So Pretty / Very Rotten is a collection of comics and essays about lolita fashion written by Jane Mai and An Nguyen. The drawings are mediocre and the essay portions' typesetting is quite awful, some of the worst word spacing I've ever seen, to be honest. But the content itself was really good for what it was. I enjoyed it enough to blow through the book in a couple of hours.
Mai and Ngyuen's writing is not particularly noteworthy. The portions written by Novala Takemoto really emphasized a lack of a certain quality that makes Takemoto's writing really stand out. Well, we're relying on translation here, so maybe that's not actually true, and I'm just a fan of wacky Takemoto. But that's how it felt. But regardless, it was quite informative. There were a lot of things I didn't know or hadn't thought about, such as the distinction between shoujo, otome and utsukushii. How little about lolita fashion had been documented in its prime. The difference in attitudes towards lolita fashion between Japanese lolitas and the Western community. Materialism. Consumerism.
Perhaps dressing in lolita fashion is not the goal but just a step in the journey, whatever that might be. Actually, the book addressed leaving lolita or falling out of love with the obsession of buying and buying yet never being fulfilled several times. In this way, it is not something to feel ashamed about not wearing lolita out of this fear or concern...or emptiness. I think lolita tries to straddle the balance between "person" and "feeling," even if the effort is a little futile since lolita is, first of all, inherently a material thing.
Nothing about the art particularly stood out to me. The style was cute enough but some of it felt really tryhard. I liked a few of the short comics, but some of them tried to be a little too mysterious. I feel like there was supposed to be some kind of metaphor but it was just wasn't there. Or maybe some deeper context was needed to understand it. So the result felt artificial and surface level. Just about every comic could have been improved tenfold if it had either stuck to telling a cute lolita-inspired story or delivered on the promise of being at least somewhat mentally engaging. But other reviews told me as much so my expectations were not very high and I definitely enjoyed what I was given. Though, the written content could have easily stood on its own with a few of the higher quality illustrations sprinkled in if absolutely necessary.
Overall, I despite my gripes (the typesetting is just really ugly), I truly am happy to have read So Pretty / Very Rotten and even more happy that there were people out there to write it. I will probably even re-read it at some point. It's helped me come to terms with the fact that lolita as clothing may not be here forever, but it is the heart of the wearer that matters to begin with anyway.