Archive for the Staff Writer 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.





Navigating With You Volume 2

October 7th, 2026

The cover of Navigating With You volume 2. The cover shows the main characters Neesha and Gabby facing away from each other but holding each others hand. They are also each holding the hand of another character. These other characters are barely shown on the cover and are walking off the sides of the image. In a way pulling the two main characters away from each other. The background is similarly divided between a school corridor on Neesha's side and a beach on Gabby's side.A second Navigating With You (which was reviewed here on Okazu in 2025) felt like it came out of left field for me. Gabrielle and Neesha’s whole wonderful journey had come to a narratively satisfying conclusion at the end of the first volume. But our two heroines are not even out of high school yet, they have a lot of life left and a lot of stories to tell.

This means stories from two locations and what the second volume of Navigating With You improves upon the first is with a greater emphasis on community. Very quickly we are introduced to two social circles: Gabby’s old friends back in Florida and all the other students at Neesha’s school who are interested in making their local life better.

The most outstanding part of the second volume of Navigating With You is the same as the first volume. Rich characters who communicate (to the reader) who they are and what they are about. So the addition in particular of Noli (from Neesha’s school) and Cary, Gabby’s ex who dumped her over text way back at surf camp. This makes sense as Jeremy Whitley is also writing this second volume and he continues to make sure every character get’s their moment. This volume it is Neesha’s mother is the MVP of parents who clearly know they are in a teen romance and what they need to do to help their child get through it.

But, you might ask, Gabrielle and Neesha found all of the manga last volume, what could they be reading in their book club now. Sadly I must confess to you that Gabby and Neesha are watching anime using a screen share video call. The anime in question is written by the same fictional author of ‘Super Navigator Nozomi’ and it mirrors the themes of Gabby and Neesha’s stories even better than the first volume. Although the change in art style is not at all as sharp as volume one, making it seem that our protagonists are reading a 2000’s image comic rather than watching an anime.

A change in art is to be expected, Cassio Ribeiro is handling just the cover art now. The comic has been A picture of four characters from Navigating With You. The center is taken up with Neesha and Gabby who are sitting in beds of complimentary flowers with their heads lightly touching. On the far left is Noli who is looking at Neesha and on the right is Cary who is carrying a surfboard and looking at Gabby.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.

It is good that the comic is as lush as it is because, sadly, the central pillar of Gabby and Neesha’s feels underutilised. It is not right to spoil this but anyone, familiar with romance comics, who looks at the cover can probably guess what the two central characters have to deal with. Which is a bit of a shame that a rather boilerplate romantic arc was used after such a unique volume one.

It thus makes it hard to recommend this new volume to its main audience: fans of volume one. Navigating With You, volume two is a tremendous peace of work and genuinely beautiful. I just wish it had a better idea of what to do with the core relationship we all bought it for. It is sad that we get so little time of Gabby and Neesha being a cute couple when we have this brand new art team who know exactly how to put their own spin on them.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 5
Characters – 10
Service – YMMV, but in my opinion 0
LGBTQ+ – 10

Overall – 8





Tsukiatte Agetemo Ii Kana TV Drama, Episodes 1-3

October 2nd, 2026

Saeko, a girl with long dyed light brown hair that has exposed black roots, holds her arm in a playfully familiar fashion around the shoulders Miwa, who is sporting a black bob. Both girls are smilingby Matt Marcus, Staff Writer

Over a year after the end of the serialization of How Do We Relationship in Japan, I happened to stumble across a tweet for a casting call for a live action drama with a very familiar premise. A Girls Love story adapted from a popular manga series, set in a college, including members of a light music club. It was a no-brainer to me what series it was.

The Tsukiatte Agetemo ii Kana drama was announced in July, with J-Pop idol Riho Sayashi (originally a member of Morning Musume, more recently a solo artist) playing Saeko Sowatori and Sakurako Konishi (best known for her role in the crime thriller First Love) as Miwa Inazuki. I was equal parts delighted and trepidatious. How much of the story could they cover in one season? Would they be able to capture the essence of the characters? How would they depict The Content?

