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Since now we can make reviews with spoilers, I'm not gonna hold myself back. I'm not going to edit the review I made for the manga so if you want a spoiler-free comment about this story just go and read it, then comeback here if you finish reading the manga to read what I really feel about the story. But before you go read any of the reviews, one thing: Don't trust at all what most people says about this story.

Now this is where the spoilers will begin:

This is not another cheap romance you can watch to feel pleased with eyecandy and fancy clothes and ... be all about shipping couples - even if they're canon. Yeah, this story have a friggin' lot of romance, but for me it is used more as a mean to tell the main character's story rather than for the sake of being a lovey-dovey, melodramatic story. To define what romance is in Paradise Kiss I could compare it to how friendship is treated in Stand By Me: Some people come into your life to stay, others don't, no matter how you feel about it. Then you grow up and they turn into some of the best memories you'll ever have.

I always saw Paradise Kiss as a coming-of-age story that had romance to help it happen rather than, as I said before, being a romance itself. Heck, the story is even narrated as the main character recalling how everything happened. This is why even when I read the manga when I was around 13yo I loved the ending, and now seeing it again, being nearly a 28yo, I still love it. Now I better understand the relationship between Yukari and George, but... You know, in real life no matter how much you want something, sometimes it won't happen. Today I can see their relationship working but still being a problematic one since both of them are extremely stubborn and don't want to lead the same kind of life. George (and the gang) helped Yukari to finally accept what she wanted to be and this is great, but... This is all.

And realism plays a great part in what make this story so damn good. Everything here feels so real, I can't put it into words. Story, characters, clothes, voice acting, songs... Everything. Not even the film could feel more real than the anime. If you read about the backstage of making this anime you'll see that they indeed aimed for realism. Speaking of this, this is a great anime if you're tired of animes that use any kind of career just to look cool, because here the character's careers are taken seriously.

The characters can make you frustrated and make you somehow identify with them at the same time because they're not one-dimensional and this is one of the major factors that make Paradise Kiss great. The crew of Paradise Kiss (this is the name of their atelier, hence the name of the story) is so different one from another that I can't help but love them all, because they feel like people you could meet in real life. Heck, even the characters that appears for only 2 minutes overall during its 12-episode run have personality. Also, congratulations for having one of the best trans characters not only in anime but in any kind of media.

The audio is amazing. Like I said before, when making this anime they aimed for realism which led to a voice acting different from most anime, including having a real-life model to voice Yukari and a real-life musician to voice Arashi. The soundtrack is great and while the opening and the ending songs don't have any thing to do one with another, both suits the story so well that I don't think that other songs would work here.

The visuals are nothing less than incredible. Sometimes you can feel that you're looking at a fashion magazine, and the character design brought the best of Yazawa's already famous pretty art style. Since this is an anime about fashion, it have a strong sense of aesthetics in everything, not only in clothes, and you'll feel like you're in 2005 even if you can't remember that time because you're too young or weren't even born yet. To be honest literally everything in this anime makes it a little time capsule.

If you want a great story with great characters and don't care about how dated the art and sound can be, Paradise Kiss is definetely a must-watch. But, if you're one of those die-hard fans of the original works that will complain about a character eating pizza in the anime instead of pancakes like in the original work, just don't watch Paradise Kiss at all. While they don't changed any thing important to the story, this is a great example of what an adaptation of anything should be like.

I'm a woman that likes a bit of fanservice and laughs a lot with dirty jokes. I loved "B-gata H-kei" and "Habanero-tan", I laughed at some jokes in "Golden Boy", but I thought about making a time machine and going back in time to slap me in the face and scream to myself to not watch "Gokujo."

I can't really understand if I was warned or not by other people's opinions. I mean, what do you do when half of a fandom this big loves fanservice and the other half absolutely despises it? The score also wasn't THAT low by MAL's standards, I mean, it's 6,17 ... but it's still a 6... Yes, I actually take the score system seriously when I'm making my lists, even though I know that 98% of the users of this site doesn't knows how to use it or use it to troll other users in a way or another.

It's not even that the jokes are very sexual, it's that they're very bad. You know when you were like 15 and was with a group of friends talking shit about being horny? It's like they made one of these conversations into an anime. It's just as bad as those sex comedies that are aired on late night television and are butchered by review sites. Yes, even though every episode is just 6-minutes long it is THAT bad. The problem is that its short duration was tricky for me. It's only 12~13 episodes and they lasted less than 10 minutes, I thought I could make it but at what cost? By the end of this series I felt like my IQ diminished to -1.

The animation was, of course, below average but still tolerable. The character design is good even though it's very average I guess?

The voice acting was... Interesting. The voices itself were between good and average, but about the acting... I swear the VAs were talking like they were thinking "I'm not being paid enough to do it but I still need my paycheck".

