[Februaryuri 2026] Girlfriend Limited to 7 Days
(base post on Februaryuri 2026 here!)
Girlfriend Limited to 7 Days (7-Kakan Gentei Kanojo) by Suika Amazaki
Publication
Ended (3 volumes, 2024-2026)
Not published in English (fan-translation readable here or here)
Not published in French
Summary
Manatsu has never been interested in the boys her friends introduced to her; but she has never questioned this much. So when her classmate Sumie asks if she's interested in girls, this kind of open her eyes to new perspectives.
She doesn't know, though. If she's into girls. But then, Sumie suggests that the two of them could maybe date for a week. Just to try. Before it becomes too serious and too complicated.
And so they try to do that. And despite Sumie's general unexpressiveness and potential ulterior motives, Manatsu quickly has to admit that she really, really is into her... but their relationship is only gonna last seven days.
CW (somewhat heavy)
As mentioned in the review, the story handles underage (17-y.o.) characters and contains a few instances of them with nondescript nudity (in sexual and nonsexual contexts like hot springs) and in pretty underwear, along with nipple shots/upper body nudity shots in one two extra chapters. While the two main characters are never sexualized in very blatant ways, they still are a bit, and the story could've definitely cut a bunch of shots of those elements.
Similarly, sex between the protagonists is partially shown and could have been handled better. It has one tidbit that doesn't feel consensual to me; and it's tense at times in ways that feel only partly purposeful, albeit understandable considering the two teens.
Aside from that, one of the characters was more or less groomed by her 18-y.o. older tutor when she was around 14-15; this is not addressed as such, only as heartbreak.
Sexual elements?
As mentioned in the review, this series contains sex between 17-y.o. characters, which is slightly too shown for comfort. This happens mostly in one scene, which lacks clear consent on one point; and inComment
This is the kind of manga I started while thinking that fake dating was kind of an overdone romantic trope1, and doubtful about whether such a classic setup could convince me here. And then I had to revise my judgment because as trope-y as it was I rather liked this one - or more like, I really liked it aside from a few elements.
So, yes, Girlfriend Limited to 7 Days has a really simple premise, and a really simple structure overall: Manatsu and Sumie have agreed on dating for seven days, because Manatsu wants to explore her attraction to girls, and Sumie clearly uses this as a coping mechanism to forget her previous crush. A lot of its events are stereotypical; yet somewhere in its execution, this manga won me over very easily.
This is in good part due to Manatsu as a protagonist. Under the fake date pretense, the story is surprisingly grounded in telling her lesbian awakening, and I really wasn't expecting that. The idea of dating guys always felt off to Manatsu; and though she doesn't consider girls much at first, she soon has to admit that she's giddy of being with Sumie, and thinking of her a lot, aaand, you know, maybe she is into girls... There is an unmissable, incredibly relatable joy to her slow realization that dang, she does love girls, and Sumie in particular; which is in turn pure joy to witness as a reader.
She also feels hornier than a lot of high school yuri protagonists (without this being used as a setup for smut), and there's something really sweet and fun to that. And she's often unexpectedly self-aware about her feelings, for a character who is coded as a ditz (and who kinda is, in all the right ways), which is really refreshing. She's a great main character overall, and I really find her giddiness contagious.
All this is also conveyed through the art. In particular, Suika Amazaki's art has extremely expressive faces, both in their heavy emotions and in their moments of comedy, and it's something I've been liking a lot through her works... and particularly in this manga. Manatsu has a huge number of funny/dumb/stupid/horny faces, while still having some pretty serious and moving panels when things get tense too; and it's truly been drawing me to this work again and again.
But it's many other things, too: the general paneling, the framing of many momentous interactions that makes them very vivid, the particularly memorable use of introspective voice - or instead of silent tension - in the later chapters... Girlfriend Limited by 7 Days is a simple story, but it is in several ways a well-written simple story. Some of its pivotal moments, notably when the fake dating idea inevitably blows up and we see the two protagonists coming to terms with their real romantic feelings, have been staying with me quite strongly after reading.
Now, I have a few negative comments that sadly curb my enthusiasm.
The first is that Sumie's backstory involves her entering a relationship with her 18-year-old girl tutor (on the latter's insistence...!) just before high school; and the manga fails to analyze this deeper than a predictable heartbreak when said tutor suddenly cuts off contact. If anything, I really would've liked the manga to be much more denouncing of and angry about the tutor's behavior there.
The second is on Girlfriend Limited to 7 Days' representation of teenage sex. I've written and rewritten this paragraph umpteen times to no avail, and the best I can say is that I'm torn about the manga's direct depictions of sexual intimacy between teens. It has several scenes that are rather relatable on some points, and somewhat voyeuristic on others2, and my resulting feelings on that are a mess.
