Paradise Kiss is a shoujo manga by Ai Yazawa, creator of Neighborhood Story. Yukari Hayasaka is a high school student struggling through her college exams. While she is walking to cram school, a young punk accosts her. His name is Arashi and he wants her to model for their label, Paradise Kiss.
This, of course, turns everything upside down. She falls in with a crowd of fashion school kids and ends up tangled in their lives. The question of finding one's path seems to be central to this manga. Yukari starts to question whether getting into the right school would really make her happy, Miwako (one of our fashion school girls) wonders if she is cut out to be a designer.
In true shoujo style, there are some complicated relationships here. Will Yukari go for the leader of this club, George, or will she go for her old crush, Hiroyuki Tokumori? Miwako is also having love problems, but no need to spoil things coming in.
This fashionable manga, whose styles are said to be influenced by the Visual Kei style, is drawn in an attractive thin-lined style. This original manga stands out from the crowd with its snappy dialogue. At $10 a pop, it's a nice stocking stuffer for fashionable young girls. There seem to be 5 volumes at around 200 pages each. This manga makes me jealous of the girls of today. There seems to be cheap, accessible manga for everyone. Hopefully, we'll see American comics getting out there to the public.