Skip Beat 15
Posted: November 13, 2008 Filed under: Skip Beat 12 Comments »Yes. There is very little that this series can do that would make me dislike it. I think it is my favorite high school-type shoujo series running right now. It is SO GOOD, and I literally finish every volume desperately wanting more.
This volume continues with the live shoot for Dark Moon. Reino is a really, really scary villain in the context of the series. Not so much… well, anywhere else, but he knows exactly how to press all of Kyoko’s buttons. Plus, he seems to be the only one that acknowledges the fact she’s got crazy grudge powers, which is pretty entertaining. Plus, he’s just terrifying since he seems to have some… er, skills of his own.
Sho continues to play a major role in this storyline. As big a jerk as he his, his role here is quite good. It’s hard to forget the fact he’s a bad person, though. As much as he seems to have turned around in this volume… well, I appreciate it, and I appreciate the trouble he gives Ren, too.
Ren’s towards the end. He and Kyoko continue to do cute stuff together and generally be a great couple. Ren doesn’t really do much in the volume since Reino and Sho steal the show, but he takes the show right back on the last page. I don’t know how this series does it, but that last page… it’ll kill me to see the outcome.
Best. Shoujo. Ever.
Sticking this here ‘cos I don’t know where else to put it, but I think you’d probably like Love*Com and High School Debut, too. They’re very different from Skip Beat!, but both are extremely high-quality shoujo.
Actually, I was thinking about starting Happy Hustle High, have you heard anything about that? I know it’s by the same author as Gaba Kawa, and I’ve heard that her series Wild Act is quite good.
Both Love*Com and High School Debut sound good, but both had some element in the plot description that was putting me off. For Love*Com, it was the fact that it was based on a style of Japanese comedy skit that I’m not very familiar with, and for High School Debut, I think it was… maybe just the set-up that sounds kind of like The Wallflower, which I heard starts to drag pretty quickly. It was reason enough for me not to pick up volume one of either of them, but I’ve got no problems going back if they’re actually very good.
I own Happy Hustle High, but I haven’t read it. I own Wild Act too. Terrible hoarder, me. :)
Re: Love*Com, it’s not entirely based on the comedy skit, but that does come into play some. Basically, the two leads insult each other sometimes and their classmates find it funny. Indeed, this aspect is my least favorite part of the story, but the rest of it is still quite compelling.
Re: High School Debut, I suppose it’s kind of like The Wallflower, only Haruna is not quite so hopeless. I really really like both the romantic leads, which is pretty rare. We see things from the boy’s perspective, too, and it’s very clear why these two would like each other and why they’re good together.
sorry, but i think that skip beat pulled a Peach Girl here and that’s not a compliment. why this beagle guy has been dragged into her life, why he cares so much to make himself the center of her hatred…it’s really just silly. there are good moments, but i think that the tension between sho and ren didn’t need this crazy, obsessed bad guy character, who has no real motive and a one track mind. he’s too one dimensional. while this volume had it’s moments…it was a major dissapointment for me.
Pulled a Peach Girl? You mean like with Kiley’s brother? Or Goro? Peach Girl started to go downhill for me after she chose Kiley 8 or so volumes in, it just felt like that was supposed to happen. But I didn’t like either Goro or Kiley’s Brother’s contributions to the series, either, they were both a little too hardcore for me.
I cheated a bit with Skip Beat, I think I reread all the volumes after I read 14, then read forward a bit. If you don’t mind a bit of a minor, vague spoiler… Reino doesn’t stick around very long, which I agree is a good thing. I sort of like what he did in this volume, but had he actually done anything else, or been around for any length of time, I think I would have been pretty upset seeing as how things between Ren and Kyoko are developing SO SLOWLY, and adding another love interest would have definitely been not cool. Especially a creepy, abusive guy like Reino.
yeah, i just think that peach girl, was believable at first…but then it just went crazy, sae becoming a model, her boyfriend, the gang rape attempts. it just lost control and it kept uping the crazy like a soap opera. i just don’t really think that there are musician’s like this reino guy in real life..i mean yeah sure it reawakens sho’s feelings for her…but he doesn’t deserve her!!! i mean, we’ve hated this guy for so long and all of a sudden they are trying to make me torn between ren and sho? no freaking way!! she is not Toru Honda! (btw i never read more than one volume of the peach girl manga, i bought the anime…and while it was horrible, it was entertaining because it was so ridiculous..and the unitentional humor was great too. such a silly show though…really)
i just feel like she’s setting this up for it to go on forever and ever, now that she’s set in place the possiblity for kyoko to forgive sho and confuse her feelings for ren, because she doesn’t think he could ever love her and the both refuse to take their relationship to that level because of a stupid reason that allows the author to never end the series and just dangle little carrots of their relationship infront of us because she knows, we will follow.
