Today, we bring you another series by a mangaka I'm very passionate about, Kyoko Okazaki. The phrase "voice of a generation" is used often and much like most words and expressions today, the meaning behind them has been lost... but there's really no better way to describe Okazaki, she was a major influence on a ton of people including the likes of Inio Asano, Akane Torikai, Kiriko Nananan or Moyocco Anno, the latter also serving s her assistant and if you read that and thought "Anno..?", well, yeah, she's his wife.
Now, obviously, I'm not saying that if you like one of the people she influenced you'll necessarily like Okazaki, right out the gate there's the art style which... isn't for everyone. I do believe that if you read a bit you'll get used to it to the point that you can't see her stories drawn in any other style, also, some people (especially fellow artists) swear by her style, and cite it as a major influence. And just so you know, her influence crossed over the big blue sea and there are a lot of western artist that cite her as a major influence, a random example would be Michel Fiffe if you've ever herd of him, he's got this Suicide Squad style pastiche comic called COPRA that he self published, I never read it but the fact that he self published it and, if you look it up, it's pretty successful, is an awesome thing! I did read Zegas from him but I didn't care much for it, I'll tell you this though, his art is fan-fucking-tastic, if you're looking for cool action packed stuff, maybe give Copra a shot. Spain has a really good culture when it comes to comics/manga. Me jelly. Anywho, back to her art style... it's loose and it's caricaturized, with chibi-like elements, the line work looks reckless but it all falls into place. Her stories are really good and to use another overused expression that people have been throwing around even for stuff that it doesn't apply to, her characters are three dimensional - they're never pure good or pure bad, there's always more nuance to them than simple shit like that, making a mistake doesn't atomically mean you've learned and learned not to make it, they're often people swept up by the consumerist culture, losing themselves in decadence but more often than not, they're fragile people with wants and desires and fears. In the 80s and 90s, she was published in a large number of different manga and fashion magazines and her stuff spoke to young people as it had a focus on glam, fashion, night life and all that comes with it, music and drugs and sadomasochism and homosexual relationships, prostitution, bullying, death, eating disorders, loneliness, celebrity worship and the unhealthy fascination with "the high life"... Her drawing style is pretty cutesy and that often clashes with the subject matter of the stories to create a wonderful combination... it's also really funny, her humor is on point and the drawings really make it work.
She actually made her debut in a hentai anthology iirc, or it's among her first gigs, either way, she lived fast and didn't stay in one place. She did gain a following from that though which begs the question... why were girls in the early 80s reading a hentai magazine? regardless, Moyocco Anno, Erica Sakurazawa or a new wave japanese singer called Jun Togawa were her "groupies" since then.
But despite all the influences, nobody can really capture what made Okazaki Okazaki, not to throw her under the bus, but Moyoco's In The Clothes Called Fat is a Kyoko Okazaki-esque manga except the characters are pretty two dimensional, it lacks the fashion and music culture that Okazaki has and she's afraid to really throw herself in the dirt, to really show the trashiness and the pain, the patheticness of the characters... even when they are presented at their lowest points, their pain is a lot more self pitying than the pure rock bottom patheticness that Okazaki shows her characters in, which in turn also shows a real sadness in their moments of pure meanness, though that's a fault with a lot of authors in any medium, when the characters are suffering, the author wants you to feel a certain way, and I never liked fiction that told you what to think. The concepts that she uses, like "the cameras that steal away my soul, little by little, with every snap" show her more sophisticated tasted in literature and music that combined with her wild girl life of partying in late night Tokyo clubs, creates a very unique work that's just hard to replicate unless you live that life yourself.
You should still read In The Clothes Called Fat though, it's not bad, just not great/amazing.
In english, only three of her manga are available, all fantastic: River's Edge which is fucking good but I think that if it's your first manga by her it can be a bit hard to get into for the first 2-3 chapters, Pink which was never scanlated but it was licensed by Vertical back when they were awesome (pre-Kodansha), you can find scans of it online though and it is a good entry point in her work, and Helter Skelter - considered her magnum opus, it was scanlated a long time ago and was also licensed by Vertical a bunch of years ago. Bit of a warning, if you want to own them, get them while you still can, if they go out of print you won't see a reprint, I actually thought Helter Skelter was out of print myself but I found it a few months ago and bought it so it sits nicely right alongside my copy of Pink. It would be best if you read River's Edge before Helter Skelter but it is not mandatory.
