoi Hana BGM is pretty delicate and soft. Truly lovely to listen to! The art also is top notch. Some moments are just astounding. The characters' facial reactions are the best things though. You can see exact moments when someone's mood changes just from a shift in their eyes or maybe a slight frown on the face. The anime has this penchant to put focus on intimacy too. You get a lot of detail in the scenes, like a character playing with another character's hair, or holding their hand. I think the hair playing and hand holding shows so much more intimacy than any amount of kisses, boob-groping, or nakedness could ever do.

Overall, for a romance, this is probably the best thing I ever saw simply because it plays out so realistically. Sure, it may not be the star lights and fireworks kind of romance or the Casablanca romance. It's more like the girl next door kind of romance. You grow into it. And for being such an excellent anime in its simple nature, Aoi Hana proves to be a success as far as I am concerned.

I strongly, strongly recommend it. Even if you're not a lesbian or even if you're not a girl, the themes of love and friendship are all too clear and not confined to just the context of the story. It has a universal and lovely meaning that we can all take something from. We can learn to be more receptive to our friends and their secrets, we can learn how to deal with a break up, and we can learn how live goes on no matter what heart breaks we might face.

Aoi Hana is a spectacular anime, go out and watch it now if you're tired of all the conventional and unreal romances!