It’s summer again and subconsciously I have yet again submerged myself in shoujo, I swear to the gods it’s like one of those silent scream moments were you wake up one morning feeling like you have a hang over because you were up until 4 am watching ‘Skip Beat’ and then you trip over a pile of shoujo beat and you finally realise that you’ve officially crossed that line of femineity and are a female in both mind and body now. But never fear a week of hardcore horror, and panty flash filled shoen and I have finally become the same cynical b**ch you all know.

Ok so it’s not exactly to that extreme but I’ve been on holidays from work for nearly 2 weeks now and my friend went home to his family which left me with nothing but absolute boredom hence I’ve been reading ‘Paradise Kiss’, ‘Crimson Hero’ and ‘Skip Beat’, while also watching ‘Revolutionary Girl Utena’, ‘Skip Beat’ and ‘Paradise Kiss’. It was about this time last year that I got hooked on ‘NANA’ and when I started accepting that maybe love might exist in reality if it was the same as portrayed by Ren and Nana. Well I’ve gotten hooked on yet another Ai Yazawa series. I love ‘Paradise Kiss’ a thousands times more then ‘NANA’ but there are things that just really bug me about the series and yes it has to do with the subject of love *broken record* but honestly how can one person create such opposing types or stories?

George and Yukari are almost the opposite of what Ren and Nana are. George seems to constantly push his ideals onto Yukari he says he wants an independent women and doesn’t want her to always be complaining and accept responsibility for her actions. It’s obvious that all of this stems from his growing up with a highly dependent alcoholic mother who unintentionally and selfishly blames George for her life turning out the way it did. She tries to make it clear that she loves him and has no regrets but even so what she previously says without thinking has already influenced him. Yes he is an adult and relatively mature but no matter how old you are to have that sort of thing said to you will emotionally impact you. As a result of this George has created his own perception of the ideal women without taking into consideration reality and the pressure that he puts on Yukari.

Yukari is an 18-year-old girl who has never experienced love because she has lived her entire life trying to achieve the expectations of her parents. She has intentionally deprived herself from experiencing the natural life of a teenage girl. Therefore it is only expected that when she falls in love and actually receives attention from the other person for the first time that she would be relatively clumsy,
George doesn’t even seems to take this into consideration like he believes that she should be absolutely perfect from the start he leaves her absolutely no room for error acting contradictory and being selfish himself. He says to Yukari that she never calls him, yet he also doesn’t want a girl friend that always clings to him, he always uses her as an excuse to keep her at a distance. This is were you see how George himself is still extremely emotionally immature to the point that he constantly scolds Yukari for not living up to his expectations. He wants her to stay with him, he says that he loves her but at the same time he is trying to turn her into something that is contradictory to what he actually craves. Ultimate he is dependent on her but he doesn’t want her to be dependant on him. Making her always afraid that he will hate her because she can’t be exactly what he wants, ultimately portraying her weak side as she is almost like a dog wanting to please it’s mater rather then a women of independent thought, another exact contradiction to what she is attempting to achieve, basically she has transferred her craving for acceptance from her parents to George.
Ok so I know I’m all for breaking away from stereotypes and that the women shouldn’t always have to rely on the man and that not all women are weak and need a man to support them, but at the same time I think that the relationship should have a level of reliance from both parties that works in with both their expectations. Why is it that George wants her to be there for him when he wont do anything for her? Isn’t that ultimately the same as saying that she should only rely on him? It’s creating an imbalanced relationship where by the women still losses out because she has to live up to the male’s expectations while abandoning her own. That’s the difference between ‘NANA’ and ‘Paradise Kiss’, in ‘NANA’ yes Ren was dependant on Nana but he gave her freedom, he let her make her own choices and live her life, while at the same time letting her know that he needed her. I guess in a way that would make Nana come across as selfish because she did chose herself over Ren. But Ren accepted that he didn’t throw it back at her, he simply moved on. He never played the kind of mind games that George plays with Yukari. Things are straight and upfront.

I’ve only watched the first 7 and a half episodes of ‘Paradise Kiss’ but I guess the over all outcome or what I’m trying to say is that no matter how you look at it a love like Ren’s and Nana’s is entirely isolated to that series it can’t be repeated in either reality or fiction because that type of love doesn’t exist, there will always be a persons weakness and expectations that will ultimate ruin any level of purity, that is just the way things are. So it’s time to stop living in a fantasy world and just accept it.