DESIGNER デザイナー (1978 shojo manga)

DESIGNER デザイナー (1978 shojo manga)

When I was studying abroad in Kyoto last spring, I had the great pleasure to volunteer at the Kyoto International Manga Museum (MM) as an interpreter at the reception, as well as an assistant to the head archivist. Boasting a collection of more than 300k publications, MM is also home to hundreds of rare manga that are unavailable elsewhere, not even online. Every time I get off work, I would stay there for an hour or two to read, to make the most out of my privilege of being there for free (the tickets were quite pricey). I was particularly interested in early shojo manga, and among the works I got to read, Designer (デザイナー) by Yukari Ichijo left a lasting impression on me. As I finished reading Designer, my immediate reaction was: “this was the most melodramatic thing I’ve ever read.” Now, equipped with a further understanding of the term “melodrama,” I want to re-evaluate the elements that make Designer a melodramatic work, to validate my reaction at that time when I only had a vague idea regarding what “melodrama” means.

Desinger (1974) Volume 1 & 2, by Yukari Ichijo.

Yukari Ichijo (1949-) is considered one of the foundational shojo manga artists (along with Riyoko Ikeda mentioned in my previous blogpost) who set the standards and the techniques and visual style of shojo manga in the 70s and beyond. According to my mentor at MM, Yukari Ichijo is particularly known for her fashionable characters. Her drawing style is gorgeous, and she pours a lot of effort into the details in the setting, while shojo manga tends to omit realism in the background sometimes. Designer was my first contact with Yukari Ichijo, and I was immensely impressed by her stylish presentation of not only the plot but also the characters’ inner thoughts. This combination of detailed realism and emphasis on the characters’ emotions became the ideal foundation for a melodramatic story to take place.

Plot Summary

Ami is a young, gorgeous supermodel at the top of her game, yet she is shrouded in mystery - nobody knows anything about her family background, not even her last name. In fact, she is vengefully plotting to overtake her mother, Reika Otori, as the No.1 fashion designer in the country. Reika abandoned Ami at a young age and a lonely Ami had to go through tremendous hardship to get to where she is now. The two sometimes collaborate, but Reika is oblivious to the fact that Ami is her daughter.

Ami later met Toki, a young billionaire entrepreneur, and he sees great potential in Ami. Toki becomes Ami’s patron and hires top fashion designers from around the globe to assist her in defeating Reika. As Ami makes a widely successful debut with her first fashion show, Reika finally sees Ami as a real threat to her throne.

Meanwhile, Ami finds herself attracted to Aoishi, a middle-aged editor-in-chief of a fashion magazine who has a mature, passive outlook on the rigorous competition going on in the fashion world. Akira, a top photographer whom Ami always works with, confesses his feelings to her knowing that her heart lies elsewhere. Arisa, Ami’s only friend and an admirer of Akira, desperately offers her body up to Akira as a consolation. A rejected Akira emotionally gets sexually involved with Arisa, but he finally realizes how selfless Arisa is to him, and slowly nurtured sincere feelings towards her. The two bear a child.

As Ami is nearing the top, she confesses to Aoishi but is shocked to learn that he is actually her father - making him the ex-husband of the woman she hates - leaving Ami devastated. To make things worse, Ami gets caught in a car accident, further damaging her will to stay focused on her goal to overtake her mother. Toki, who develops affection towards Ami, helps her get back on track and the two, finding peace and happiness in each other, finally fall in love, and Ami is finally able to forgive her mother… ONLY to find out that they are actually twin siblings related by blood, while Toki is adopted by a billionaire. This piece of information led to Ami’s suicide, which sends Toki into a state of psychological impairment, causing him to forget everything about her. Reika, already defeated by Ami, moves to Paris to further her studies in fashion design alone, leaving the readers with a classic quote: “I was a designer before I was a woman.”(“女である前にデザイナーなのよ。”)

Designer and Melodrama

I don’t think I’ve ever felt this mentally exhausted after reading manga. I have read a few shojo manga by Riyoko Ikeda and I thought I had braced myself for the number of plot twists and women scheming to destroy each other’s lives, but I was still devastated by the ending of Designer. All that drama was packed into merely two volumes, and almost every single chapter contains a twist in one way or another. This excess of drama could have been comedic, but somehow Designer, along with some other early shojo manga I came across, was still able to initiate an emotional response from me.

Designer centers around a quite conventional mother-daughter rivalry, and the plot is made unpredictable and filled with hyperdramatic moments that shatter readers’ expectations. The extent of emotional intensity involved in each of these moments was extreme, and it is further accentuated by Yukari Ichijo’s pioneering illustration and formatting techniques that amplify the coverage of inner monologues and facial expressions. The beautifully written monologues are presented by repetitive panels that depict even small changes of a character’s facial expression and gestures, reminiscent to theatrical soliloquies. The melodramatic appeal to emotions is at work; overall, it was a very action-packed, plot-driven story, but it slows down when appropriate to leave ample room for the monologues to sink in, in order to grip the readers’ emotions, which also explains the popularity of shojo manga at the time.

While melodrama typically involves the clash of moral polarities or class struggle, Designer does not really provide a solid moral framework for the readers to determine who’s good or bad. It constantly reveals new information about characters’ relationships and motivations, prompting re-evaluations on the degree of sympathy towards each of the characters from time to time. For example, Reika is initially presented as a cold-hearted mother who will do anything to reach the top, but we as we gradually learn about the reasons behind her actions, we start to respect her as a woman who is willing to make the sacrifice it takes to perfect an art. In the end, the only villain in the story seems to be “fate.” The term fate/運命 is a frequenter in early shojo manga, as the characters always refer to: 1)how cruel fate is 2)how amazing fate is to bring two people together 3)how unpredictable fate is. The mentioning of fate elevates the tragedy of such plots since they emphasize the powerlessness of the precious characters against it, and romanticize their downfall, which deepens the appeal to our emotions.

Family, Gender, and Melodrama

Pertaining to our viewing of Mildred Pierce, Designer also brings to my mind the quote from Halperin’s “The Sexual Politics of Genre”: “A generational conflict, by contrast [to one of father-son], even at its most serious or passionate, cannot rise above the level of melodrama” (p.261). I did get this impression from Designer, especially since the rivalry among women is a well-established trope that is deemed melodramatic, campy, and soap opera-esque. The male characters in designer also directly address how “meaningless” female rivalry is, even Aoishi undermines Ami’s intense sentiment towards her mother/his ex-wife.

I found myself initially reading with the detached, ironic perspective Halperin mentions since I couldn’t really sympathize with Ami since she is too unattainable. She herself isn’t necessarily a likable character herself, and the intensity of her hatred to Reika, and Reika’s relentless determination to remain on the top were unrealistic enough for me to have the same dismissive reaction as the male characters. Halperin writes, “for so much excessive and hollow emotions requires justification, and no rational explanation is available to justify its hyperbolic extremes…you will have to assert [adequate justification] by force. Violence is required.” (p.267) This is exactly what Designer does: it involves a (planned) car crash, a fair amount of slapping, and suicide among other things. Although it didn’t take me long to abandon my detached perspective and become wholeheartedly invested into the story like the typical shojo manga reader I am, as the plot proceeds, the violence eventually explained that excess for me, and I was able to savor all the emotions Yukari Ichijo wants me to take in.