[Review] Skip Beat! Anime

Skip Beat is about a young girl named Mogami Kyoko who moves to Tokyo to be close to her crush, Sho, while he becomes a famous singer. She happily works several jobs to pay the rent for their nice apartment and even though he's out all the time and keeps all of his money for himself. As long as she's with Sho, she doesn't mind. But one night, when she stops by the recording studio to drop off his dinner, Kyoko overhears Sho telling his manager that he really only brought her with him so she could be his maid. In fact, if he had stayed in Kyoto, he would have had to marry Kyoko and watch her take over the family inn! Heartbroken, something in Kyoko snaps and her once pure self is gone. She confronts Sho and declares that she will get her revenge. Sho simply says that in order to get her revenge, she would have to beat him in show business.

And so Kyoko cuts and dyes her hair, moves in with the owners of one of the restaurants she works at, and quickly forces her way into LME, the agency that is famous for being in charge of Tsuruga Ren, Sho's biggest rival (it's one-sided). Having lost all ability to love, Kyoko is placed in the Love Me section where she slowly begins to discover her true talents, forget about Sho, and gradually begins to become close to Ren himself.


Skip Beat! is a series that is very close to my heart. It's none like I've ever seen before. Kyoko is like most anime heroines at the beginning; selfless, innocent, pure, polite, willing to sacrifice everything to just make the one she loves smile. But after the "transformation" she becomes one of the most interesting characters I've ever seen. She still retains a bit of her old self, more as the series goes on, but she also has her "grudge Kyokos", little demons that appear when she is angry or in the presence of great negative feelings. You begin to sympathize with her during her journey to heal her heart and be able to find her place in the world.

Tsuruga Ren is also intriguing. Voted Japan's most handsome bachelor, he can have anything in the world, including women. But he has never been able to truly fall in love because of Kyoko... They had met when they were children and he was immediately smitten with the little girl. So throughout the series he struggles with his growing love for Kyoko and his hesitance concerning their age differences; he's twenty and she's sixteen. Although his nosy manager, Yashiro-san, tells him that four years is nothing, Ren still can't allow himself to care for someone who is still in high school. (It will be interesting to see what he does when Kyoko graduates. ;D)

Although Sho disappears after the first chapter and only makes very brief appearances, he becomes a major character again later in the series. When Kyoko appears in one of his music videos, he is stunned to see how beautiful she looks (with the help of makeup and an angel costume) and everyone begins to wonder if his possessive feelings for her is just simply "she's my maid" or it's actually beginning to form into love...

So with two love interests, one of whom Kyoko hates, and the other Kyoko thought hated her (but later forms a friendship with) Kyoko tries to make her way into the acting world.


Okay! Enough for plot summary and stuff~



Subs for this anime have not yet been released, so I had to watch it without. Good thing I've read the manga so many times! ;D

The opening is not bad. I actually like the animation, but I'm not entirely fond of the song choice. I was hesitant at first; they showed Kyoko as her "old self" for the majority of the opening... Which I found odd, since she's only like that in the first episode. xD

The animation isn't bad. The hair looks a little odd. In the manga it's very soft-looking and relaxed; in the anime it's very spiky and stiff... But the animators do a very good job maintaining the artist's original style, although the guys aren't quite as close as the girls.... The manga has very distinct lines styles that give it its uniqueness, so maybe that's why it doesn't look right.

It's also weird with them actually having color. xD The Love Me uniforms are pink! Really, really pink! xD

So far, the anime follows the manga perfectly. The first episode was really like the entire first chapter put into one. The pacing was off at times (but that's compared to the manga) but it fit really well.


Overall, I am very pleased. The ending is great, too, though I don't like the weird ripply effect they used throughout... It hurt my eyes. xD

But I'll be following this series. Every.... Sunday, is it? =3