Ara ara, I just finished Paradise Kiss in one go. It was a pleasant watch… Now, for a review.

Yukari, a normal high-school girl with somewhat of an ego, has lost her way of life.  Someone shouts to her while she’s walking, only to be stopped by one tall long woman, still being followed by the rough-looking boy. The tough-looking boy is Arashi and the tall woman is Isabella. Yukari got scouted for her looks and that’s why she gets dragged to their hide-out. She meets the other members of the group there, Miwako and George. They are fashion designers and work under the label of Paradise Kiss. George takes a liking to Yukari and eventually they start going out. In the mean time, there’s the triangle between Arashi, Miwako and Yukari’s friend from school and childhood friend of Arashi and Miwako. George finishes the big contest at the end of the year as a runner-up, yet Yukari doesn’t feel satisfied. In the end, everyone takes their own path and Yukari is no longer lost.

Hm, what to say. It’s a fine drama and there’s also plenty of extravagant clothing in there, especially George… The character development is nice. Yukari starts off somewhat like a bitch and gradually softens as she starts as a model. Everything of that transformation gets undone when another woman is at the door, though. All the other characters get their time too, but unlike other stories, their stories don’t feel like a filler. Not a single person is really unneccessary.  Well, at least for their futures. The ending was really bittersweet, but expected. The animation killed me somewhat in one of the last episodes: it seemed to stagger and that was very annoying to look at. Except for that, everything was okay. The animation is especially more realistic, so there are a lot of real backgrounds. That isn’t weird if you know one of the other works of the author, like Nana. I do wonder one thing: why were there those surrealistic creatures in there… Perhaps for comic relief.  One bad thing: Yukari’s seiyu. You really could hear  that she wasn’t used to the job, as it almost sounded RO-BO-TIKU-DE-SU. Well,  it seems like ParaKiss isn’t a huge succes because of the seiyu, because most of them don’t have more than 5 jobs on their anime cv. Hrm. Well, that doesn’t make the anime suffer. It was a fine watch, because life never is perfect and that’s captured well with this anime (and manga).