Paradise Kiss

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By Ai Yazawa. Released in Japan by Shodensha, serialized in the magazine Zipper. Released in North America by Tokyopop.

When I first picked this series up several years back, I was getting into the habit (which I still have) of researching a series before I read it, to find out what I can. Paradise Kiss was a rather unusual oddity in that respect. It was put out by Shodensha, but did not appear (as one might expect of this material) in their josei magazine Feel Young, but in a fashion magazine for young adults, Zipper. It was also a semi-sequel to another serial of Yazawa’s, Neighborhood Story, that had run in Shueisha’s Ribon 4-5 years before ParaKiss came out.

I had worried that I wouldn’t be able to get ParaKiss as its prequel had not (and still has not) come out in North America, but there’s nothing to fear here. ParaKiss takes place several years after Neighborhood Story, and most of the cameos that the prior cast make are seamless (Miwako’s sister Mikako being the exception, as she was the star of the previous series). No, the sequel uses the world of Neighborhood Story, but has its own story to tell, about fashion, getting over your past regrets, and finding the right future.

It also features one of the great supporting casts in manga. Each of the six characters I’d call leads (Yukari, George, Arashi, Miwako, Isabella and Hiroyuki) are well-written characters with their own lives and problems, and the manga succeeds very well in avoiding a typical shoujo pitfall of having everyone be there to facilitate the heroine’s romance. Partly this is because they’re all so interesting in and of themselves (it’s arguable that the Arashi/Miwako/Hiroyuki subplot is more fascinating than Yukari’s), but partly because for once, this is a romance you may not want to see helped along.

Don’t get me wrong, as a hot couple, Yukari and George are pure win. (They’re also fairly explicit, something that startled me as I re-read this series in the children’s section of my local library, as it sat next to Pokemon Adventures. And people wonder why there’s always articles about evil manga in the papers.) But it’s made fairly clear from the start, and hammered home several times, that as a lifelong romance, the two would be horrible together. This is not something we see a lot of in shoujo romance, where the hero bringing the heroine out of her shell and showing her how to live life would be offset by his sweet moments. Sweet moments for George are few and far between.

But then, this is not just about the romance, it’s about Yukari’s realization that she can be so much more. As she begins to do model work and realize how much she enjoys it (and how good she is at it), her maturation is almost startling. The manga actually manages to have it both ways, having Yukari become a famous successful model while at the same time having people complain about how wretchedly difficult it is to actually do so. But then, this is a cast full of Beautiful People. :)

The ending was slightly controversial at the time, and still provokes some discussion. The anime adaptation did not help, as they made Yukari’s breakup with George seem like a sad and depressing thing, and did not feature the flashforward epilogue. But it made sense with Yukari’s character, whereas trying to shoehorn her in with George did not. It’s very refreshing seeing the bad boy lose for once. Also, I love her monologue about getting less model work as she ages, but being able to use all the contacts she’s made to parlay that into other work that keeps her career going. The whole epilogue is the definition of a feel-good happy ending, even if it ends with Yukari saying she’s going to cry.

I haven’t mentioned the art, have I? Well, it is why this ran in a fashion magazine, rather than Ribon like all her other stuff. It helps to make Paradise Kiss less of a manga to read and more of an experience, a world to immerse yourself in. There’s lots of sensory stuff here, not just the pretty visuals. And it’s the sort of manga where I look back and realize there’s so much more that I can still talk about. I didn’t even mention Yukari’s relationship with her mother, or Arashi and Miwako’s somewhat tortured relationship. And to think it’s just five volumes long. One of the best manga Tokyopop put out. Highly recommended.

Manga the week of 7/28

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This post is late, mostly as Midtown’s list was so ludicrously small that I knew it would be missing stuff. And I was right. A comparison between Diamond, my store, and Midtown:

Diamond: About 80% of Viz’s first week August titles, plus Del Rey’s last week of July titles, plus 2 TP titles.
My store: no Del Rey stuff, but 100% of Viz.
Midtown: just the TP titles, and nothing else.

So I waited till Monday, so I’d have something that vaguely resembled reality. I’m leaving off Del Rey, as I don’t get it, so you can’t have it either. :p I’m also fudging the Viz releases, as Diamond’s list is leaving off some of their titles my shop is getting in (like Seiho), so I’ll note all of Viz’s first week of August stuff.

Vertical has another volume of the always fantastic Black Jack. Tokyopop has another back from the abyss twofer, with Vol. 8 and 9 of Yubisaki Milk Tea, a series last seen in March 2008. Sadly, I can’t stand it, but I’m sure its fans are happy.

