A story about the everyday life and adventures, the “love” and “capitalism” of a girl who was born, raised and “normally” wrecked in a boring town called Tokyo
Kyoko Okazaki was one of the most influential mangaka of the late eighties, but sadly a traffic accident in 1996 left her unable to work. Specialising in slice of life, psychological driven stories, Pink is one of her most famous works. Written and published in 1989, at the height of the Japanese Bubble, Pink is the story of a 22 year old office lady who moonlights as a sex worker at night to be able to afford the meat with which she feeds her pet crocodile.
There’s more to Pink than this of course. As the opening sentence of Okazaki’s afterword reproduced above states, this is a story about love and capitalism, written at a time when Japan’s love for capitalism was at a fever pitch, just a short time before the bubble would burst. Yumi is representative of a generation of girls who came of age during the bubble and started their careers when it was still expected they would drop out in a few years to get married and have children. She actually comes from a rich family who still pay her rent. The only reason she has to have a job and work as a sex worker is to buy things and most of her money is actually spent on that pet crocodile. Which needs to be fed or it will feed on her.
In some ways Pink, especially with Okazaki’s art, reminds me more of 19902s alt-comix cartoonists like Julie Doucet, Seth or Chester Brown than ‘regular’ manga. This could’ve been published by Fantagraphics or Drawn & Quarterly in 1995 and not look out of place. Instead it only came out in English in 2013, from Vertical, a Kodansha subsidary. As a one volume manga it’s a quick but satisfying read. The only quibble I have with the edition is that the translator is nowhere credited.
I actually only got this manga today, having ordered it because LowercaseJai’s video analysis of it made it look interesting. Because I’m actually suffering from a nasty cold and barely able to string two sentences together, I thought I would embed the video to explain why this is such a good, interesting and important manga.
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