If you are unfamiliar with the story, the opening episode is a fairly accurate adaptation of the first three chapters of the manga. Miwa and Saeko, both first year college students, meet and join the light music club together. After a night out with their new club mates, Saeko admits to Miwa her interest in women and Miwa responds in kind. Saeko says they should take advantage of this rare opportunity of two lesbians organically finding each other and proposes that they date. Miwa reluctantly agrees, and the two awkwardly spend time together until they are caught kissing in the club room by their bandmate, Mikkun, and have to decide how to navigate being out (at least within the band).

I’ll admit that I have not watched too many live-action adaptations of manga or J-dramas in general, but the handful I’ve seen ranged from passably entertaining (the Death Note duology) to abysmally awkward (GAP the Series, sorry Frank). Sometimes the issue is that the source material reads very unnaturally when acted out with real people; often the issue is that the performances are rather middling. I find that in most cases these adaptations fail to match the impact of the source material, let alone elevate it.

I felt more optimistic when I read that the production was being handled by people who worked on Ayaka is in Love with Hiroko!, as that was one of the better of these adaptations that I’ve seen. So far, there are awkward moments and stiff performances, but I felt that it was at least intended to be so. Saeko and Miwa do not gel, and the one thing I would strongly credit the first episode for is making that awkwardness extremely palpable. 

That said, there are myriad concerns I have, the first and obvious one being the pacing. There are only 8 episodes of 23 minutes each. Of course episode 1 has a lot to establish, so there isn’t much you could reasonably cut, but knowing that the previews show scenes up through volume 6, there is a LOT of ground to cover. Tamifull-sensei mentioned on her Twitter that there are changes to the story, which leaves the door open for a very different (read: heavily truncated) path towards the ending.

The trimming down of the story has already become impactful in episode 3, which covers the summer club retreat arc. The arc is split between Saeko wrestling with jealousy and Miwa struggling to stand up for herself against pushy men who are either hitting on her or threatening to out her. The instigator of the latter scenario, Kan, has been completely cut, which robs Miwa of the opportunity to try, however feebly, to defend herself. This ends up doing a disservice to her, reducing her role in the arc as merely the object for Saeko’s jealousy. It’s focusing the story down to the most core part of the plot, which is understandable given the runtime, but I fear more key character development moments will be shaved down to focus narrowly on the will they/won’t they of the love story.

The other issue is that of, frankly, the sex. Sex and physical intimacy in general play major roles in plot, characterization, themes, you name it. I think if a lot of that content is cut or glossed over, it will rob the drama of one of the elements that made the manga so potent. At least as of this writing, the sex is…there, but it is just off screen. There have been a couple hints towards Saeko’s discomfort with being touched, but aside from that there has not been much “action” depicted, which unfortunately means one of the funniest page-turn surprises from volume 2 is completely absent. You know the one.

If you approach the drama with an open mind and try not to get hung up too much on adaptation changes (I’m trying, I swear), you will find that the show has done a solid job of bringing the manga to the small screen. And there are some fun production details, like how Miwa and Saeko’s guitars were the ones Tamifull bought as reference.

Having a pop idol as one of your lead actresses also has some benefits, like including live performances that feel actually performed live.

So, that leaves me with two questions: will the drama stay in tune, and will you tune in?

Overall – 7

The series is airing in Japan on several TV stations (MBS, TV Kanagawa, Chiba TV, TeleTama, Tochigi TV, Gunma Television) and online via TVer and FOD; it is also available overseas on GagaOoLaLa.

