Girl's Ride

Isomoto, Tsuyoshi (Story & Art) deserves credit. It is not easy to draw motorcycles in a realistic style. Especially so considering the artist is drawing specific models for an audience that is likely to be familiar with the details. Is the artist still working? Perhaps under another name? Or as part of a group? Or self-published? MAL has very little from this artist, and nothing from the mangaka over the last 10 years. I hope s/he is still working. Girl's Ride made me want more from Isomoto-sensei. Girl's Ride is for fans of the Girls Love or Yuri genre. It is heavy on the romance,the undeclared love and passionate affection. These girls are in love and they fall hard for one another, holding hands and watching sunsets, spending vacations together, touring the countryside by motorbike. It is also very wholesome. No sex. No kissing or makeout scenes. If that happens, it is out of frame, in the imagination of the reader. Girl's Ride is also for fans of the small subgenre of Girls x Motorcycles. Certainly it is more serious than the silly comedy Bakuon!!. But it is not as refined or well developed as the masterpiece, Super Cub and its spinoff Super Cub Rei. If you are looking for CGDCT, you might enjoy Girl's Ride, but it really is firmly on the high school yuri romance shelf. Girl's Ride is romance, drama. Just a hint of comic relief at times. And although there is a poignancy in the plot, the author ends it on a hopeful note. This short, one volume manga was written for a yuri magazine, and it appears there was never the support to keep it going past nine or ten chapters. But our author did a great job, and the reader will fall in love with the characters as quickly as they fall for one another in the story. I am left wanting much more of the story of Sei and Nan, and any tears shed are not for their story so much as my own tears at parting with two such lovely people. Highly recommended. 8.5 out of 10.