Those of you who have been following Girlfriend might already have noticed that the relationships depicted in this series aren’t exactly your typical high school romance. I’m not only referring to the central role sexual intercourse seems to play within all the stories, but also the ambivalent nature of the girls’ feelings towards their (boy)friends. Both aspects are apparent from the first story and they constitute a recurring theme in the rest of the series.

Basically, what we encounter here is the clash of two kinds of “love.” While the boys’ affection seems honest and pure, the same thing can’t be said about the girls. Each of them has a different reason to be with the boy in question, yet none of them “loves” the same way she is loved. The girls’ motivations are often complex and nuanced (they have to be, otherwise we’d only be dealing with a bunch of simple sex stories ;)). They are also the reason why this series is called what it is called.

Masaya Hokazono, the Japanese author, didn’t just choose ガールフレンド (”Girlfriend” in Katakana) because he wanted a hip and trendy title, but also to signify the unusual nature of those relationships. This detail becomes especially obvious when he uses the word ガールフレンド in contrast to 彼女 (”kanojo” - the “traditional” Japanese word for “girlfriend”) and 愛人 (”aijin” - “lover” or “mistress”). A ガールフレンド might kiss you and sleep with you, but her heart doesn’t belong to you, at least not alone. You can neither reach her completely nor make her yours. These thoughts sort of correspond with a quote from Takahisa: “Girls… way more than I thought / might be… creatures of freedom.” (Chapter 6)

As you might guess, it was a bit tricky to come up with an appropriate translation for the word ガールフレンド itself. “Sex friend” goes a bit too far (though I did use it once in the third chapter) and “girl friend” (as printed on the Japanese cover) doesn’t go far enough. In the end, I decided to simply put “girlfriend” into quotation marks, which I hope will make clear to all readers that the word has a slightly different meaning.

To conclude this way too long rant on my part, we release a new chapter of “Girlfriend.”

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 22nd, 2006 at 7:15 pm and is filed under Release(s). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.