Spoiler Alert: Paradise Kiss

http://img.animefreak.tv/meta/11/4307.jpg

Paradise Kiss is an anime about Hayasaka Yukari, a final year highschool student, who has spent her entire life studying alone. She is scouted by four students from YSD, a school of design, who want to make clothes and open their own shop, to be their model for a school competition. The four students include Arashi, (a punk, guitarist with a body filled with piercings and tattoos) Miwako, (a girl entrapped in the shadow of her older sister who is an established designer) Isabella, (a transgender woman who adores glamorous and eccentric styles) and George (a bisexual, designing prodigy, perfectionist and idealist). They call their brand, Paradise Kiss. When Yukari, a girl who has never had an original thought in her life, or wanted something of her own volition, meets these four outgoing people who are following their dreams with passion and hard-work, she finds herself wanting to become a part of their world. As she spends more time with them, she grows and gradually starts to find her own will and desires and dreams.

The anime is only 12 episodes long and the story itself happens in a short frame of time. However, it pulls you in and enwraps you in its fantastical fabrics, intricate embroidery and patterns created with passion. While dealing with themes like highschool romance and young love, you might find yourself in a nostalgic space, reminiscing about the precarious nature of that time or the constant insecurity that seemed to have rented a room out in your heart permanently. The story depicts intense, intoxicating romances between the main characters in a world filled with gorgeous pieces of clothing. However, while these young blooming artists weigh the reality of needing to make clothes not just for art but for the purpose of being worn by people every day, the anime shows the characters in school having to face harsh realities of life and livelihood. Despite the show being all about appearances, the focus isn’t beauty but rather knowledge and understanding. And although it takes academics and education off their pedestals, it values them equally to knowledge gained from experiences and from meeting new people.

As the show portrays students about to graduate from their schools and step out into the “real” or “adult” world, it balances the difference between fantasies of childhood and responsibilities of adulthood extremely well, valuing each feeling and emotion equally as paradise for these children changes as they grow up.

Please watch the anime and share your thoughts!

Signing off

Pigment Editor