River's Edge

May 9, 2015

czxcjx

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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

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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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Aug 19, 2020

-_-Val

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First I want to warn you that there will be spoilers, not much but there will be, I am not a native English speaker, and I am sorry for any mistakes I make. We started.

River's Edge, Netflix passed me by and recommended his film, I was going to start watching it but I realized that it's an adaptation of a 1993 manga, although it's not the eighth wonder of the world either.

Story 8/10
Well the story is “innovative” in the 90s because well... this kind of plot was very interesting and touches on taboo subjects for the land of the rising sun (knowing that they are ... very conservative), like homosexuality, I would have liked Yamada's homosexuality, Haruna and Kannozaki's relationship and other characters to have developed a little more (I will talk about this later). I also want to emphasize about the corpse, this had some symbolism or what?, what I understood was that 2 crazy people found a corpse and when they need to calm down, they go to the corpse and relax, WTF? Well, as I said, two crazy people, what can you expect? And about Haruna's reaction to the body... I don't know, she's just another crazy person like the two of them. Take a step back, don't let them know you're leaving and run to the police, I don't know if what I said makes sense but that's the way I see it.

Art 7/10
Well, I'm not much of a critic of animation and this kind of thing because, well, I don't know anything about drawing but I can identify when it's a bad drawing and when it's not. This style of drawing is not the best but I like it, a simple and fresh drawing style for the year the story takes place and when it was published.

Characters 6/10
I have mixed feelings here... but of the bad
Well I would like to talk about each one individually but it would take too long, so I will do my best.
Yamada is a poor boy who is bothered, shy and quiet but surprise, surprise, it's GAY!... for me it's not interesting, I feel that he doesn't innovate much, I don't know if it's because this kind of characters are burned
Haruna is a normal girl, but she's got a screw loose in her head. Her friendship with Yamada is very rare for me, but she enjoys it, it's nothing big but GOD, when I say that this girl has a screw loose in her head it's because I say it with reason, first you have a boyfriend who likes to hit everyone who crosses him, he hits your BFF, possessive, he has relations with your other BFF, you say you don't love him, but they have sex and the worst, he rapes you and the 2 crazy people are watching that and leave her alone, that is to say, bad friends, with those friends so that enemies. Anyway, the hypocrisy. What kind of girl goes around with a guy like that?
Yoshikawa, a girl who didn't really make sense of the plot. A crazy girl who likes to see dead bodies like Yamada and kills cats too, what was the point of her being part of the main characters? That she turns Haruna into a lesbian? We'll never know.

Enjoyment 7/10
Like I said, it's not the wonder but it's not the swill either, it's enjoyable, you want to read something fast? This is for you buddy.

In conclusion, a good manga that could give more, had an interesting story but as long as we advance little by little it declines, either because of its characters that lack more development or because it's an open ending. What I did like about his epilogue is that as he makes it very clear. In life, we know thousands of people but there will be a moment when they will no longer be there, even if it hurts, it is the law of life.

Thank you for reading and have a nice day

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Feb 4, 2021

rti9

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When we read stories about adolescence in manga and anime, we usually see idealized bits of how exciting life could or should have been. River's Edge does the opposite and focuses on the harsh and bleak existence of pubescence.

The cast is composed of deeply flawed characters who are intertwined in a web of complex relationships. We witness the cruelty of children in growing bodies, trivial gossip, vapid affairs, and the desperate search for love and some identity. This is the modern teenage life.

A peculiar friendship is formed among Haruna Wakakusa, Ichiro Yamada, and Kozue Yoshikawa. Wakakusa is a proactive girl who befriends Yamada due to ... him being the bullying victim of her boyfriend. Yamada, a handsome quiet boy who is secretly in love with another boy, takes Wakakusa to see something he treasures: the body of a dead person he has found. Strangely enough, this corpse is not only cherished by him, but by Yoshikawa, a beautiful student who has lately become famous due to her acting and modeling gigs. It is impressive how rich and elaborate the characters are. They can be brilliant and right after do something incredibly stupid. They can be gentle and then do something brutal. The characters here are more realistic than what we usually see. They contain both logical and irrational traits at the same time.

While reading I couldn't help but keep asking myself why does Wakakusa keep going out with her boyfriend? She hates his bullying nature, does not seem to enjoy his company, and doesn't seem to find much pleasure in his physical contact. But then I ask myself, how many couples have I known in real life that don't seem to match at all, and they persist in an ephemeral state. The problem is that most of the time we don't know the history of their relationship to understand what kind of bond they truly have. We only have a partial perspective of their connection. We can only guess what is going on in Wakakusa's head. Does she feel lonely due to her parents divorce and needs a boyfriend even if he is someone she doesn't love? Does she not want to be like her parents and doesn't want to let go of this insipid relation in fear that she will end up like her parents? Is keeping him as a boyfriend a way to protect her newfound friend by keeping checks on his bully? Does she feel like having someone to interact physically better than feeling nothing at all? Or is this just a typical teenage misjudgement that after a few years she will look back and question why the hell did she do that?

The art-style is expressive and does seem to fit the raw emotions and the rough existence the characters live in, but it is definitely a bit too simplistic to be appreciated. It seems rather to emphasize more how good the writing is as opposed to the art.

This manga is more for people who don't expect a nostalgic or escapist look towards the modern teenage life. This is a bitter tale of three unusual friends trying to find some meaning in life in own their juvenile ways.

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Feb 22, 2022

bitterpapaya

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This is one of my favorite manga, i love the story, i love the characters, i love how it leaves me in this melancholic feelings.

It's the kind of manga that I keep coming back to, I read it in middle school, discovering it after I finished Helter Skelter. It changes how I see life, it made me realizes some things about life.

My favorite quote in this manga is;
"We had chattered endlessly after school, so that we wouldn't have to say something"

I like how the settings are so mundane, for a person who lives near industrial area of the town, I get this feeling that ...

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