Yeah, it’s true, setting Ren back up as a romantic possibility is kind of bogus. I liked this series for having a girl that rejects a jerk, so having him come back into things bugs me quite a lot. I think I can tolerate it as long as it’s just Sho’s one-sided thing, but if Kyoko starts considering going back to him, that’s when I get angry. Reino’s kind of a non-contender in my head. You’re right, he’s not a good character… he’s too over-the-top. I do hope he leaves and never comes back.
You’re right about Peach Girl, too. The manga was addictive because things kept going more and more over the top (I like that in one of the first volumes she threatens to jump out a window unless Toji listens to her). I’m not sure how much of the story the anime covers, but if I remember right, I stopped reading when Sae blackmailed Toji into giving up Momo and Momo hooked up with Kiley. This would have been a great ending, except then the second half of the series is spent with Momo going between Toji and Kiley when minor misunderstandings keep throwing her from one to the other. It drove me crazy, especially after the beginning was so addictive.
i know! momo was so trusting in the begining, and then after she breaks up with toji the first time, she changes into this crazy-will-freak-at-anything-ho, it’s like, she doesn’t even need Sae to ruin her relationships anymore, she just does it on her own!
thanx for the spoiler about skip beat, it’s good to know that it will pass, it makes me dispise it less.
Ha, I should go back and read Peach Girl to see if it’s as good as I remember. The more I think about the second half, the more depressed I get, but I was totally addicted to it for a long time.
As much as I hate spoiling things (or even reading ahead), it would be a shame if you stopped reading Skip Beat because of a character who doesn’t stick around. I think he’ll be a problem for maybe one or two volumes, but he pretty much up and vanishes kind of abruptly after that.
Peach Girl drove me nuts for the few volumes that I read! I wanted to like it so much, but like ame said, it just kept on getting more and more ridiculous for such insidious reasons… I was just really irritated after a while. I put it down. ^^
I think ame has some valid points–I used to feel the same way about Reino. I really couldn’t help but feel that Nakamura, Skip Beat’s creator, used him as a cheat because he suddenly appears, messes around with Kyoko, becomes obsessed with her, and then blah, LOL, He’s gone!
Even though I *feel* like she totally cheated, the problem is that she’s actually still consistent with her storytelling. **SPOILER** Skip Beat! stories happen in arcs. For instance, Ruriko, Mimori and Momose are *all* characters that’ve had a “stint” on Skip Beat!. They appear, they have their moment of transformation, reveal something about the main characters, and kind of disappears. The only difference is, Reino is a guy and he happens to develop a weird obsession with Kyoko (which is also in *his* character, cuz he’s a freak ^^). But his appearance in the manga isn’t just to fall in love with Kyoko, it’s also to: (1) stir up Sho’s feelings for Kyoko, (2) reintroduce Sho as Kyoko’s prince and (3) reveal a little bit of Ren’s mysterious past. He essentially tells Kyoko not to trust Ren, but she ends up trusting and confiding in him even more!
I wouldn’t compare Skip Beat! to Peach Girl just yet =P Or, just because of Reino because, yes, he does disappear for a while, but the information that he leaves behind, is interesting enough to keep you wanting to know more about Ren. Just my two cents!
connie, you should get a forum!!
i’m far from quitting skip beat, i’ve invested too much in it already! and i need to see kyoko and ren hook up.
and i skipped over that spoiler- kind of!!! even though i’m itching to find out more….gosh. i just wish i had volume16 already…
I don’t think I have enough people that comment regularly enough to get a forum ^_^; This is sort of an unusually active comment thread.
I was a bit worried, but it’s hard to believe that anyone who’s followed the series for this long could drop it. It’s just SO addictive, and I don’t think I’ll be able to quit until Ren and Kyoko get together, either. I’m hoping it will get a little more concrete before too long, though.