River's Edge

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Alternative Titles

Japanese: リバーズ・エッジ

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Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 1

Chapters: 14

Status: Finished

Published: 1993

Genres: Drama, Slice of Life

Theme: School

Demographic: Josei

Serialization: None

Authors: Okazaki, Kyoko (Story & Art)

Statistics

Score: 7.33¹ (scored by 1,951 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #4568²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #3191

Members: 6,459

Favorites: 144

7.33

Ranked #4568Popularity #3191Members 6,459

MangaOkazaki, Kyoko (Story & Art)

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Volumes: /1

Chapters: /14

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Synopsis

Haruna Wakakusa and Yamada become friends after she saves him several times from her boyfriend's constant bullying. Through him she gets to know Kozue Yoshikawa, a fellow student who also models professionally. The three emotionally stunted teens' lives briefly yet intensely intertwine for one semester before splintering from the aftereffects of one disastrous night. For both Wakakusa and Yamada, their emotional awakening fosters an unlikely friendship between the two battered souls.

(Source: MU)

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Background

River's Edge was published in English by Kodansha USA under the Vertical Comics imprint on June 27, 2023.

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Related Manga

Character:

Helter Skelter

More characters
Characters

Wakakusa, Haruna

Main

Yamada, Ichiro

Main

Yoshikawa, Kozue

Supporting

Kanna, Tajima

Supporting

Kannonzaki

Supporting

Rumi

Supporting

Reviews

May 9, 2015

czxcjx

Recommended

Okazaki: In Fragments

When Okazaki draws a face, whether she scales back on the lines to make it really comedyish or deformed, or when she draws it full to make it stylish/traumatic, she hits the emotions of the character's perfectly.

The thing about the Okazaki face is that it never screams over-romanticism. When Okazaki draws a face she doesn't layer the emotions with flair the same way just about every other anime drawer does (not saying that that's bad, just saying that she doesn't do it) but aims at showing human grief in all its trauma and sometimes ridiculousness.

Okazaki can also very easily switch from grief or ... fuckedupness to lightness at a snap. Contrast whatever happens at the Riverbed at the climactic finale with Kozue's extremely joyously happy face when she gets the phone call. (Kozue is life, Kozue is love)

The neutral position of an Okazaki face is a kind of stylish adolescent boredom.

If you haven't guessed, Kozue is the Kozue from Helter Skelter.

Okazaki only draws necessary detail, but when she goes all out (with her full shot of the riverbed for example, or her night-time cityscapes) she really aims to go all out.

Regardless of whether all these people are horrible unlikeable people or not, the main thing is that Okazaki draws actual people.

There's a whole lot of underlying social stuff involved that isn't really so special for any non-Japanese modernized society but can only be given light in the special Japanese circumstance of the Kogal movement and the Bubble economy and Enjo Kousai and all that Neo-Japanisme stuff.

I don't think there's anything that can be called Love in these pages, even between Yamada and Wakakusa. Just the aching need to be saved from oneself.

Okazaki probably doesn't believe in karma though there's one instance of poetic justice being wrought in the whole story. The self destruction of a narrow mind through its own superficiality and solipsism.

There's this look at Kozue and Yamada give at the end of whole finale towards Wakakusa which seems to transmit that quite frankly it probably isn't going to ever get better and all the horrible things that they're going through aren't going to ever stop but they couldn't care less anyway because to them its just another one of those things they have to get through.

Okazaki's characters are seeking the kind of shattered happiness that only exist in fragments in a world shaped by banal surfaces and horrific sewers of pain.

Kozue is the best bulimic screwed-up character who just takes it as she goes and screw all her personal problems because she's just going to move on and do the shit she wants even if there's this gaping void inside her. She looks at the world with probably a detached amusement.

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Mar 23, 2021

potentialPizza

Recommended

If you found an abandoned corpse, would you come stare at it whenever you needed to feel better about your life?

River’s Edge is the kind of manga I love to find. While Okazaki Kyoko is one of manga’s foremost and greatest josei authors, she’s tragically under-known in English-speaking communities. Her stories capture a kind of realism that’s both tragic and comedic. People suffer, are victims of their own self-imposed complexes and worries, self-destruct, and yet there’s always a sense of nihilistic levity. To worry too much about the horrors before them is to take life too seriously.

