Gokinjo Monogatari

Gokinjo Monogatari (ご近所物語, lit. Neighborhood Story) is a manga series by Ai Yazawa. Ribon serialized it from 1995 to 1998, and Shueisha published it. A fifty-episode anime was adapted by Toei Animation from September 10, 1995 to September 1, 1996. Later in 1996, a short animated film of Gokinjo Monogatari was released.

In 1999, Yazawa began publishing a stand-alone sequel to Gokinjo Monogatari titled Paradise Kiss. Many Gokinjo characters reappear in it.

Plot
Mikako Kouda and Tsutomu Yamaguchi are students that attend Yazawa Academu, a special high school for the arts in Tokyo (named after the author, who makes a cameo appearance as the school's principal) and reside in the same apartment building as neighbors where they have built a long-standing friendship since infancy. However, as has been humorously pointed out by their apartment manager, Mikako and Tsutomu's feelings have undergone an unmistakable metamorphosis. Mikako and Tsutomu's friends inside and outside of the Akindo club also detect this metamorphosis and wonder one thing: will Mikako and Tsutomu embrace what is already community discourse or will they deteriorate into leading very bitter adult lives of not-at-all-significant brevity and dysphoria?