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ESSENTIAL // 3.07.03 PARADISE KISS PARADISE KISS There has been a lot of noise about pop comics lately. Comics should be hip! Sexy! Fun! They should sizzle with style, and writers should be like rock stars. In the future, all the cool kids will read comics. PARADISE KISS is the pop comic of the future, here today. It debuted in ZIPPER, a magazine covering the bleeding edge of fashion in Harajuku, the center of Tokyo fashion. True to its readership, PARADISE KISS showcases glorious fashions with influences from haute couture to the Elegant Gothic Lolita style, an ultra cute style in which devotees sport Alice In Wonderland dresses and even little parasols to keep off the sun. But PARADISE KISS is not all style and no substance- between these elegant covers is a very down to earth plot. Imagine you are a Japanese girl. At the behest of your mother, you've been taking entrance exams since you were 5. If you don't get into a top college, well, you're just Ms. Nobody. This has been Yukari Hayasaka's life so far. One day, a punk accosts Yukari on her way to prep school. She tries to escape but is caught by a giant transvestite. They tell her that she has the look and that they want her to be their model for their school's fashion show. She resists at first, but keeps getting pulled back in. She may wear the uniform of an elite high school, but the college entrance exam pressure cooker leads to an uncertain future. As Yukari becomes closer to these fashion design students, she begins to wonder who the smart people really are. In the US, manga is known for pure escapist fantasy. A confused teen can count on a beautiful girl to fall from the sky or on at least finding a magical book. PARADISE KISS is a kick in the ass for this type of manga. There's a dash of fantasy here -- many girls wish they'd be stopped in the street and told that they have the look. However, Yukari must become an independent adult with little guidance besides the well-meaning words of other teens like herself. Despite being a manga in a fashion magazine, it's the anti-fashion magazine manga. Fashion magazines celebrate passivity. The point is to attract someone to make your life for you. At the beginning of the manga, Yukari is letting others do just that. Her mother pressures her to get into a good college, so she strains herself, trying to work above her level. She has no real direction of her own. George, the complicated young man she falls in love with, says it best- "Where's your drive and determination in all this?". Even while pretending to be an independent woman, she becomes little more than George's pet, although she is self aware enough to realize she is being sucked in. The beauty of this manga is that Yukari remains a very human girl- trying to do what is right, but unsure what that is. She makes the same mistakes many girls do- especially confusing sex for love. All she has is a good head on her shoulders, if she'd ever use it. This is a very romantic manga, but there's no Hollywood glitter here. Yukari's relationship with George is gloriously confused and messy. He has a whip in one hand and candy in the other, and Yukari is totally unprepared. This is paralleled with the romance of two other design students- Arashi and Miwako, who were next-door neighbors that became lovers 'just by coincidence'. The theme of confusing sex for love is repeated here, and the parallel is repeated literally in the composition, with Yukari's dialogue being used as a bridge between George and Yukari scenes and Miwako and Arashi scenes. All this drama may make it sound like PARADISE KISS is a very grave comic, but there is plenty of humor to take the edge off all this drama. PARADISE KISS revels in tasty dialogue, with frank sex talk on top of the menu. The character interactions draw most of the humor, keeping PARADISE KISS from falling into the "Look, we're wacky!" trap. The forth wall is kicked and trampled all over, with the characters admonishing each other for wasting pages. These elements are conveyed using a thin lined drawing style. The characters are slim and stylized but their expressions convey emotions beautifully. The page is crammed with gutterless panels separated only by thin black lines. This eases the eye from panel to panel without stopping. Sometimes the backgrounds look like they have been run through some Photoshop blur filter. This happens most often in locales where Yukari doesn't want to be; that she is not paying attention to. It's a subtle touch that adds greatly to the atmosphere of the manga. The three graphic novels have nice touches at the end- the first one has an essay about PARADISE KISS, the next two have fashion quizzes, underlining the fact that the target market for these books isn't the cat piss man who sticks up all the Wonder Woman comics with god knows what, it is normal people out for a good read. PARADISE KISS should be required reading for all young high school age girls. In a stylish way, it showcases issues of independence, and finding your path in life without being preachy. It is erroneously marked 13+, but because of sex scenes should probably be 16+. At ten dollars a pop, price is not a barrier to getting into the story as often as possible. Read this comic and lend out its goodness. Now that's activism.
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