zarusoba

We know the story of the plucky girl making it big in the glitzy world of showbiz. It's the story of Bridget Jones, Josie, the Pussycats, and even Hanna Montana. Skip Beat! puts a welcome spin on it, and it's not just the (fascinating) insight into the Japanese entertainment industry. The story is consistently compelling throughout, and the surreal imagery is inventive and keeps the tone light and humorous, even as its emotions are scathingly deep. While it's not beneath the show to humiliate the characters or make them look foolish, they are complex and principled, and the show has enough compassion togive them their dignity. The way it allows even its most prickly characters to learn and change feels natural, authentic and worthwhile. It's rare to see any show about anything from anywhere as concerned with human dignity as Skip Beat! is. Let's have a second season, already.

ggultra2764

Been quite a while since I last found a shoujo title that I genuinely enjoyed. Skip Beat focuses on the challenges faced by our lead Kyoko in trying to become a successful actress as she learns that she wants to get more out of it besides being a tool to get revenge on her jerk of an ex-boyfriend and popular musician, Sho Fuwa. Some have called the series as something of a Cinderella story and the description seems mostly accurate as we learn of Kyoko's tragic and impoverished back story and dealing with the ramifications of being abandoned by those close to her. The emotionalscars do affect her at the start of the series as she lacks the passion for wanting to enjoy acting at first as she only seen the profession as a means of seeking revenge on Sho. But as episodes progress, she does develop a genuine love for acting, sees it as something she feels motivated to excel in beyond her original goal of revenge and a number of episodes revolve around how Kyoko approaches a role she would be performing in. Beyond Kyoko, some other characters get focused on within the world of stardom as they come to connect with Kyoko and we learn of their own personal challenges they struggled through to get to the point where they were at within their careers. Tsuruga's character is given the more prominent focus in his interactions with Kyoko as he seemingly hates Kyoko's motivations for persuing an acting career at first, before the changes in her motivations lead him to start supporting her and developing feelings for her. The series does drop hints that Tsuruga may have a more tragic past than Kyoko and he may have known her for far longer than she thinks, but the series abruptly ends before more of these aspects to the storyline could be explored. This weakness appears to be due to the title's manga source material still being ongoing as of this review. Another issue I did find with the series at points came with its comedy. Scenes with it tend to pop up throughout a good part of the series, serving to either exaggerate on a conflict or emotional state affecting one of the characters or to lighten the mood following a rather serious development in the show's storyline. The title's comedic style was hit-or-miss for me as I had some moments where the humor focused on the former got me laughing, but others left me indifferent and usually had me feeling that they got in the way of the mood of serious scenes for the latter mentioned moments. Fortunately, the comedy does tone itself down as Kyoko's emotional state improves from adjusting positively to her new life as an actress and doesn't intrude too heavily upon later developments with her character and others. The visuals to the series are rather standard for a late 2000s anime in terms of detail and design for characters and scenery. Details are clean and bright color is used to go along with the show's upbeat mood, but this and the animation for Skip Beat don't particularly stick out. The same thing applies to the show's soundtrack as it does its part to complement scenes in the series that fit for their intended purpose, but have nothing too memorable with them. Gripes aside, Skip Beat is still one of the better shoujo titles I've seen recently as there hasn't been anything from the demographic that has seriously hooked me beyond a number of titles that came out during the late 1990s and early 2000s. The focus on Kyoko's growth as an actress is a compelling and enjoyable story worth seeing throughout Skip Beat's 25-episode run, alongside other characters in stardom who interact with her. If you're a shoujo anime fan, this is worth a definite look.