Art: Gotta say, while there are lots of pretty, close shots of beautiful characters in the flashy outfits, everything else is rather awful.
While some drawings like chapter and volume covers, as well as occasional manga panels have more or less realistic proportions, the rest of the manga is filled with skeleton people trying to hide inside skin bags with various degrees of success. It's inconsistent but it's probably a stylistic choice so your mileage may vary. I found it to be pretty bad cause fashion to me is about using clothes to bring out the best features of human physique and go even further beyond. Stick people don't work for that.
Next are backgrounds, they are absolutely dreadful, no two ways about it. It's better than something like Sailor Moon or BeruBara who completely annihilate spatial awareness.
Paradise Kiss has three types of backgrounds:
1. Absolutely nothing - nothing uncommon for women's manga, they often focus on characters and their appearance to a point where backgrounds doesn't seem to matter to them.
2. Minimal outlines - bare minimum of a background, at this point you actually have an idea of where things take place. Better than a void of nothingness but lacking in detail and not rally pretty to look at.
3. PHOTOS - straight up photos! No, even worse. It's very badly filtered photos. This practice existed in manga for a while but this is the first time I see it done this badly and lazily. Inio Asano and Mokoto Shinkai at times get criticized after someone praises them for what is essentially a traced photo but after this I'm sure people would give them credit for at least putting in effort to have it look nice and fit the style of their work.
Overall the linework is clean but rough, as in, lines themselves are often not smooth but there's no excess either. Aside from up close shots that have nice and smooth art with varying line weigh the rest is mostly flat looking.
Story: you might think Paradise Kiss is about fashion and you would be right. But it just as easily could've been acting or making music or drawing art. The fashion thing is just a setting for a character driven romance.
ParaKiss romance is rather well done, I expected another Cinderella type story that little girls and teens could insert themselves in and while there is a smidgen of that, it's not the point. The characters here are just believable enough to care about their attempt to build a relationship while having to deal with their own and each others flaws. It captures well the storm that takes place in someone's mind when they are high on love. Making irrational or impulsive decisions or coming to far off conclusions that are however easily understandable.
In the background there's a plot about all of the characters finding their place in life which I think made a compelling addition to romance. While it doesn't exactly go in depth on all of the themes is brings up, the part about growing up is decent. Our main heroine starts as an aimless student that goes wherever her mother points her to but along the way finds her true self, she finds what she wants to do in life and happiness it brings gives her courage to pursue her dreams. It's a sweet message.
Funfactor: Given how I hated most shoujo/josei manga I've read prior, I think it's worth something when I say this was decently enjoyable. I wouldn't recommend it to just anybody but if you like more complex romance that delves into psychology behind human relationship and doesn't just ride on melodrama I'd definitely recommend this.
