Skip Beat! - Anime Review

Anime , Review    Comment   

I watched Skip Beat! awhile back...I think it was the week I watched five series, in fact. Great fun.

So anyway, in asking a friend which series I should review today, her choice was this one (note: it's because she loves it) and as such...well, here! Also, minor spoiler warning for the Question of Genre section.

Skip Beat! Anime Review

You know who is an asshole? Shoutarou Fuwa. In Skip Beat!, Kyouko Mogami is devoted to this popular star, not out of some weird girl-falling-in-love-with-boy-band thing, but because she's known him since they were kids, and when he moved to Tokyo to become a star, he asked her to go with him.

So, you know, she's in love with him and even though she doesn't see him much she does her best to take care of him. That changes when she goes to see him and overhears him talking to his manager about how she's basically a gullible little servant.

Instead of crying and being upset, Kyouko does what any natural teenage girl should do, she flies into an EPIC RAGE. Her goal is to hurt him. But of course, because he's so famous and popular, the only way she can really have an effect on him is to...well...match him in showbiz!

She refuses to take no for an answer at the agency opposing his (read: the agency that his biggest rival, Ren Tsuruga, works for) and finally gets an in.

From there we get rivalries, and vague romance and some triumphs and some failures, but it's all pretty entertaining to watch Skip Beat Crunchyroll.

The Characters: Skip Beat!

I sort of admired this cast. They weren't anything extraordinary, to be honest, especially when I was mentally comparing this series to the manga Honey Hunt the entire time, but I'll try to avoid that comparison here, since I doubt many people have read that. So anyway. It was a good cast.

Kyouko is a pretty interesting heroine in that really, she is in this for revenge and she is not fucking around. She wants to make Shou hurt in response to what he put her through. She wants to ruin his life, ruin his career. And she's not going to stop until she succeeds.

Still, you can watch her evolve over the series, while it may have started out all about revenge, it doesn't stay that way. She really gets into it, starts to care about what she's doing, and thoughts of Shou fall more or less by the wayside unless he's actually there, sharing her screen-time. Shoutarou? Oh, Shoutarou is a giant dickwad. Seriously.

Even after Kyouko tells him in no uncertain terms to fuck off (okay, she doesn't actually use those words) he still sees her as belonging to him, as something he can do whatever he wants to. It's a load of crap, and regarding men who need punched in the face, he is one of them. Also, women like this should be punched in the face. I'm not sexist.

We can even cut off Shoutarou's bits and proceed to punch him in the face that way, I don't really care, so long as the character gets punched in the face.

Then there's Ren Tsuruga, the other primary player in this little triangle. (Not love triangle by any means). He's not only Shou's biggest rival when it comes to showbiz (though only Shou sees it this way...Ren barely acknowledges the other star's existence), but he also starts getting into Kyouko.

Really, he doesn't like her at first because of her reasons for getting into the business. But as she starts to change, you can see his feelings for her start to change. It's nice when the main character isn't the only one developing.

With these three at the helm, Skip Beat! is a bumpy, all-too amusing ride. I definitely can't complain about the cast.

The Question of Genre: Skip Beat!

Okay, return to the genre list for a moment... Comedy? Check. Drama? Check. Shoujo? Double-check. Romance? ...Wait, what? All right, here is the issue with including romance on this list, person who created it (hint: it was not me).

Where's the romance? Sure, Ren develops feelings for Kyouko. You can not only see it happening, but he actually comes out and says it, and you get to watch him have an Intense Emotional Turmoil and shit going on because She's So Young and Also I Am So Old.

Really, not that big of an age difference, but Whatever Who Cares, This Is Anime and There Is No Such Thing as Pedophilia In Anime. Right? (Yes, I am enjoying my capital letters, if you were wondering).

So...okay, he's in love with her, and this is a romance anime, so he's obviously going to admit it to her by the end, right? Pfft, you thought! And by “you”, I actually mean “I”. I really assume that when I'm watching a romance series, there's going to be some romance by the end of it, but no.

Skip Beat! just wants you to think there will be some such thing. It doesn't actually happen. Sorry.

Conclusion?

Okay, I did want to make myself avoid the Honey Hunt comparison, but I can't help it, I was thinking about it by the end of the first episode! Honey Hunt is a manga series in Yura Onozuka does more or less what Kyouko does.

She's the child of two incredibly famous people, an actress mother and musician father, and they don't really acknowledge her existence. She's got her best friend / next door neighbor as her closest companion.

So then it turns out her parents are getting divorced because her father was caught in an affair, and oh, that best friend of hers? Yeah, he's been sleeping with the mother.

Great! Yura ends up on TV telling her parents to go to hell, but it doesn't hurt them, and she's told that to damage them, really, she'll have to beat them in show business. She decides to become an actress. Also, there is romance.

Similarities? Yeah, I would say so. I can say Honey Hunt does it better, that I felt a lot more connection with Yura than I did with Kyouko. But anyway. Both are great series.

If you're looking for manga, I say go for Honey Hunt and anime, Skip Beat! (there is a Skip Beat! manga, is why I point this out) and if you want actual romance, also go for Honey Hunt.

Now, if you want some nice, comedic stress-relief in the form of shoujo anime, go for it.

Watch Skip Beat!. I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

My rating: 6/10

It wasn't that great. I was mentally comparing it to Honey Hunt the whole time, thinking about how Honey Hunt was better, and really, this series would have gotten a better score if there had been something accomplished regarding romance.

I like romance in my romance anime.

Skip Beat!
Episodes	25
Genre	Comedy, Drama, Shoujo, Romance
Aired	October 6, 2008 to March 29, 2008
Directed by	Kiyoko Sayama
Producers	Hal Film Maker
Opening Theme	Dream Star by The Generous / Renaissance by The Generous
Closing Theme	Namida by 2BACKKA / Eien by Yuusaku Kiyama