Being girls doesn't seem to get in the way of anyone except of Julia's manager, who tends to smack Julia on the head whenever doing something stupid. Getting mushy on some small parts, but mostly being purely a comedy, this is a manga about that awkward, cute love story between "an incompetent and an airhead", called that multiple times.
The art was nice, a little bit old-fashioned though, with big eyes and shiny hair. As models, everyone dresses really pretty. I liked how the girls are easily recognizeable: in such a big cast for its length, I never accidentally mixed two characters.
Talking about the characters, they are certainly the most important thing when it comes to comedies. Characters in Strawberry Shake Sweet are funny, goofy and cute. No matter how many times Julia gets a nosebleed because of fantacizing over Ran, the beauty salon owner stirs up all the trouble for her entertainment, or (a half of) Zlay begins over with their antics, I found it as hilarious as at first.
Julia is hardworking, lovesick baka protagonist who fell (hard) for her kouhai Ran. Ran is honest, goofy and dense, completely oblivious to being the subject of Julia's musings.
What I liked is that the roles the two of them had weren't that of the stereotypical "male/female" character as in the rest of yuri (and yaoi, for that matter) that I watched/read. There isn't the line of seme/uke, these girls are simply teenagers in love. A little confused and unexperienced, sure, a little stupid, and most of the time outright hilarious, their misunderstandings made me laugh out loud at several points.
Isn't love, at first, always like that? Awkward, cute and kinda complicated. Before we make it even more complicated.
:)