I don't know. It doesn't feel much like some out-of-context in-your-face fanservice the way I've seen other fictions do; more like using a few too showing shots to tease or amp up the actual sexy situations the characters are going through. Somehow, the general vibe I get from this manga is that it feels written for lesbians who want to see their horny teenage selves acknowledged, but it leans a bit too much into eroticizing those moments sometimes. If that makes sense.
Some parts tackling the protagonists' intimacy do work well, to be fair, notably when using nondescript nudity or when focused introspectively on Manatsu's frequent palpable horniness; and I like that the manga doesn't shy away from this at all.
Still, I'm obviously miffed that the very first color page uses a flash-forward shot of the leads in underwear and ready to have sex, for instance - a glimpse which is clearly here to draw readers in3. Similarly, I think several moments throughout the manga could really have reined in a few shots and be more thought-out in their handling of underage characters. As they are, they sometimes cross or blur the line between being an earnest attempt at representing teen attraction and sexuality, and showing a bit too much of their bodies here or there; and that made me slightly uneasy at times4.
(edit: the last volume's extra chapter, translated one week after I posted this, contains a brief additional sex scene in the same vein: it is very sweet in itself, with a clear intent to show lesbian teen sexuality without sexualization; but once again it would've made me more comfortable if the two characters were of age.)
As a distasteful cherry on top, Sumie's behavior in their one big sex scene5 makes me uncomfortable consent-wise... without this being apparently the point of the scene, or felt anywhere else in the narrative. And, uuuugh - take care on that part.
For some reason, none of these complaints felt like dealbreakers to me, when they could clearly be in other mangas. Still, they obviously affected my experience here or there, and made me wish for more yuri addressing all these topics better.
Despite all this, I couldn't help but like Girlfriend Limited to 7 Days, and be really enthusiastic about a lot of it. It was a trope-y read on some level, sure, but it was also full of expressive faces and momentous tensions and horny dumb lesbians (affectionate) who are not as clueless as they seem. Seeing its protagonists figure out their mutual attraction in the throes of fake dating, with their emotions often leaping from the page, made me feel a lot more than what I bargained for.
Extra
While I'm a bit critical of a few here or there, Amazaki-sensei has also written a lot of fun short yuri oneshots. She's a yuri author I've been attentively following the works of6 after getting suddenly hooked on Girlfriends Limited to 7 Days, and it seems clear that, for the faults I find in those sometimes, she's often writing horny dumb lesbian characters for horny dumb lesbian people.
With that same trope and a somewhat similar setting for its characters, I also need to briefly mention Becoming Her Lover for the Sake of Love by Shio Usui (who is notably behind Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon). I don't think it has been as good, but it has a kiss scene that has been really staying with me for some reason. My best experience of (sapphic) fake dating tropes otherwise remains the indefinite-hiatus webcomic Seven Days in Silverglen.↩
Aside from a bit too much focus on pretty underwear on too many occasions in the first half of the story, the biggest instances
is oneare two extra chapter featuring upper body/nipples shots. They are to some extent used as a demonstration of Manatsu's lesbian attraction - which I love - but also clearly as more explicit "bonus sex scenes" bit for the audience - which I find really iffy in stories about underage characters. Though they're quite different narratives, I feel like Girlfriend Limited to 7 Days could sometimes take a page or two from Gal x Gal Yuri in showing horniness without depicting anything directly, or from the older staple that is Kase-san in its better-handled attraction and sex scenes.↩How Do We Relationship uses this exact same narrative device much better, for instance (and also features adult characters). More generally, I still hold it as the gold standard of directly depicting sex scenes that are really hot without ever sexualizing the characters themselves. This really makes me want to reread it.↩
just to be clear, it's important for teenage physical intimacy to be represented to some extent in manga: there's a lot to be told on that topic in awkwardness and complexities and self-discovery, and in teaching consent, too! But I believe that has to be done with care, with a focus on situations and what the characters feel subjectively, much more than directly depicting more or less undressed teenage bodies to an adult audience. Sadly, a lot of mangas that treat of this topic seem to fail on that front, and this one here sometimes stumbles too, despite its resonating lesbian awakening elements mixed in.↩
Sumie in general doesn't let out much before late in the story, which makes this sex scene doubly scary and tense with everything Manatsu doesn't dare to ask her - even if somehow all of their moments of intimacy that follow are very sweet. I wish that scene had been reexamined in its lack of communication somewhere down the line. I also wish I had more yuri with clear consent. It shouldn't be that hard, gaaaah!↩
Researching her accounts to inform this post and finding that she recommended the movie Carol among her favorite yuri/lesbian media also made me smile.↩