For starters yes Im the odd one out here. I didnt like Paradise Kiss as much as I initially thought I would but I didnt exactly hate it either. In Summation: it has its problems and in the end I decided to give it 6/10. Which in my opinion is pretty fair. There WILL be spoilers in this review so beware Paradise kiss is about 18 year old Yukari Hayasaka whos a senior in high school and taking extra classes for the college entrance exam. She doesnt know what she wants to do with her life and is only doing so because of her uptight mother who always expected her to be the best student in her class and to be honest is a really bad mother. But oh how I wish that her mother was the only problem in this manga Yukari then cross paths with the Paradise Kiss crew a group of teenagers from a fashion school who were in desperate need of a model. Yukari is a lean tall and beautiful young lady so naturally shes a match. But here is where one of my major problems with the story begins: George. https://i.ur.com/W1tlSXR.png George is one of ParaKiss and probably is considered its leader. He is an excentric boy and quite frankly not at all a good hero for this story. Before meeting George Yukari was supposedly in love with Tokumorikun: https://i.ur.com/1gBjSVs.png Okay yeah CLEARLY the good choice is Tokumorikun. But Im getting ahead of myself here. ahem Only a few chapters in and suddenly shes all about George And okay this is a shoujo even though many consider it to be josei and theres a love triangle tag that I didnt check beforehand but thats on me but I kind of expect love triangles to... make sense? As in: I expected her to take a little longer to uh switch sides. I expected her to show more love towards Tokumori considering that she had a picture of him on her wallet. I wasnt expecting her first love to be so... shallow. But okay she immediately gets smitten by George and I was hoping that George would be a good person but... hes a terrible person. 0 emotional availability or responsability never calls her waits for her to call him ALWAYS unavailable for serious conversations and only really available when hes kissing/having sex with her OR dolling her up with his outfits and makeup. https://i.ur.com/Fz6sRqm.png The amount of times he makes her cry in this story is abysmal. The amount of times he does something to rectify that or even just say that hes sorry is literally ZERO. Hes a terrible person and a terrible boyfriend and Im nowhere near done with this review yet. Meanwhile Hiroyuki Tokumori is a hardworking student from the same class as Yukari. Hes honest hes reliable and hes... actually in love with one of Parakiss members his childhood friend Miwako: https://i.ur.com/h9tgkFT.png Whos actually been dating their childhood friend Arashi: https://i.ur.com/B5x8rZF.png And hey we got ourselves... a love sextuple?? I think thats the word. Its basically two love triangles but theyre interwoven together. And utterly unnecessary but ANYWAY. Those three were childhood friends and have had issues since then. Miwako has admitted to loving both of them but since Arashi gets insanely jealous she decided to stop talking to Hiroyuki altogether. Also mind you this stuff happened BEFORE THE EVENTS of Paradise Kiss I think this is better explained in Gokinjo Monogatari. As unhealthy as this is he complied with her wishes and we only find out through Yukari who arranged for a meeting of the two without them knowing. Upon finding out about his feelings for Miwako who became a very dear friend to Yukari I expected... drama. I expected a little bump on the road of their friendship but THANKFULLY this time I was happy to be wrong. Miwako stays strong with her choice of Arashi and even said that shed be happy for Yukari if she ended up with Tokimori. But. Yukari immediately deflects that by telling her she actually thinks shes in love with George. Sigh. And heres another problem I have with this manga: clearly since the beginning Ai Yazawa was planning for Yukari to end up with George. Tokumori was supposed to be a mentor just a good male friend. Which is a shame to me considering hed be a fantastic male lead but then the story gets worse. Out of NOWHERE Tokumori says hes in love with Yukari but by then she was already in a toxic relationship with George. Youd think this would make me happy but it didnt. Even though this story only has 48 chapters I think there should have been enough room for things to happen in a natural progression. The way that things happened in Paradise Kiss were way too fast with little to no time to develop its own characters let alone a satisfactory relationship between them. One chapter she likes Tokumori the next shes madly in love with George. One chapter shes in love with George the other she decides to tell him to fuck off then shes back to being on her knees begging for him again. We see Tokumori being a nice friend and being worried for Yukari but I dont think the little weve seen of him was enough for him to develop romantic feelings for her especially since he was hung up on Miwako for so so long. George is a dick to Yukari again but the next minute hes being a slightly decent person. Really I think the timing of Paradise Kiss was a huge mess and it got on the way of my enjoyment. Another perhaps minor complaint I have is with the 4th wall breaking. If it was fun and/or had any plot reason for that Id like it but... https://i.ur.com/tmMPMD1.png Instead of laughing at the times they break the 4th wall which are many I was unamused. And I think it got in the way of the flow of the chapter. Here I am trying to take this story seriously and suddenly the characters are acknowledging theyre only characters in a manga. And they just gloss over that fact like it was no big deal. Moving forward to other problematics theres Ai Yazawa trying to bring LGBT characters to the story but without further fleshing out them. Theyre... George and Isabella. https://i.ur.com/sqRMAMO.png George is Bissexual and at first that made me REALLY excited because 1 I hardly ever see bi characters in anime/manga or at least its handled poorly and 2 I happen to be bissexual myself. Sadly what we got was this: https://i.ur.com/1MM88Yf.png https://i.ur.com/C4VJkgl.png https://i.ur.com/5Lq3ftE.png https://i.ur.com/TBMqOj4.png This isnt flirtation this is harassment. Arashi is clearly uncomfortable but all these situations are played for laughs. Instead of laughing I was also uncomfortable. This is a caricature of what most straight people think being bissexual is like. And then theres Isabella. https://i.ur.com/ESgPPL1.png Shes a lovely trans woman who acts as the mother of the group. Too bad she barely shows up. https://i.ur.com/wmKFYIh.png Shes such an underused and underappreciated character. Whenever she shows up its always in the background and/or being nice rarely did we get more insights on her thoughts and her character. There was ONE flashback chapter with her but that was it. I cant help but think about the chapter amount. If only we got more chapters. If only Ai Yazawa knew how to properly manage those chapters. I know that Isabella is a supporting character its natural that she gets less screentime than the MCs but out of all the supporting cast shes the one with the very least amount of screentime. The only characters showing up less than her are the parents who naturally werent that important for the plot to start with. Theres also a hint of her maybe having feelings for George but I couldnt say for sure due to her being severely underdeveloped. Lastly Ill be complaining about the ending of the manga but itll be in a long spoiler bubble so dont worry. Overall I cant give this a worse rating because I did have some moments of fun while reading. And I did read worse things before lol trust me. But yes Paradise Kiss was a huge disappointment for me. Thank you if you read this review till the end :