Fame, fortune, and beauty are the lusts of modern world. Pop culture has turned celebrities into shining icons to be idolized and strive to become. There is a social pressure for women in particular to maintain a standard of physical beauty, especially when they are in the limelight. And this can lead them to take drastic measures. So is the case of Liliko, the central character in Kyoko Okazaki's Helter Skelter, a horror story about beauty.

Liliko is the hottest model in Japan. Her career is booming, and she's everywhere, from movie appearances to talk shows and gossip tabloids. She's on the tip of everyone's tongue and treated like Japan's sweetheart. Her beauty seems too good to be real, and that's because it is. Liliko has gone through countless operations; her eye-balls, skeleton, and internal organs are all that remain from her original body. Regular operations are required to maintain her body, as well as copious amounts of drugs. In all respects, Liliko is a "plastic girl" manufactured to be a superstar. However, Liliko is painfully aware that her time in the limelight won't last forever, and has become resentful and self-destructive as her career begins to fade.

Helter Skelter examines celebrity culture with scathing cynicism, exposing the harsh reality and often grotesque nature of the pursuit of fame. Liliko's beauty is only skin-deep, behind her sweet public persona is highly volatile, unstable woman, who has almost no genuine personal relationships. Her "boyfriend" is a spoiled heir she plans on using as a meal ticket once her career fades, she treats her assistant with a twisted mixture of abuse and affection, and lets her boss (whom she calls Mama) run her life. Because of her profession, Liliko is obsessed with her appearances, having meltdowns whenever she notices the littlest imperfections. She's spiteful to anyone she feels might threaten her position, and resorts to sabotage and violence to eliminate competition. All this adds up to compelling portrait of a woman driven to madness and moral decay by her own thirst for fame, and society's fixation on celebrity.

It's tempting to simply to paint Helter Skelter as feminist tirade against celebrity culture, but this would not be doing the manga justice. Okazaki pens the story from a much more nuanced perspective; diving into the darker parts of femininity. Society's unrealistic standards of beauty puts monstrous pressure on Liliko, but she's a willing participant in this corrosive shallowness, making her just as monstrous. While is is implied that Liliko came from an unglamorous background, the story doesn't at all lionize her behavior or even attempt to milk the reader's sympathy. Instead, the focus is on the terrible person Liliko has become. The vitriolic hateful mess she allowed herself to become, implicating her just as much as the societal pressures that come with fame. It's this unflinchingly harsh honestly which Helter Skelter its unique power.

The manga is illustrated with Okazaki's idiosyncratic minimalism, and is a testament to its versatility. In Pink, an earlier Okazaki work, her art captured the flippant carelessness of the characters. Here, the art style is creates an inescapable artificiality which fits the story like a glove. A lot of emphasis is put on Liliko's manufactured beauty, and the loose detail of the art makes any standard of beauty feel fake. Yet, despite being minimal in detail, there are some truly haunting images in the manga, most notably Liliko's drug induced hallucinations late in the story. The only real drawback to the style is some designs look very similar, making it difficult to tell some side characters apart from one another. Also noteworthy is the accompanying illustrations of miserable looking nude women, which put society's obsession with sexualization in a darker context.

Helter Skelter is an relentlessly harsh examination of the shallowness of celebrity culture. It's an unflattering character piece of a woman so driven by wealth and beauty that she becomes nothing more than a decadent facade hiding a rotten core. It certainly isn't a comfortable read, but it's a visceral experience, and one which is well worth the read.