And as for Viz… wow, that’s a lot of stuff I read. A lot. There’s Skip Beat! 21, starting its new story arc. Otomen will hopefully feature a little more Ryo, as she’s on the cover. Kimi ni Todoke gets a great Chizuru subplot to go with its adorable Sawako one. Gin Tama is… well, it’s Gin Tama. Need I say more?

There’s three series ending this week. I never read Muhyo and Roji, so can’t say much about it, except it lasted 18 volumes in the cauldron that is Weekly Shonen Jump, which is pretty good. Flower in a Storm is ending at 2, which is probably the sole reason I’m getting the 2nd volume – the first was merely adequate. Speaking of adequate, my favorite lost cause is ending, as The Magic Touch comes to an end. But we have Oresama Teacher to look forward to in 2011.

As for debuts, there’s Seiho Men’s High School, which looks like your standard Shojo beat fluff. Don’t know much about it, but will certainly give it a try. I hear it focuses on the guys rather than the gals, and not in a reverse harem way. And then there’s Bakuman, which I will give another shot. I read the scans when it debuted, and Chapter 2 irritated me so much I stopped dead. But it seems to be very popular, so I will persevere!

And yeah, the Del Rey stuff that everyone but me will get. I’ll talk about it for next week’s post… I hope.

Himeyuka and Rozione’s Story

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By Sumomo Yumeka. Released in Japan as “Natsukashi Machi no Rozione” by Kadokawa Shoten, appearing as one-shots in the magazine Asuka. Released in North America by Yen Press.

This is a very odd manga, and a very odd choice for Yen to license. These sorts of one-shot collections are seen quite a bit in Japan, but tend not to be brought over here to North America unless the author is really huge (such as the recent Songs To Make You Smile from Takaya). And while Yumeka-san is known over here, both for the BL stuff she’s done that DMP has released, and Voices of a Different Star which she drew under a different pen name that Tokyopop put out, she’s not exactly a big name. I really had no idea what to expect of this going in.

After reading it, I’m still not sure what I expect of it. Three of the four stories read like typical shoujo one-shots, albeit a bit weird (not surprising as they ran in Asuka, the weirdest of the mainstream shoujo magazines). The title story is probably the best-written, despite being rather heavy-handed about its metaphorical moral. Himeyuka has a nerdy look we don’t really get from most shoujo heroines, who tend to use glasses as fashion accessories. There’s also a weirdly unfinished subplot with her teacher (classmate?) Yamamoto, who gives out candy randomly and seems to be more than he is. Actually, I should get used to that, as there’s a feel throughout all of the first three stories of ‘pilot for a series that never got picked up’.

I enjoyed The Princess of Kikouya in District 1, but it’s the least inventive story in the book, being a standard ‘yakuza girl must not reveal her sordid past to the guy she likes’ tale. But she’s cute, and spunky, and wields a giant umbrella. If you like sweet romance with no originality whatsoever (parts of this are so unoriginal, I felt the other manga in my stack getting more outre just being near it), then it’s rather sweet. My Very Own Shalala is sort of a twisted magical girl story, which gets the closest this volume ever does to BL, as the magical girl has to disguise herself as a boy to get close to the guy she needs. It’s more of an interesting idea than the prior story, but the execution falls flatter, with the entire story feeling rushed.

And then there’s Robot. You’ll note I’ve been saying ‘the first three stories’ throughout this review. Robot is the fourth, and the longest. And it’s one of the most opaque stories I’ve ever tried to read. And I did my best – the strength of this story is that you keep trying to make sense of it, feeling that it’s you rather than the story. If you can just pull the disparate threads together, everything will make sense. Sadly, that just never happens here. I’m not even sure I can provide a summary. It’s a post-apocalyptic world, and there are clones, but there are also humans that die and are reborn, and then there’s the robot boy, and they all go out for cake, and they’re kidnapped, and… whaa? “I can’t stand the confusion in my mind!” The post-apocalyptic landscape looks fascinating, and there’s a sense of a world attempting to be created, but…

In the afterword, the author apologizes for the poor quality of her work. I’ve read so many Japanese mangaka saying how horrible they are that I barely notice this these days, it seems to be something that just needs to be said. The author notes Robot was written for another magazine before the rest of these, and they bought the rights to it so they could pad out the collection. She also admits it’s a collection of loose ends with no explanations. So I feel better about not getting it at all, although I also agree with the author that it’s certainly evocative.

I’m not sure I can recommend this as a purchase, as the quality is highly variable and even the best of these stories is merely good. Still, it may be worth getting from your local library if they’re the sort that has so much manga they can afford to put this on the shelf next to Hikaru no Go. I think it succeeds in creating a certain mood; I just wish that the mood wasn’t seen entirely through a curtain of gauze.