Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Paradise Kiss – episode 10

January 17, 2006 on 9:34 pm | In Paradise Kiss | 2 Comments

“Rose”

Isabella finally gets to become slightly more than furniture, although showing her loveless childhood serves mainly to demonstrate that George was conceited even at ten; that, perhaps, he still hasn’t grown up.

On the day of the parade, George raids Isabella’s garden so that he may create blue roses. Yukari has nerves about walking like a model, and George is uttery, utterly a bastard about it. Meanwhile, Tokumori attends the festival with mixed feelings.

I appreciated the Isabella parts of this episode, as they showed the sort of guardian (the butler Sebastian) that accepts their ward’s right to freedom. Also on display as a result of Isabella’s choice is an entirely untitillating dressing room sequence.
Considering how “girly” Isabella is (to the point that one would not know she was a man were it not mentioned in the dialogue), it must have been tough for her to tell Yukari about her past and the difficulties of having been “born a boy”.

In this way we can see that Yukari has met some good people at Para Kiss, and Isabella concedes that George has a “magic” about him; a spell that he casts that makes people dance to his whims. Telling Yukari “It’s not your fault if you fail; it’s ours for choosing the wrong model” is enough to make my blood boil. George is entirely inconsistent and right here there is absolutely nothing to like about him.

Otherwise, this episode draws heavily on manga-style framing in its direction, with good effect for the Noriji story and wasted “romance” for George scenes. The Tokumori story would work much smoother if he had shown an interest before, but Noriji is a fine way of showing his motives.

I don’t much like anything about how this series hjas turned out, but I suppose that this is how life works. Just because something is accurate doesn’t mean I have to like it.