Words cannot describe how much I love Pink. It takes all your refined, inked, resplendent, and glamorous Shoujo Art and throws it out the window, then proceeds to feed the remains to its crocodile, all while stylishly donning on an Alexander McQueen fluffy crazy-suit and waltzing in the street like a cross-dresser out of a Harlem Ball.

Like any other Okazaki comic, the art is exactly what it needs to be, and nothing more, nor less. When its stylish, you know its stylish. When its comedic, you know its comedic. When its bitter, you know its bitter. I think Pink better exemplifies what Hayashida Q said of her own manga Dorohedoro, that its "a song with really dark lyrics, but a melody that's so happy that you want to dance to it".

Pink makes me actually want to be a Mangaka, because (like some of the comics of Sam Alden) it tells me that you can make something amazing without giving a shit about piling on detail like make-up. Of course whether you can actually know the line well enough to make it is a whole different matter. When I flipped through the whole book again I noticed one spot where the lines falter a bit (that is, when Keiko is crying but her eyes are a bit off), but only one spot. Everything that is necessary to be conveyed, is exactly conveyed. Yea you can tell Inio Asano, Charles Burns and Herge to screw off because Okazaki knows exactly where its at all the time.

You could also say that the story is, like most underground type works, one with a non-plot. A call-girl, her sister, her lover, her mother. And a crocodile. If I see anyone else try to analyze what Croc means, I'll tell them 'it means exactly what the hell it means', because that's what it means, a bloody ass crocodile. Pink taught me that its bloody awesome to own a crocodile, Capitalism be damned.

Pink tells you a lot of things. It tells you that even if you're a person in a soul-sucking office job, who also has to go down on sleazy old men for a living, its okay if you own a fucking crocodile. It tells you that you can be a novelist who is "deeper than Castaneda, funnier than the Tunnels, using larger fonts than Eimi Yamada, selling better than Jiro Akagawa, and televised more than Shizuko Natsuki". It tells you that talking about Toshio Shimao and Louis-Ferdinand Celine is boring because ""Zines, TV and comics do the job in our times". It tells you that "grown-ups are horny and dishonest and so damn complicated" so "being a kid rocks". It also tells you that apple pie is "so super-sweet and full of apples". It tells you all these things through its miniscule but vibrant cast, and half of the time its the lines that does the talking.

Existential Crisis and Tragedy be damned, you can go live on a tropical island.

Most importantly Pink shows you that being surrounded by nice things feels nice, because it can help you get through the times. Whether it clothes, or food, or a crocodile, or apple pie, or a novelist's dream, the main thing is whether it can help you get through the times, and then later help others to get through the times. Whether its plastic surgery, or a corpse, or binge eating and purging it all, or an abusive client who is good with his genitals, or a loser boyfriend, or just looking at the person you love, the main thing about all these things is whether they can help you get through the times. And Kyoko Okazaki doesn't want anything more.