Archive for the I Wanna Be Your Girl Category


I Wanna Be Your Girl, Volume 4

October 11th, 2026

Two girls standing in front of a classroom blackboard. They are both smiling broadly.

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.





I Wanna Be Your Girl, Volume 3

March 11th, 2026

Two people in Japanese style school uniforms, one in boy's uniform, one in girl's uniform, their head on their knees, sit on a school stairway.by Eleanor Walker, Okazu Staff Writer

We have now reached the penultimate volume of Umi Takase’s I Wanna Be Your Girl, and having also reviewed volumes 1 and 2 here on Okazu, this one is definitely the weakest of the three. One thing this series continues to excel at though, is portraying teenagers realistically. Hime is still headstrong in her convictions and her determination to protect Akira. Akira, meanwhile, just wants to be treated like one of the girls and be noticed by the senpai she has a crush on. At the end of volume 2, we start to delve into another character’s back story. Hamuro is another student who has a secret of his own. He cross dresses as a maid while working at a cafe near the school, and it’s revealed that he’s not trans like Akira but cross dresses to support his younger sister Momo who was bullied for being too cute.

I don’t really feel Hamuro adds very much to the story, and the whole starting cross dressing because your sister was bullied just seems a little too out there, especially for a seemingly cishet teenage boy. Fortunately, it’s not a big part of this volume. What we get after Hamuro though is something I’ve hoped would happen since volume 1, and that is Sasaki-sensei’s backstory. I mentioned in my review of that volume that “It seems though, that there is more to the teacher than first meets the eye. He sits Hime down for a talk one day, and it’s strongly suggested that he’s gone through something similar regarding identity in the past” He now reveals in a conversation with Akira that he is aromantic, and how he has suffered from not meeting society’s expectations too. I’m glad we got this segment, especially since in the afterword the author mentions that he was only supposed to appear briefly in chapter 2.

The rest of the volume is just more of what we’ve already seen before, Hime and Akira continue to misunderstand each other, side characters are used as sounding boards for the main characters to talk about their feelings and we’re not really any further forward with their relationship either.

I Wanna Be Your Girl is still an enjoyable series and I’m very glad it exists, but nothing new really happens in this volume, especially when compared to the previous two. I’m optimistic though that everyone will get their happy endings in the next and last volume, and I’ll be reading it to find out.

Ratings: 

Story – 6. This would be a point lower if we didn’t get Sasaki-sensei’s backstory.
Art – 6.
Characters – 7 Hamuro and his sister are unnecessary.
Service – n/a
LGBTQ — 10

Overall – 7 but again, probably an 8 if you’re a confused/closeted queer teenager looking for something to relate to.