Synopsis
Gokinjo Monogatari (or if you prefer Neighbourhood Story) introduces us to the world of a group of non-conventional japanese students; they all attend the Yazawa Institute, a school for fashion designers, artists, designers and similar.
Our protagonists, Tsutomu and Mikako, both attend the Yazawa Institute, and they've been living next door to each other ever since they were kids: they're the best friends in the whole wide world, and maybe something more...
The Yazawa Institute is indeeda very special high school: students have classes in all of your normal subjects in the morning, and then in the afternoon they can learn fashion design, interior design, visual design or classic design.
Mikako dreams are to be a fashion designer and to have her own brand of clothes and accessories called "Happy Berry". Tsutomu attends the visual design course and is famous among all the older girls in the school because he looks just like Ken Nakagawa, the singer from Mambo, the most popular boyband around... Their group of friends include Mikako's best friends, Pii-chan and Lisa, and Tsutomu's best friends, Yusuke and Jiro. Each characters has its very own style, and one of the most amusing things to do whilst reading Gokinjo Monogatari is to take notice of all of their different outfits!
Mikako lives alone with her mother (who, guess what, is a mangaka); her parents divorced when she was a little girl, and she hasn't seen her dad since. Because of her father's departure when she was a child, which is still an unresolved trauma for her, Mikako can be very childish and selfish, and she still doesn't really know how to express her feelings... So maybe that's why she's never told Tsutomu how much she likes him. When finally Tsutomu starts going out with Mariko, a beautiful, older girl, Mikako is incredibly jealous. Because of her scenes Tsutomu slowly starts to realise that maybe he has feelings for Mikako too...
From that moment on, the story develops like any other classic shoujo manga: characters starts to fall in love with each other all the time! Yusuke tries to ask out Mikako, but she finally decides to start a real (and very complicated) relationship with Tsutomu. Because of that, Yusuke and Mariko (who is in fact very superficial and spoiled, and is still in love with her first boyfriend, Shu, who dumped her) meet and become friends, until finally Yusuke falls deeply in love with her and asks her out. There you go with the second VERY complicated relationship! Then a new girl arrives at school: her name is Ayumi and she's very sweet and shy. After provoking Mikako's jealousy with her strong friendship with Tsutomu, she falls in love with Yusuke! And obviously Yusuke, even though he's in love with Mariko, can't stop himself from being attracted by Ayumi, who is really sweet... And so on.
All of the characters in Gokinjo Monogatari are part of a group called "Akindo": they produce clothes, accessories, dolls, videogames, portraits, etc. and then they sell them in little flea markets around Tokyo. They have their atelier in a room given by Ayumi's family, and they spend all of their afternoons in there. Then in the evening they chill out in the Blue Parrot, a cool bar owned by Mikako's and Tsutomu's friend Hiroaki: he is in fact the older brother they never had.
As Mikako's and Tsutomu's love grows, all of the other characters have their little misadventures: we find out everything about Mikako's parents relationship; we discover that Lisa at 18 is already living with her boyfriend (they've both moved from Hokkaido); we get to meet the "shiny alien" aka Seiji who helps Mikako out with her problems but causes a certain amount of jealousy in Tsutomu, and so on...
In the end Mikako is offered a grant to study in London and she has to decide whether she wants to stay in Japan near Tsutomu or take this fantastic opportunity and go away for a year.
I won't tell you what Mikako decides - but I can assure you that Gokinjo Monogatari is a beautiful shoujo manga, and that Ai Yazawa is very good in analysing people's minds... As you read Gokinjo Monogatari, you will find it more and more fascinating, because you can really understand what the characters feel and think. In my opinion Ai Yazawa also has the advantage of having a very different style from other shoujo manga authors, and you cannot help but admire her for her crazy fashion sense...
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