Pink

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This was actually a very fun read. It's one of the most accurate depictions of life, and something that everyone can relate. It criticizes life and the people in life, while not being annoyingly preachy. This is brilliantly done by having the people who comment on things be a little girl and a dumb woman. This manga pokes fun at lots of hypocrites, while acknowledging the hypocrisy of the people poking fun at others. It reminds me of myself actually. I get annoyed at my mom splurging on dumb things, while I splurge on dumb things as well. My ... older brother told me not to waste money on skins in games, while he spent money ordering a big Godzilla action figure from Amazon. We're all hypocrites who partake in capitalism and doing dumb things. The little girl, the MC's step sister, criticizes the adults for being horny people who needlessly complicate things. It's true that adults make things harder than they need to be, but it also juxtaposes against her naivety. She's too young to really understand things, and we understand that when we see her point of view. Yet she still manages to be relatable. Once again, we've all wasted money on dumb things while criticizing someone else who does the same. We've all had that point in our life where we wanted everything to be a fairy tale. Too bad we grew up and reality hit us in the face.

The manga also pokes fun at people who portray one thing, but the reality is totally different. Or people who criticize things, while partaking in them. Like an English major who thinks that reading is for nerds. Irony! Or men who pay for sex, telling said prostitute that she needs to settle down and become a respectable young lady. Reminds me of the people who say that I shouldn't have to work on Christmas Eve, while they're shopping at the mall on Christmas Eve, thus creating that demand. Or people who speak up and talk about our treatment of animals, while having a wallet made from animals.

Though once again, they manage to critique such people without coming across as preachy. Instead, they just show us their actions and we are meant to come to such a conclusion ourselves. The ending was abrupt, but that's the entire theme of this manga. The entire time, the main character constantly says that anything can happen at anytime. That's the thrill of life.

I'm going to preface this by saying I LOVE josei... so naturally, I had to read Kyoko Okazaki's Pink, ntm it comes with the tagline, "LOVE + CAPITALISM."

Starting off with some backstory, Pink was originally written in 1989 during the peak of bubble economy Japan. Despite this, it takes a different approach than the one you might be expecting, instead of being head-on with its criticism, what Pink does is take this setup and paint a picture of the way a consumerist society operates. It doesn't tell you how to feel, it just throws shit at you, and in a way we can still pull ... aspects of the narrative and apply them to our current situation even decades later.

Now moving on to Yumi, I actually really enjoyed her character. She doesn't have groundbreaking characterization, (which actually serves this type of a one-shot surprisingly well!) nor does she feel like a one-of-a-kind idiosyncratic protag whose purpose is to excel at being annoyingly cynical, which is sadly a common theme within Josei. Yumi feels like someone you could actually know in real life as opposed to a caricature. But, moving on to another factor I like to look out for!! The way taboo topics are presented within transgressive media!! Now with Pink, although the story is carried out in a comedic way, it never seems to put itself in a light where sensitive issues such as misogyny and suicide are devalued which I greatly appreciate.

SPOILERS???? AFTER THIS MARK

More on the story's light-hearted feel, it's humorous in a way that's refreshingly blunt, and for me personally, the most memorable part of reading Pink was skimming through Okazaki's sardonic commentary (mostly on the characters) that was stuffed into the margins. But aside from all that, plot-wise, Yumi, our protagonist, works late nights as a call girl to feed her pet crocodile (a manifestation of her hunger/desire if you will) who just kind of chills out in her apartment??? She has sex with rude old men, buys things just for the sake of well... buying things, and just explores the simple pleasures of life alongside her sister, and the man her step-mother is having an affair with. Sure, it's messy and complicated.. but it's also so much fun at the same time!! Pink essentially shoves its eccentric nature in your face and leaves you to deal.

So in conclusion, if you can get your hands on Pink I'd definitely say to give it a go!!! :)

It is tough to put into words how frustrated I feel realizing the amount of effort it took from me to read this. It feels very avent-garde; I do not even know what that word fucking means, but the closest words I would associate it with is probably fake and plastic. It is extremely exasperating when I realize how high this is spoken of then contrasting to the reality of actually fucking reading it. It is important to note this since this section is flooded with 10s and 9s putting a pretty high expectation of this manga. It is hard to figure out the purpose ... of this manga aside from being p r e t t y and a e s t h e t i c. Reading this was a chore, and I do not recommend this in the slightest. Okazaki Kyoko’s stories tend to be like this in that you barely understand much and whatever questions that are unanswered will stay unanswered. This applies to another work of hers which is Helter Skelter. The author’s paneling is very hard to follow as well. It is not that it suffers from overcrowding rather it is just extremely clunky at times; so much so that sometimes I would spend at least three minutes trying to understand what is exactly happening. A very superficial work which is art in name only and mostly made for privileged intelligentsia, so they can vicariously live through oppression.