Matt Marcus is a cohost of various projects on the Pitch Drop Podcast Network. You can find him mostly reskeeting Yuri posts and sports takes on Bluesky @hyperartmarcussan.bsky.social





How Do I Turn My Best Friend Into My Girlfriend? Volumes 4+5 and Series Overview by Luce

August 30th, 2026

I’m Luce, procrastinator extraordinaire and- how did I end up with more books than I started??? – book hoarder. You can call me a bookwyrm. Mostly hoarding, but getting back into reading novels. 

In the first three volumes of what I call Best Friend Girlfriend or ‘BFGF’ by Syu Yasaka, we met Minami, who realised she has a crush on her childhood friend and next door neighbour, Yuzu, and decided to try and get Yuzu to see her in a more romantic light – and generally failing in her attempts. We found out that Yuzu, however, also likes Minami, so we were landed firmly in the ‘mutual pining’ section.

Volume 4 cover, it does Minami and Yuzu sitting against each other in ski gear In volume four, Yuzu gets a cold and Minami looks after her, Kamiya tries her best to talk Yuzu into telling Minami she likes her, and Christmas arrives with all the romantic implications it carries in Japan. In volume five, things get romantic on the school skiing trip, but misunderstandings abound. Can Minami and Yuzu finally just tell each other?

Pining, pining, pining. As a fanfiction reader, and writer, I’ve read it, I’ve written it. The delicious tension of words unsaid, hands not quite reaching the other person. The roadblocks characters will put up to avoid saying anything, only to trip over them and have to catch themselves. The moment it all comes crashing down as they throw over the cliff of no return, yet find themselves flying as the other person returns their affections (at least, in the ones with happy endings). But there’s an art to it. There has to be a compelling reason why one or both wouldn’t just say something. Something has to be in jeopardy if they were wrong about it, no matter how big, and the creator has to sell you on that.

Which is to say, how much you like this will depend hugely on how much you like, or can tolerate, mutual pinning, and people just not spitting it out. I enjoy it… sometimes. It’s a well worn trope for a reason, and can result in breathtaking scenes of self-restraint, where you just want to hug the characters… but it can also leave the reader with frustrations where you’re thinking ‘just kiss already! They obviously like you!’. This tips into the latter, unfortunately. I get that it’s hard to admit you like a friend romantically, and daunting to tell them that. But there comes a point where it goes a little past denial into ‘how thick are you?’. There are various moments in these last two volumes where, in my opinion, there’s no compelling reason for them not to tell each other. Look. If someone is also going in for the kiss, that’s a pretty good sign they’re into you romantically. Don’t then say it was nothing! If someone says ‘I want you’ and tries to kiss you, that’s not ‘getting your hopes up’. Reacting that way is absurd denial, or ‘authorial delaying’. Making pining work as a trope is all about making the reader believe that the character genuinely believed that their feelings were unrequited in that moment. They’re normally not correct, but only the audience should know that.

Volume 5 cover. Minami and Yuzu look happy, hugging each other. I guess my problem with this manga is that the pining was quite cute for the first two or three volumes, after which it got too stretched out. The older I get, the more interest I have in stories that cover making a relationship work – getting over hurdles, managing intimacy and boundaries, and especially when the characters are in school, trying to work out where the relationship fits, if it can, in their futures. Series like Kase-san and… and You and I Are Polar Opposites have both been exploring this to various degrees, and it’s been really refreshing. It makes manga like this, where they dance around each other, and not even particularly convincingly, less interesting.

It also ends up so focused on the dance/mess between Minami and Yuzu that everyone else falls by the wayside. Their friends feel like puppets to react to the dramas rather than people. There was some hints in the early volumes that two of them might be interested in each other, but does it get mentioned here? No.

In total, a cute series that overstretches its premise to its own detriment. There’s a fine line in pining between ‘come on, you guys can get there!’ and ‘get on with it!’. Unfortunately, this series falls closer to the latter.

