Ranked #3200

Helter Skelter (Manga)

"A word before we start: laughter and screams sound seems very much alike." Okazaki Kyoko "Helter Skelter"

When I finished chapter 9 of this manga, I felt a intense need to listen Beatles song "Helter Skelter" to complete the feeling that "Helter Skelter", the manga, started in me. Do you know all the definitions of this title? Originally, Helter Skelter is a amusement park ride with a slide built in a spiral around a high tower. On Paul McCartney's explanation to the song we got: "Using the symbol of a helter skelter as a ride from the top to the bottom; the rise and fall of the Roman Empire—and this was the fall, the demise". Charles Manson, a serial killer who believed Beatles songs contained a coded prophecy of an apocalyptic war, defined it as: “Helter Skelter is confusion. Confusion is coming down fast. If you don’t see the confusion coming down fast around you, you can call it what you wish”. It's pure chaos and that's what we slowly see in this manga, we got confusion and chaos, a ride from the top to the bottom with Riroko.

Story: Our main character is the anti-heroine Riroko/Ririko. We enter her celebrity life following her twisted mind since the beginning when her perfect body starts to crumble. When your work is based on using your body image, you start to do everything to achieve the world's beauty concept and to maintain it as time pass by. But, unfortunately, isn't enough. Even with more and more surgeries, the time will come. "It's a rat race".
Helter Skelter introduces us a lot of subjects, be it in dialogues, little panels showing high-school girls talking, quick and smart quotes, small jokes or in one of the character's thoughts. Talks about the media and how it controls the news, about how a person can be loved by millions and still be lonely, makes you question if the person became that way because of the world, the pressure or because of her own choices... and it doesn't give the answer. Tells us about relationships and how weak they can be... Makes you thinks in your principles. Are they right? Aren't you filled with conformity?
This manga has background stories too. The characters are connect somehow, a police detective doing a investigation can be "a feather of the same wing" with Riroko. Her manager Hada, one of those who suffer with Riroko imposing herself, can choose a path that she never imagined.

Life is full of decisions. Are your decisions based on your principles? On the world's ideals? On the others orders? Which one?

Development: I like the development. Some details in the story you can consider overdone a little, but still amazing how everything happens. Like Riroko bruises, surgery after surgery... Can we consider Riroko a Josei creature from "Frankenstein"? She's compared with a chimera, built with every fashion sense of that time, "a unnatural face, it doesn't match". Riroko's story is compared with Norma's from "Sunset Boulevard" too. The way the fashion industry influences womans everywhere, "I want to become her, I want to be like her!". Easily hearing a "I just sleep and eat what I want" from the ideal successful model makes you yearn even more for it. Where did her fall began? People stopped liking Riroko a bit, she became even more twisted and bothered, people stopped liking her even more... It's a vicious circle. For the background stories, the way Okazaki Kyoko connects it is just great. A detail here and there in chapter 1 to 6, one page for the mama, the manager, the clinic... And in chapter 7 to 9 everything collides.

Art: I must say, I wasn't happy with the art style. Since we were dealing with the concept of beauty, I was expecting a detailed art with a perfectionist touch. I was expecting more beauty. Then, I stopped to think: "What was I expecting...? Was MY concept of beauty. What I find pretty." and a quote from the previous chapter snapped in my mind: "Her beauty is a manifestation of our own desires"... Oh, you got me there, Okazaki Kyoko. So, giving a second thought, you realize the art style is just... necessary. Specially for the quickly transformation of beauty to freaky, which is just so easily and well done with a alternative art like this (Nakamura Asumiko is a great example too of how quickly a calm face can change to a face full with anger). How I can't give a 10 to a manga who answered my question with its own character's dialogues?

Overall: You have to read it slowly to enjoy everything. Or read it fast to have a quick ride from the top to the bottom. I don't know. I'm pretty sure this manga is not for everyone and that some won't appreciate it. I was thinking in a 8 when I started it, a 9 in chapter 6, but I could only give a 10 when I finished and started thinking about the quotes and the way she connects everything in the end.

Remember: "Youth and beauty are not synonymous. Youth is beautiful, but beauty isn't youth". What is beautiful for you? read more

this was one of very few manga i've ever read i just could not stop reading - it was like watching a traffic accident: you have to look - an amazing exposure of the cancer and pain that is the rotten center of modern celebrity culture - it is the saga of ririko, a rather plain girl who achieves super-model status through the complete subjection of her former self beneath layers of make-up, plastic surgery, pain, and drugs and her ever advancing dissolution from stone-cold beauty to stone-cold crazy and falling apart - the art is beautifully water-color sketchy and perfectly captures the mind state of our "heroine" - story is perfectly paced and draws you in like a runaway train - ririiko reminds me of similar sad stories of hollywood goddesses such as marilyn monroe, francis farmer, or veronica lake: beautiful doomed idols who will always capture the imagination of similarly lost people - a must read!!!!!! read more