Akiko Morishima is a Girls' Love mangaka who specializes in realistic stories about romances between adult working women. Her works include Hanjuku Joshi, 20-Year-Old Girl × 30-Year-Old Maiden, and The Conditions For Paradise. She also provided the character designs for Yuri Kuma Arashi, as well as the art for its manga adaptation.
Akiko's works provide examples of:
- Berserk Button: In "Angelic Girl", Nana does not like Kei mentioning she's been with men, or whatever knowledge she's gained from those experiences.
- Christmas Cake: Most of Morishima's protagonists are women in their late 20s and 30s, adult women who are professionals when they encounter their love interests, despite Girls' Love authors usually having lesbians as protagonists. For example, Keiko from 20-Year-Old Girl × 30-Year-Old Maiden angsts about this, especially once she starts dating Emi, a cute girl ten years her junior, whose youthful beauty makes Keiko even more aware of her age. Fortunately, Emi doesn't seem to mind.
- Drowning Our Romantic Sorrows: In Honey and Mustard, Mitsuki and Kaori go get hammered at a bar after they both get turned down by Mai.
- Gray Rain of Depression: In "We're Aiming For Love Now", the trope is Inverted because rain causes Shinobu to get depressed. The rain reminds her of the day her mother deserted her.
- Indirect Kiss: Mitsuki kisses Mai's hand, and then kisses Kaori's hand to pass it along.
- Meaningful Name: Momoko's name, from "Peach Taste", means "peach girl".
- No Periods, Period: In one chapter of 20-Year-Old Girl × 30-Year-Old Maiden, Emi's period ends up foiling Keiko’s plans to deflower her. This averts the trend of works not including the female menstrual cycle.
- Not What It Looks Like: In "Soft-Boiled Fujoshi", Chitose hears some rather suggestive noises coming from Chie and Yuria's room and bursts in to tell them to tone it down, only to discover that the two of them were just working on a porny doujin together. In Chie's own words, "it's just the story that's dirty!".
- Old Shame: In "Soft-Boiled Fujoshi", Chie cringes when she finds out that Yuria has read all of her Doujinshi works, even the really old stuff.
- Sexual Euphemism: In an omake for "Peach Taste", Yoshino recaps the story as "two girls doing this and that with a lollipop". The term "this and that" is a common Japanese euphemism for sex.
- Shout-Out:
- In "Soft-Boiled Fujoshi", Chie reads Yuri Hime Wildrose.
- In "Peach Taste", one of Momoko's friends has a crush on a manga character named Chasuke (a parody of Sasuke from Naruto). She also whips out a magazine called Shounen Chump which advertises a Prince of Table Tennis on the cover (parodying The Prince of Tennis).
- Time Skip: 4 years pass between Parts 1 and 2 of the Honey and Mustard series.
- Bridal Carry: In "We're Aiming For Love Now", Lalah [does this] to Shinobu in their backstory. She also tries doing it in the present-day, but finds that grown-up Shinobu is a little too big.
