| Overall |
8 |
| Story |
8 |
| Animation |
8 |
| Sound |
7 |
| Character |
9 |
| Enjoyment |
9 |
Paradise Kiss
Growing up is probably the hardest part of our lifes. Because when you get older you do not see the world as you used to see. You want to try everything to know what is wrong or what is right. The life always teaches you the best but the hardest way. You don’t have to be 50 to understand the world. Because age is just a number only mistakes get you older. Since I watched Nana, I am a fan of Ai Yazawa. Because until now, she is the only person who made me see a girl’s perspective in a realistic way.
Paradise
Kiss is an anime which aimed for the girl audience but unlike the most of shoujos it is a bit deep for me. You will understand what I want to say while you read:
Story: The story is about a girl named Yukari who only focus on her education and she does not have any intention to be a model until she come across with a group of the fashion design students who want Yukari to be a model for their fashion show. At first, even she does not want to do this, then she becomes friends with the student and her heart is stolen by our main character named George then she decides doing this. But the rest won’t be pink as you think. She will want to discover the real world and it will cause a problem because of the pressure of her family. Then she has to decide which one she will choose: Education or Stepping Into The Life?
Characters: To me, the most important thing about the characters is seeing the development of them. And you will definetly see it and fall in love with the characters. Because every character has own their stories. You will try to empathy to the character especially with Yukari. It was really enjoyable to see Yukari’s growin up.You will ask yourself if you were her what would you do. We will witness Yukari’ choices, George’s stability on his job, the other characters’ facing with the past…Also I think the girl audience will fall in love with George who was created by inspiring Brian Slade from Velvet Goldmine. And this makes George a very charismatic and flirt character.
Art: Ai Yazawa’s art is simply amazing to me. Her design and different drawing style make her an unique artist to me. But for the people who has not seen any work of Ai Yazawa, this type of art might disturb them. Because everything in Ai Yazawa’s works are proportionated
and glamorous. You can see the characters do not wear the same clothes everyday. And seeing gothic lolitas and rock chicks will make happy the boy audience too. Well at least I became :) Also you can see lots of detail in it: the boys with the piercings, glamorous and exaggerated clothes, even a crossdresser too. And some of you may find it weird because of not seeing it in every anime, but the buildings and some places are live action…
Music: To be honest I was surprised when I first listened the opening and ending song. I was not expecting something like Nana’s but it was better than I expected. Nothing could fit in this anime except indie-rock / post punk type songs and luckily the opening is very suitable to this anime. And after hearing the ending I screamed because the ending song was from Franz Ferdinand which is one of my favouite bands. So if you are into indie music you should check that songs. They are really good.
Originality: It does not have any stereotype in a shoujo anime like the school festival, valentines day etc. Also there can be people who say we could not even see a kiss. Well I can tell you that you will see more than a kiss. And our main character is not a loser. I mean she is rebel and a strong girl to survive to the real world.
Satisfying Ending: Well, I always talked about the good parts in it. But ending was not satisfying for me. Maybe it is just because I don’t love the unhappy endings. But it made the serie more realistic to me.
Bad Sides:
-Some events have no connections to each other.
- It was too short and the final episode was not satisfying enough. I mean everything just happened suddenly and I could not keep up. It should have more episodes
-Some of the scenes were unrealistic to me. Like the relation with Yukari and her mother…
All in all, Paradise Kiss is an amazing anime for me. And it is one of the best shoujo’s I’ve ever seen. To know what to do in the future and gambling with the fate is really hard. The anime does not say what to do. It gives us options then we decide what to do. As a boy I really enjoyed this, I hope you all enjoy this I did.
read more
