People in Japan have been enjoying Yazawa-Sensei's work for decades. Modern fashion always seems to have a huge influence on the plot and artwork of her manga series. There is a kitschy style to her artwork, with a lot of European 80's fashion influences. While many complain that her artwork style in Gokinjo Monogatari (the prequel of sorts for Paradise Kiss) is too funky, her art style has very obviously matured in her most recent series, Paradise Kiss and Nana. Her images are clean and often breath-taking in their complex beauty. The men are sexy, and the women are cute. In my person opinion, Paradise Kiss is most beautifully drawn manga I have ever read. Ai Yawaza currently has 5 well-known series: Gokinjo Monogatari (Neighborhood Story - a manga and anime series) [complete at 7 volumes], Nana [ongoing at 11 volumes], Kagen No Tsuki (Last Quarter) [complete at 3 volumes], Tenshi Nanka ja Nai (I'm Not an Angel) [complete at 8 volumes], and, of course, Paradise Kiss. She also has several single-volume books, and two older, harder-to-find series; Marine Blue no Kaze ni Dakarete (Embrace the Marine Blue Wind) [complete at 4 volumes] and Ballad Made Soba ni Ite (Until the Next Ballad) [complete at 2 volumes]

She's released three beautiful art books, one for Gokinjo Monogatari (Neighborhood Story), titled: "Welcome to the Gokinjo World", and one for Tenshi Nanka ja Nai Illustrations, and the most recently released "1st Illustrations" book for Nana. Two places online that will ship to the US where you can buy them new are mangaart.com (under "Art Books, etc.") and Sasuga Books (just do a search for Ai Yazawa) at what is essentially their retail price (you should be able to get them for under $25 each, new). Of course, you can always hunt for them used on eBay or at jpqueen.

ISBN4-08-855089-7
ISBN4-08-855096-X
ISBN4-08-782075-0

The Gokinjo Monogatari anime series is also one of my favorite anime series, you can buy fansubbed videos of it from Hitokiri's Fansub Haven.

If you're interested in other Gokinjo Monogatari items, you can buy the very difficult to find pencil boards from Manga Search! and occasionally jpqueen will have the used copies of the mangas (Sasuga Books has them new, but knowing Sasuga, they probably don't have them in stock, so you may have to wait a while).

There are plenty of other places to purchase Ai Yazawa manga series, I've just mentioned a few of the places which I prefer shopping from.

I scanned this picture of Ai Yazawa from the back of the Gokinjo Monogatari art book.

Ai Yazawa is a popular manga-ka that the US is only just now discovering. With her innovative designs and ultra-expressive characterization and expressions, Yazawa has been popular in Asia and in Europe since the creation of her previous title, Gokinjo Monogatari. Loosely set in the same world as Paradise Kiss, Gokinjo features some characters from Paradise Kiss. Paradise Kiss is currently one of the most popular shojo titles in Japan. Yazawa has worked on several other manga series, including Lunar Quarter and Tenshi Nankajanai.