The songs are somewhat catchy but you can listen to them somewhere else and skip the suffering that is the anime itself.

If you want perverted girls doing perverted things just watch "B-gata H-kei" or read "Habanero-tan" instead.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

I'm not going to review Part III because I haven't watched it yet and to be honest I don't even know if I will someday.

> Part I

I can't see other way to start this review if not by saying that I will always wonder how it would have been if instead of an OVA this story were a full series like it was intented to be. Even if a reboot worked out, it's not the same thing.

[SPOILER]
Nowadays, a story where a whole society that lives in a world created by a computer without knowing anything discovers what is happening and needs to ... decide how to deal with this information may seem cliche, but at the time this story was created I don't know if this was an innovating idea, but for sure was an interesting one.

The story, while it have a pretty amount of fanservice of both the sexual and violent type, is well told. Sometimes it may pass as contradictory, but at least for me, it's not contradictory in the sense that it's badly written, but more like "what would you do if it happened to you?". The fact that it ends in a cliffhanger only makes this feeling stronger.
[SPOILER]

One thing I think is worth noting is that while Part I ends in a big cliffhanger, if this is not a problem for you, you can watch only Part I and forget the other parts exist. It may be because I'm still traumatized by Part II but I don't know, the choice is yours.

Since this is an OVA, the animation is well made, and having a character design by Haruhiko Mikimoto (the guy that made a lot of character designs in the 1980s, including for anime like Macross and Top wo Nerae!) only makes it way better. The direction is amazing too because it makes you get involved with the story from the first to the last second. You can feel that everyone that worked in this project really believed in what they were making.

The voice acting is good. The voices are the usual for an anime from the 1980s, but they're a bit refreshing when you're used to listen to the voice acting from the 1990s onwards.

The soundtrack is by far one of the strongest points of this OVA, that have as a trademark the classic "Senakagoshi ni Sentimental". Kumi Miyasato's singing voice is just way too perfect for this OVA. The songs are very strong and absurdly outdated – and I mean it like a compliment since I really love the sound of the 1980s. All the songs are good. "Kaze no Lullaby" is one of the songs that most perfectly personificates the feeling of loneliness, and "Samishikute Nemurenai" is good as an ending song.

Overall rating: 9,5

> Part II

Ah... Even though it's just one year apart from the Part I, the quality and feeling of everything – with the exception of the soundtrack – dropped or changed ghastly. To start with, if I'm not wrong, it wasn't produced by the same team, and the project only had a second part to end the main storyline.

Everything is exaggerated here. The fanservice, the product placement (that is even mocked in a brief break of the fourth wall lol), and the melodrama. Everything here is not the worst that are there, but it doesn't looks and feels like the first part at all. It feels like the people behind this OVA made it as an obligation to give the story a proper ending.

The character design used here is not my favorite type but I could get away with it if it wasn't for one little thing: the change in the character design is so dramatic that you literally can't recognize the returning characters.

Just like the change in the character design is dramatic, the change in the direction style is too. The story is not even that bad, but the direction have a heavy, unpleasing feeling. I literally paused it for some minutes because of how torturous was to watch it.

[SPOILER]
This style of direction is tetrical, and only makes the "end of humanity" scene, along with the dreadful song "Himitsu Ku-da-sa-i", more difficult to watch. I don't know, I don't like this kind of scene, but because of said reasons it felt haunting for me to watch it.

The final scene can be slightly unexpected, and this can be a good or bad thing... It depends on who's watching it. I liked it because it's almost a happy ending since the main characters end up alive, but after that second-to-last scene, I felt frustrated that they were alive, like, I know it was the "end of humanity" but since 1% of it survived couldn't y'all make it less distressing? I've had nightmares for three weeks because of that scene.
[SPOILER]

Apart from the story, the only real good thing about this OVA is the soundtrack. Even the vibes of the songs changed between Part I and Part II. "Himitsu Ku-da-sa-i" is not bad but I really don't feel like listening to this kind of song, but I really loved the ending song, "Lonely Sunset". Just like the first OVA, this song have the sound that was common at that time and it is, again, very well made. Since compared to the former song this is an upbeat song, it also makes you feel relieved that the OVA is over.

Sincerely, if the whole story were only this OVA, I would never recommend it to anyone, unless if said person likes depressing stories. But since it ends the story started in the first OVA, I feel obligated to recommend it for who wants to know what happens in the end.

Overall rating: 5

I can't start this review without an introduction because one of the easiest ways to describe this manga is by asking: Have you ever watched the 1957 musical film "Funny Face" and the 2006 film "The Devil Wears Prada"? Yes? Good. Now, try to imagine the plot of the former without all the songs & dance and mix it with the plot of the later. Then, you will be prepared to read Paradise Kiss.