Even then, out of the stories of hers that ... I’ve read, River’s Edge is the darkest. Pink was gleeful and flippant in its slice-of-life portrayal of how much easier life is when you don’t worry too much. Helter Skelter was a grand tragedy, of a larger-than-life celebrity whose facade began to break as she flew too close to the sun. And River’s Edge is grounded, focusing its tragedy on ordinary people, with an air of realism inhabiting every way in which they hurt each other. Unlike those other two, River’s Edge is a study of a larger ensemble cast.

The protagonist, Wakakusa finds herself torn as her reckless boyfriend Kannonzaki bullies the secretly gay Yamada. In helping him, she becomes embroiled in the web of relationships with Yamada’s unsuspecting girlfriend, Kanna, and the young bulimic model Yoshikawa (who you may remember from Helter Skelter). There isn’t a singular goal to this narrative — they carry on with their lives, have conversations, and clash for reasons that feel natural.

Is it really realistic? That depends. No story truly can be, but River’s Edge shows one side of how Okazaki views reality, and I think it’s an interesting one. Most high-school manga are written to embody certain fantasies of that era of life. Okazaki is here to explore its flaws, not in the system, but in the people themselves. There’s certainly a realistic flair to some of the dialogue, in Yoshikawa’s eating disorder, or in Yamada’s sexuality. There’s a great conversation where he calls Wakakusa out for thinking that just because he’s gay, it’s appropriate to ask him overly sexual questions.

It’s the same kind of drama that might seem like it could be fully resolved if everyone just communicated, but this is not your shonen or shojo where they fail to do so just to force conflict. River’s Edge’s characters wouldn’t feel like themselves if they truly told each other how they felt, and that would probably make them hate each other more. It captures the imperfections of people who don’t understand what they really want.

You want to see Wakakusa call out her boyfriend. You want a climactic confrontation where she breaks up with him, pledges to never have anything to do with him again. You don’t get it, and it’s not because this manga is realistic. It’s because Wakakusa is a teenager who was never quite aware enough to realize that would be an option, much less go through with it. That’s not to say it’s a tragedy. In the end, her life goes on in a way you can accept, no longer affected by Kannonzaki’s behavior.

The end is woven surprisingly tight, though, for a story of this nature. Every plotline weaves together naturally, in a way that would betray the sense of realism if not for how well it’s done. It doesn’t feel like an ending Okazaki envisioned and contrived her story toward. It feels like the simple result of who the characters are. That’s the whole appeal of this manga. You won’t get the drama of heightened reality, but the characters are interesting, and they find themselves in interesting situations. It’s more about the people than the message, but the message is as simple as how important it is to treat each other kindly. What hooks you isn’t that simplicity, but the complexity that arises when people fail at that.

On a technical level, Okazaki is as competent as ever. While perhaps off-putting to those used to the stylization so common in the medium, with its simply outlined eyes and mouths, there’s still a careful aesthetic, and plenty of great composition and visual storytelling. The story can be a little more text-driven than it needed to be, and the flow of dialogue bubbles was sometimes unintuitive — flaws I didn’t find in Pink or Helter Skelter. But like those two manga, I would put River’s Edge on a list of great character studies that anybody should read if they’re interested in such a thing, in exploring josei, or in exploring what great manga can be found beyond the mainstream.

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Mar 4, 2023

Wupr

Mixed Feelings

When I first read this manga a few years ago, I thought it was terrible. I did not find any enjoyment in the themes explored, I struggled to relate to any of the characters, and overall I felt like the manga failed to make any kind of strong, powerful statement that would stick to me, seeing as this is the type of manga that appears to have something to say. However, now that I’m reading it again, I’m starting to see that maybe there is some merit to this manga after all.

Now before we delve into what made me reconsider my stance on ... this manga, let's first address what I still hold my grievances towards from my first read: the art. The manga's jarringly ugly art style, in conjunction with the unforgiving walls of text, makes the experience of reading this manga feel like a chore at times. This manga was not easy to get through for me, not because of the content itself but because there was nothing particularly inspiring with how it was presented. However, there are certain moments where you can see a lot of thought put into the timing of certain panels, such as the events that unfold in chapter 4. The juxtaposition of Kannonzaki's adulterous sex presenting itself as a symbol of life and pleasure with Yamada's dire revelation of his secret discovery and the pain he lives through everyday providing a somber contrast to that symbol.