Story: 6
Characters: 5
Art: 7
Service: 1
Yuri: 8
Overall: 6

Man, I really want to go read some good fics about mutual pining, now. As for manga that give me some of that vibe, Hirano and Kagiura (BL) and If I Could Reach You (Yuri) comes to mind. A Sapphic book, Six Times We Almost Kissed by Tess Sharpe also did pining very well (amongst other things). Any favourites for pining Yuri manga?





With My Own Hand: The Secret Life of Marie Maitland

August 20th, 2026

by Eleanor Walker, Okazu Staff Writer.

Erica is away, so the staff get to play and I’d like to introduce you all to the story of Marie Maitland, Scotland’s 16th century Sappho.

A woman in a 16th century dress holding a quill in one hand and a red notebook in the other

I first learned of Marie a few years ago when I discovered that the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh was displaying an imagined portrait of her, commisioned by historian and translator Ashley Douglas. Ashley discovered Marie’s lesbian love poetry hidden in the depths of a manuscript long attributed to her father, known as “The Maitland Quarto.” This manuscript is a collection of poetry published in the Scots language (N.B. Scots is a related but separate language from Scottish English, the dialect of English spoken here in Scotland. Both English and Scots are West Germanic languages, unlike Gaelic which is in a completely separate family and very different to both English and Scots. It’s most closely related to Irish and Manx, and then more distantly to Welsh, Cornish and Breton.) Scholars have debated over the years who actually authored the poems in the manuscript, with Marie generally considered to be the scribe for the majority of the manuscript. It wasn’t till much later that Marie’s potential authorship was examined, although one scholar who published many of the poems in 1786 suggested that Marie had at least some involvement in writing the poems, not just transcribing them. Naturally of course other male scholars disputed that a woman could possibly have actually written any of the poems.

Scotland in the 16th century was not a kind place for women of any social class. This is the time of the Protestant Reformation, spearheaded by John Knox, the author of the magnificently titled and utterly misogynistic, even for the era, screed “The First Blast of The Trumpet Against The Monstrous Regiment of Women.” If you were lucky enough to make it out of childhood alive, your best hope if you were middle to upper class was to be married off to a man who would treat you even a little kindly. After that, your job was to get pregnant and produce a male heir. This is the destiny which awaited Marie Maitland too, until fate intervened. The youngest of her sisters, she watched her sisters be married off one by one and no doubt had consigned herself to the same fate, until her father went blind and required a scribe. This afforded Marie a degree of independence and self sufficiency almost unheard of for women in this era, and allowed her to pen her remarkable poetry. Poem 49 in particular was almost certainly written by Marie, and reads as follows (Original Scots language followed by English translation):

And thoucht adversitie ws vex
Yit be our freindschip salbe sein
Thair is mair constancie in our sex
Than evir amang men hes bein

And though adversity us vex
Yet by our freindship shall be seen
There is more constancy in our sex
Than ever among men has been.

If that’s not written from a lesbian point of view, I don’t know what is.

A pair of hands holding a quill and a red book in front of a woman's chest. The woman is wearing a 16th century dress.

Fast forward to summer 2026, and Ashley’s book is finally available. It’s been one of my most anticipated books of the year and I’m delighted to say that it was as enjoyable as I hoped it would be. Ashley herself is a lesbian and in my opinion, the perfect person to bring this tale to a 21st century audience. Queer people and queer love have always existed, and Marie’s story is a remarkable one of resilience and trying to fit into a world which was not made for her in the slightest. Earlier in the 21st century, Scotland was the first country in the world to introduce an LGBT+ inclusive school curriculum, which includes Marie and other queer figures from Scotland’s history. Her life is an important part of our history, and I’m very pleased that I’m now able to share her story with Okazu readers all around the world. You can order your own copy of “With My Own Hand” from bookshop.org

The only known copy of the Maitland Quarto is in the Samuel Pepys collection at the University of Cambridge. I’d love to see it come home to Scotland one day.

Online sources:

https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/features/marie-maitland-scotlands-16th-century-sappho

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Maitland