If I idolized it by the first time I've read it? Yeah, sure. If I would idolize it if I've had read it today? I don't know.

The first time I've read it ... was when it was licencised in my country, back in c.2007. I managed to re-read it completely once, a long time ago, but I still remember vividly most of its story. I also watched the live action when it was released.

Why I was so fascinated by this manga when I've had read it by the first time...? It was because I was in that phase when we like everything we read and watch? It was because it is about fashion (something I always loved) and was created by someone who understands this subject? Because Yazawa had a beautiful character design and knew how to tell a story with characters and stories that you could meet anywhere in real life? Because it is realistic without being grotesque?

I made the last question be the last one on purpose, because this is what makes me keep on respecting this manga, no matter how frustrating it can get at times. This should even be the theme of this story, "frustration". Not something traumatizing and distressing, just... Frustrating.

Sure, the official theme is how you should face your and other people's taboos and live your life how you want to, even if it means having a career that most people considers to be eccentric or somehow strange. But another strong theme, related to the former, is how life can be frustrating because, for better or worse, it doesn't always ends up like you planned it to. Literally from the first to the last page this is shown by the author. This is why I don't like the live action - they changed what made this story good and believable, the only good thing about the film was the soundtrack.

But you know, saying a lot of times how this is a frustrating story doesn't mean this is a bad read. Of course it have its faults but at the end of the day this is a good story if you want something that can feel real without too much melodrama and strange situations.

This can be considered one of the most complicated anime that are there. Being a complicated and long story, this asks for a long review... Sorry.

The story of the anime and the manga are virtually the same, though the anime gives, what I think, a better ending for some characters. But watch the anime and some months later read a few chapters of the manga gave me a mood whiplash. While I like the things that Dezaki used to do, it's abysmal how the anime takes itself too seriously and the manga takes itself too lightly. The anime could also have been shorter and have ... less melodrama, and the manga could be longer and could have taken itself a little more seriously.

Regardless of these things, I think that that was the perfect timing to adapt this kind of story. It's impossible to imagine a serious anime like this in the 1970s, and even if it had a better atmosphere for it, I don't know if the 1980s were a good time to adapt it. But the early 1990s were simply perfect. It had the perfect atmosphere, and the fact that this decade had a 1960s and 1970s revival only helped it, even though the revivals happened some years later.

This anime have a paradox. Because of the amount of melodrama it have, it's almost tortuous to watch it until the end because of its high number of episodes. But on the other side, it is aesthetically so beautiful that I could watch it forever, it's easily one of the prettiest anime ever made. Only to begin with, the opening is 2-minutes long. Every scene in every episode is so detailed that I ask myself how many time it took to be made, and how they got permission and sponsorship to do it... Even more being the adaptation of a complicated manga released friggin 17 years earlier. It makes everything complicated because while you're probably going to feel like skipping some episodes, literally every single one is so beautiful that it also feels like a crime to skip even a single one of them.

Talking about the story... It's a shoujo, and worse, a 1970s shoujo ai. Expect literally every kind of tragedy possible. I can't even list them because it would be spoiler, ranging from light to heavy spoilers. So, really, almost every thing you can imagine happens in this anime, sometimes more than once. What is strange is, like in a lot of melodramas, while it is tiring and sometimes almost funny to watch so many tragedies happening, sometimes you think that everything (or almost everything) you're watching could happen in real life.

The voice acting is good, which means something coming from an anime where 4/5 of its cast is composed by girls. But one voice that caught my attention was Rei's voice, because it's not the kind of voice you would expect from a character like her and this is perfect, making her believable.

The soundtrack is beautiful, the opening being one of the most incredible and melancholics that I've ever watched, and the ending, while of course still melancholic, gives a lighter feeling.

Without any sarcasm or irony, this anime is for the strong ones. I've had started to watch it because when I'm feeling depressed I watch, read or listen to sad things to try to get ridden of these feelings. But I try to stop going after these things once the feelings are gone, so it made it almost impossible to finish this anime. So, I tried to binge watch the remaining episodes and honestly, after finishing it I think it was with no joke one of the worst ideas I've had in my 26 years of life (even though I've watched it when I was 24).

For the strong ones, even though this is an awfully slow series, I recommend it, because virtually everything else is well executed. For the not-so-strong ones, I would recommend listen to the soundtrack and go after some screencaps, gifs or anything among these lines.

Update 2022: So... I've finished reading the manga and if you're really interested in this story, please just watch the anime. Yes, it changes some elements of the story, but to make up for it the anime actually explains(!) or develops a lot of events that in the manga are just remarked by the characters or happens in a flash. The anime being so slow is a favour to this story that is so good but so rushed in its original form.