In Clothes Called Fat

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It was reading that last one that made me realize why it is that, while I appreciate Anno’s work, I don’t love it. Noko appears to be living a great life, she's got a good job and a loving boyfriend, but beneath a thin veneer is a young woman who is struggling with her self-image and self-confidence as she fights to keep her weight down. Saranno subito coperti, la sera di rientro a casa, da un bel piatto di pastasciutta e qualche biscotto.

The analysis was spot on, mostly since I have never read her work before, and the art style sold me. Her sex life with her boyfriend, the bullying she experiences at work, her abortive attempts at self-control…all show that Noko is victimized by her own lack of self-confidence and hatred of her own appearance. Anno delves into the experience and mystery of Japan’s cultural fascination with beauty through the unsparing episodes the readers get from Noko’s life.Noko does have a boyfriend of eight years, and when her colleagues find out, Mayumi promptly seduces him, and the bullying Noko experiences at work escalates. I don’t read josei very often – which perhaps should change – but I discovered Okazaki Kyoko in college, and was completely into her short work, “River’s Edge”. Anno does a great job exploring the psychology of an addict, in this case a food addict, but it feels a lot more universal that that. I really think this start style, peppered with lots and lots of nudity I can't show, really reinforces the themes in the book.

She makes it clear that Noko's problems mostly stem from Noko's need to fill the emotional void in her life, be it with Sato, with food, or with weight loss. Furthermore, Noko’s weight loss is portrayed as a very sudden and extreme change, as though she somehow managed to drop the weight in a week’s time which leads to her own coworkers not recognizing her.It has clear influences from a great women’s manga creator, but also it’s obvious that Anno learned a lot and built on that knowledge, particularly when it comes to constructing the main character. It’s not an easy read mid-way through, and it’s just a difficult to work through, comprehend and finish. While it has its weaknesses, particularly in overall depth of characters, it still an engaging read that is difficult to put down. To Noko, being 5 pounds overweight means being miles away from happiness in her love life and in her work-place. Throw in a conspiracy theorist co-worker, a mysterious man who is a ‘chubby chaser’, a mysterious weight loss clinic and office politics and you have the story.

The movie was directed by Shinji Higuchi, who, like her husband Hideaki Anno, is a co-founder of Gainax. After all, no matter what he does, Noko has always taken him back, so he can continue to paint himself as a good guy instead of as the asshole he truly is. But we’re generally okay with this because, thinking people that we are,[2] we recognize that the intention of objectification is not to explore with ultimate depth and patience the full expression of the object of our objectification. She views fat people as weak and stupid, the perfect targets for her hate, and Noko is the most perfect target of all.The art style of this manga feels very quick and loose, similar to Erica Sakurazawa if you've ever picked up her work. It’s probable that no Philistine actually thought Dagon looked like a hybrid between a fish and a dude, but people need something to hold on to, a little prop to turn mere metaphor into something vaguely solid and believable. It's got that same sort of rough and brutally honest tone, which are used to highlight some of the bitter truths and hypocrisy that young women must face in the modern world. That is the central theme of the story – a pervasive dissatisfaction with life that most of us have, that we think will go away if we fix a few things. The fascinating difference between Clothes and Okazaki’s Helter Skelter is that while the story of Helter follows a model whose profession demanded the physical perfection of an ideal, the occupations of the characters in Clothes are much more ordinary.