Title: Helter Skelter: Fashion Unfriendly
Genre: Josei, Psychological
Publisher: Shodensha (JP), Vertical Inc (US)
Artist: Kyoko Okazaki
Serialized in: Feel Young!
Original Release Date: August 20, 2013
I couldn’t help but take a step back after the end of Helter Skelter to think about everything I had read. Now, I half expected that there would be a lot to chew on since it promoted this on the back cover, with it’s talk of a supermodel’s career after plastic surgery and what happens to her. But at first, it didn’t exactly hit me with all of the messages it was trying to say. Thankfully (or maybe not so), all of the events eventually come together, and it reveals what a number of celebrities over the course of history could have possibly gone through behind the scenes/what we actually see on the news. And that’s makes it a pretty memorable manga, even if the art style may leave some a bit disappointed.
Helter Skelter: Fashion Unfriendly tells the story of Liliko, a supermodel who’s the talk of Japan, and as gossip spreads, people want to look like her, mimic her, and wonder just who she really is…except Liliko is not who they think she is: she’s a ruthless, downright inconsiderate woman that has been remade thanks to plastic surgery. Thanks to her surgery however, her body consistently breaks down unless she takes her medications, and that produces reactions ranging from excruciating pain to constant sickness. While she attempts to take care of her body, she has to continue to try and gain popularity and not let the younger models steal her spotlight. Little does she know that she’s gotten herself involved in a medical scandal, and only the people trying to crack this case discover this fact for themselves.
I think I need to get some of the issues I have with the manga out of the way before I delve into what it does right. The first is the artwork. Now, Helter Skelter actually was published in Feel Young! magazine in Japan in 1995; but due to Ms. Okazaki getting hit by a drunk driver in 1996, it was finally released in tankouban format in 2003, so any possible corrections were not done, and that may contribute to some of the designs of the characters. It might have even been intentional, and I personally think it is. It still looks really unappealing, and in certain cases, it looks like it was done fairly lazily in certain pages. The other issue is I found it hard to connect with some of the characters for a good portion of the read. I could surely sympathize with the situations the characters were in, and they were not pretty (one example is Liliko’s continued badgering of her “manager”, Hada, and forcing her to attend to her every need. And I mean every need, and that even involves licking at one point). The problem is I mostly wished they’d grow a spine or something, as it got to the point of, “Yeah, it’s a job, but screw this!” This doesn’t really happen, and you can bet it didn’t make me happy.
The reason this will stand out to be one of the more memorable reads for me this year though is because of its subject matter, and how it handles it in a fashion that’s gonna be really hard to forget. This literally is a story about fame and celebrity culture, and how warped it’s become. It tells a story that we see from multiple perspectives: from Liliko’s perspective, to Hada’s perspective, to family’s perspective, and to close confidants’ perspectives. It leads and informs, and not in a manner that disrespects the reader or would force them to grow bored quickly. It gets hairy. It might even get a bit disgusting too. Then again, this is rated 18+.
Probably the one scene that pushed Helter Skelter from something that was just another manga to something that will stick out in my memory is her meeting with her little sister. Now, this manga has a lot of events that might stick out for you more, but I wanted to go with something that seems almost tame compared to everything else. But how tame is tame when Liliko didn’t even know she had a sister? How would this meeting even go in the first place? And who does Liliko drag with her to speak with her sister? But it revealed a lot: a lot about how information is hidden for mysterious (and maybe dumb) reasons, how it doesn’t take much to influence a person and how relevant a famous person is in influencing someone (we see this thrown about all the time in real life, how a celebrity/athlete is an influence for someone’s life), and how that might…that just might have been the only time Liliko could actually act…human. The layer of that conversation doesn’t seem important originally, but it eventually creeps its way in as the story moves on.
And that’s what makes this manga stand out: how everything eventually ties together and ends up solving itself in a smart and satisfying way. It’s not just Liliko’s surgery and her body breaking down we get to worry about: it’s worrying about the high costs and toll for those who also get the same treatment. And then from there, it’s how it ties together with Liliko’s worsening issues and a prosecutor determined to expose a clinic for its crimes. And then it goes back to how Liliko decides to go out. Again, you’re not going to find many heroes in Helter Skelter. But that’s ok. I didn’t expect that when reading this. And I don’t think I did. Instead, I found a carefully crafted work that it’s definitely worth buying however you can.