I thought this was a nice analogy with quite brilliant, thought-provoking execution. It makes me think back to the way Haruna described her first time with Kannonzaki (“Sex without the purpose of reproduction holds many contradictions and mysteries”). In this chapter, we witness the first of many contradictions: sex for the “fun” of it. Many people, such as Kannonzaki, seem to strongly hold this idea of sex as an inherent act of love, yet those same people have no qualms having sex completely devoid of it. Whether or not sex implies love is a question outside the scope of this review, but it's certainly true that people behave in incredibly contradictory ways when it comes to love. The way this manga observes Kannonzaki's attachment with Haruna and contrasts it with how he continuously acts in contradiction to this supposed attachment serves to illustrate to the reader a wonderful example of this phenomenon. This was a compelling theme and I think it’s quite well explored within numerous other moments of the story as well. I would delve into more of the nuances, but I'd rather not spoil any more of the story than I have to.

Getting back to Yamada’s pain, I want to get into how Okazaki explores the theme of bullying in the context of romance. Kannonzaki’s merciless harassment of Yamada is nothing short of being utterly disgusting. Haruna does try to restrain Kannonzaki in some ways, but for some reason she chooses to preserve her superficial relationship with him instead of following her moral compass and protecting Yamada. Personally, this relationship frustrates me to no end. Sure, Haruna has poured a lot into this relationship, especially considering that Kannonzaki is the person who she gave her virginity to. Yet, after the horrific acts of torture that Kannonzaki commits against Yamada, why would she do anything other than break up with this asshole? It’s simply something that I don’t understand. However, perhaps that’s the point of it all. I believe that with this complicated relationship, Okazaki offers quite a somber reflection about the limbo state of prolonged futility that many relationships exist under. This relationship exists solely to benefit Kannonzaki’s own ego and to the sheer detriment of Haruna’s happiness. And yet, what is there to hold Haruna back from breaking up with him? It's a question that many of us struggle to ask ourselves. Maybe there's some deep-seated fear of abandoning the status quo, perhaps the social repercussions of a break up would be too much for Haruna to handle, or it could be some other reason that only Haruna could ever truly know. Clearly, it feels like there’s a specific target audience that this manga seeks to relate to. This is a story about trauma and grief. But also, this is a chronicle of our many vices as fragile beings. The things we do to seek attention, the things we do when acting out of our deepest insecurities. A lot more happens in this manga, but again, I'd rather you read the manga for yourself and reflect on your own about those parts.

This manga seeks to tackle a lot, and it does so succinctly. Ultimately, this manga is a statement about how bubbling emotions and our self-obsessed egos work hand-in-hand to foster tragedy. Yet, despite my praise of the themes that I found were explored quite well, I honestly believe it should've honed in on one or two specific themes instead of attempting the Herculean challenge of crafting a multidimensional masterpiece in just one volume. Ideally, it'd be the themes I mentioned in this review. I haven't even addressed some very prevalent aspects of this manga, like Yamada's sexuality, his girlfriend, and anything relating to Kozue because I feel that these aspects weren't nearly as compelling or well-explored. Nevertheless, I enjoyed what this manga was able to accomplish and I’m glad I gave it another shot. Overall, I think this manga does a solid job at bringing up certain issues about love, both the love towards others and the love towards oneself, but feels bereft of much of its potential depth due to its tediously zealous onslaught of ideas and a general sense of over-ambition.

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Poll: River's Edge Chapter 14 Discussion AlexSadist-sama - Jan 20, 2012	5 replies	by Dreat123 »» Jun 24, 2023 3:24 AM
Poll: River's Edge Chapter 9 Discussion AlexSadist-sama - Jan 20, 2012	2 replies	by Dreat123 »» Jun 24, 2023 2:07 AM
Poll: River's Edge Chapter 10 Discussion AlexSadist-sama - Jan 20, 2012	2 replies	by St0rmblade »» Jan 30, 2021 5:51 AM
Poll: River's Edge Chapter 4 Discussion AlexSadist-sama - Jan 20, 2012	1 replies	by St0rmblade »» Jan 29, 2021 7:34 AM
Poll: River's Edge Chapter 3 Discussion AlexSadist-sama - Jan 20, 2012	2 replies	by St0rmblade »» Jan 29, 2021 7:04 AM

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