#kyoko okazaki

[strangemonochromes]

Helter Skelter // Kyoko Okazaki

[patrickbatewoman]

Helter Skelter, Kyoko Okazaki, 2003

[animefeminist]

Coming of age as a queer teen in Okazaki Kyoko's River’s Edge

Content warning: discussion of historical homophobia, bullying, disordered eating

Spoilers for River’s Edge

On a chilly winter night, Wakakusa Haruna is led to a field of goldenrod near her highschool by her classmate, Yamada Ichiro. As a show of thanks and friendship after she rescued him from bullying, he promises to show her his “treasure.” The two teens trek through the tall grass until they reach this treasure: a dead body. 

This scene serves as the symbolic center to Okazaki Kyoko’s River’s Edge (1993-1994), where, despite its morbid and nihilistic undertones, the body is a source of connection and possible community between three young people all disenfranchised for their own reasons: “normal” and seemingly popular girl Haruna, closeted gay teenager Yamada, and their underclassmen, young model Yoshikawa Kozue. The body and the secret of its existence can be interpreted as a symbol of their outsiderness, and more specifically their queerness. Though this series is not primarily discussed as a queer manga, it does explore and reflect Japan’s “gay boom” in the early 1990s, both skewing and addressing contemporary media tropes. River’s Edge features a range of queer representations within its central cast, from frank depictions of closeted life and homophobia to more ambiguous depictions of attraction, making it a layered piece of LGBTQIA+ media and a powerful time capsule of the state of queer representation and queer life in Japan during this period. 

Read it at Anime Feminist!

[yonamatsuri]

[foolsparadise1986]

RIVER’S EDGE, Kyoko Okazaki/岡崎京子

[akolnoix]

you can't stop: move, move!! it's already begun

[mediaomnivore]

Interior images from Kyoko Okazaki’s Pink

[haveyoureadthismanga-poll]

[mangacapsaicin]

kyoko okazaki’s pink || 岡崎京子の『PINK』

[melonreads]

i left my bookstore!!!!! moved to another one so i could have a higher position - i’ll miss my old one so much :’( ofc i had to leave em with a big haul in hand

[strangemonochromes]

Helter Skelter // Kyoko Okazaki

[pink-evilette]

by kyoko okazaki ♡

[sindromesflorales]

Helter Skelter by Kyoko Okazaki

[linawu]

from Helter Skelter by Kyoko Okazaki

[kushanna]

Helter Skelter: Fashion Unfriendly | ヘルタースケルター

Kyoko Okazaki

[foolsparadise1986]

岡崎京子/桜沢エリカ - Kyoko Okazaki/Erika Sakurazawa

( Tokyo Dragon Road )

(via レトロな日本 - Olive No.170(1989) | Tokyo Dragon Road)