Available in three volumes
Writer/Artist: Ai Yazawa
There is a pressure in Japanese society to conform. To not stand out. The best you can hope for is to knuckle down, get good results, graduate, get a dead-end job, get married, raise a few kids, and not disappoint your parents, who have worked so hard so that you can get to exactly where they are now (are you with me?). This is just how Yukari feels until a suave young man asks her to be in his fashion show.
The dapper fellow in question is George, an "equal-opportunities lover" - I'll let yourselves decipher that - who is as ruthless and manipulative as you could expect from a fashion student. Helping him put his show together are his fellow students, Issabella, a transvestite with excellent culinary skill and a fondness for long gowns, who is the den mother always lending an ear for her friends' problems as well as wise words, Arashi, rough punk with violent tendencies and a heart of crush velvet, and his super cute girlfriend Miwako who is following in her older sister's platformed footsteps to be a fashion designer (well, Miwako's trying but she's really much better at being very cute).
Renamed Caroline by Miwako, Yukari's new-found aspiration rises uncontrollably and she becomes obsessed with the show and even skips school and risks disownment to help make the frocks at Paradise Kiss (the studio they create their line at). Problem is Caroline is useless with textiles, her grades at school have taken a dive, now the only person that can prevent this fall from grace is guru George. But does he want to save or devour her? With characters like these this book writes itself, taking the story down unpredictable avenues I could not foresee, plus my girlfriend assures me that it has the most realistic "first time" she has ever read, and I don't mean that all you can see is your partner's face because you're too nervous to scroll your eyes south.
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