If you look her up, she was very energetic and full of life, even though she's amazing at capturing the feelings of suburban depression, disillusionment and the horror in that world of party and glam that hides underneath the bright lights.
Tokyo Girls Bravo is the story of a small time girl living in a lonely world... Sakae is moving from Sapporo to Tokyo and is excited to experience all the coolness that the city has to offer. Will it live up to her expectations? Will she fit in? TGB is a bit lighter than her other three manga available in english in that it doesn't have any morbid or overly provocative stuff in it, but it's very much a Kyoko Okazaki manga in terms of characters, presentation, and humor.
Sadly, her story does not have a happy ending, as life usually doesn't... In 1996, after completing Helter Skelter, she was hit by a drunk driver. She ended up in a coma for several months and since then has been wheelchair bound. I never did dig much beyond that, like for example, why did she never continue writing while finding other people to draw her stories, certainly she can't draw anymore because of the nerve damage but she could type up a script, right? thing is... the possibility that she was left with brain damage and has lived like that for 25 years is just something I would prefer not to have confirmed. It's not all tears though, her friends have not abandoned her and when they talk about her, they talk about her in the present and not about "what she was" but they talk about how she's doing now, couple of years ago they even took her to a concert to a band she really liked. Her work has also seen reprints in the last couple of years so she is certainly not forgotten in life and not forgotten in the realm of manga either. She was very prolific as a mangaka and four of her stories have been adapted to live action, Helter Skelter (2012, dir. Mika Ninagawa), River's Edge (2018, dir. Isao Yukisada), both of these are quite good but I recommend reading the manga first because that's the better version; there's also Chiwawa (2019, dir. Ken Ninomiya) this one was never scanlated or licensed so just watch the movie, it's really good; and also Georama Boy Panorama Girl (2020, dir. Natsuki Seta) which I have not watched yet but I plan to, hope it's good. It would've certainly been interesting to read some contemporary Okazaki manga considering the decadence and complete fall that society has seen since her accident. There's also still merch made nowadays based on her manga, like t-shirts and stuff.
I still remember her afterword at the end of Pink, to say so much in so few words... that little bit of text really speaks to me and it just perfectly captures what life is about, when she talks about her sister it's like... she just gets it. She knows what life is, with all the hardship and with all the ugliness, with all the hardship and with all the beautiful bright neon lights, she fully understands what it is.
All work is prostitution.
And believe me, the editing on this thing is incredible because we're using some old ass scans. Our beloved leader would like to make it known these are the worst raws he's had the displeasure of working with so a round of applause for him and radicalkiwi and also because on the typesetting we switch fonts and stuff, as said in the credits pages, that font used of certain words is because they're originally spoken in english and, well... when you translate it in english... it's all in english! but I wanted them to pop out because if spoken by these ja-po-knees people, they'd pop out, and we also kept it for foreign bands and stuff. "Heaven" is a japanese magazine so I decided against using the font because it's not "a foreign object" in the conversation. The speech bubbles are also pretty cramped so it's not an easy ts job at all. I'll be honest, I actually like the end result, the raws might be bad but post editing... these pages look good!
Tokyo Girls Bravo ch. 1Tokyo Girls Bravo ch. 2
I'll try to add a song for every chapter that I think would fit since Kyoko Okazaki has great taste in music, the trick is that I'll only use song released from 1990 onwards (the manga takes place in the late 80s but it started publication in 1993 so I'll meet them in the middle.) ; They'll capture a moment in the chapter.
Chapter 1
Every Breath You Take would've been good for ch2 but that's from '83 so...
Chapter 2
It has returned. And no, I am not talking about Tomoko Tonobe. Brace yourself so you don't start foaming at the mouth.
Saruchinesu ch. 41
And we're off ! Second volume starts here. Some really cool pages in this chapter from Kamui Fujiwara.
Unlucky Young Men ch. 16
