What I just Tried to Read: "Pink" Chapters 1 - 8 (Post is Mature)

Title: Pink
Artist: Kyoko Okazaki
ISBN:  978-1939130129
Publisher: Vertical

MATURE POST AHEAD



First Impressions:

Page 1 -- Naked Girl

Page 3 -- Naked Girl

Page 6 -- And then this happens

Uh-huh... another seinen manga that Vertical is trying to pass off as josei... I've have enough of this shit. I only got through chapter 8 before I had to put this trite crap down.

Breakdown

Artwork -- F: It's clear from the cover art and the color page that Okazaki can draw. Why she chooses to make the comic itself so ugly is beyond me. The main character looks like this most of the time:

Seriously...it's like Sailor Moon drawn worse than she already is. Is Okazaki even trying? But I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who will say this minimalist art style is masterful.  Yeah... whatever... It looks half-assed to me.

Presentation -- B-: The cover is art is nice and so is the color page and general feel of the book. I like the size of the book and paper has a nice weight to it. The translation is fluent, but uses very narrow slang that lasted 15-mins at most.  For example:

Uh... yeah...anyhow, the translation tries way too hard to be hip and youthful and it comes off as false.

Story -- F: I can only speak for the first 8 chapters because that's as far as I got.  That said, this is the story of a vapid slut-whore and a male-slut-boy-toy wannabe novelist. I can't identify a story here. It just seems to be stupid people doing stupid things mixed in with some random loveless f*cking. There's a crocodile. But that not as exciting as you would think.

Overall -- F: I can't recommend this manga to the general Crimson Flower audience. I'm sure there are people who love cynical loveless stuff like this. But this story is devoid of heart and purpose. And if this is truly "josei" then it represents the worse of it because it hates humanity in general. But if you hate humanity and yourself, and you love works that confirm your abysmal view of the world, go for it!

If there are readers out there who were able to read the entire volume, please comment on the rest of manga.  Does it get better? Does it eventually have a story?