by Eleanor Walker, Okazu Staff Writer
This review contains spoilers.
Being in love with your best friend is hard, but being a good friend is even harder. The final volume of the hit manga series about the complications of friendship, first loves and what it truly means to be an ally.
Childhood best friends Hime and Akira are finally ready to make up. After a big fight about a boy, and about what ‘being a girl’ means to them both, Hime and Akira have done the work to accept themselves and each other.
At the end of volume 3 of I Wanna Be Your Girl, reviewed here on Okazu, along with volume 1 and volume 2, Hime vows to face Akira head on and sure enough, in I Wanna Be Your Girl, Volume 4, the final volume, we finally get a confession. Both girls are able to open up and be honest with each other, which is wonderful. Hime reveals that she’s been in love with Akira for a long time, and Akira reveals she wasn’t actually that interested in Hasegawa-senpai, she just thought that having a crush on a boy was a normal teenage girl thing to do (Disclaimer, I am not trans but I am definitely not straight and I too pretended to have a crush on an older boy when I was in my first year of high school because I was trying desperately to fit in…)
I went into this volume hoping that we’d get a confession, then Hime and Akira would get together and everyone would live happily ever after. Life isn’t always that simple though, and I respect the decision to not just go for the fairytale happy ending. The whole series continues to be an excellent look at being a teenager and I recommend it wholeheartedly on that basis. The series then ends with Hime and Akira graduating from high school and then the final two chapters act as a sort of epilogue where we get to see everyone as adults. Even Hamuro-senpai who I wasn’t keen on in the previous volume becomes a lot more interesting once he’s given a bit of time to develop.
Overall, I’m satisfied with the ending even if the starry eyed teenager in me just wanted Hime and Akira to get together. What I do think is important though, is the acknowledgement of all kinds of relationships. Akira describes her and Hime’s relationship as “Not lovers and not just friends.” and I think more people could do with realising that some relationships just don’t fit into a neat little box. I hope that if you do read this series, you take that away from it, whatever your age.
Story – 7
Art – 6.
Characters – 7
Service – n/a
LGBTQ — 10
Overall – 7 but as always, probably an 8 if you’re a confused/closeted queer teenager looking for something to relate to.
Yuri Anime
A second 
divided up between Falia Hanakata on the art, Linden Cahill & Juancho! handling the colours and Carlos M. Mangual on lettering. The new style is certainly cuter and very correct for the comic. There are so many new characters in this volume and they all stood out brilliantly with very little page time.
Yuri Manga in English
