Skip Beat 21
Posted: August 13, 2010 Filed under: Skip Beat Leave a comment »Yoshiki Nakamura – Viz – 2010 – 25+ volumes
After the last volume, full of all sorts of fun and girly stuff, the momentum slows way down this time, and the plot switches over to a story where Kyoko has a lot of problems. She starts shooting her new drama, but things get off on the wrong foot when she shows up late for the first reading, then things go even more south when she can’t act the part of a normal high school girl and hates being told to act the bully parts like Mio, since the character Natsu isn’t anywhere near that evil. Plus, the other actresses on set bully Kyoko, but this doesn’t really seem to get to her as much as the acting stuff.
Ren is consulted at several points, and there’s a great scene where he elaborates in a fantastic way on the present he gave Kyoko last volume, but for the most part, this is all about Kyoko semi-failing, not a common theme in Skip Beat.
Well, it sort of is, because you have to have a lot of this sort of story in order for Kyoko to triumph and bounce back. Which I suspect will happen next volume. But she is brought pretty low in this volume, and I think that it’s nice that Kyoko doesn’t succeed immediately every time. She also has to sit on failure for the entire volume here, and while it makes for some depressing reading, it does do wonders to make Kyoko seem like less of an innately gifted princess, since she’s working hard to fix her problems here.
I also liked that Natsu wasn’t a role that Kyoko liked, or was even good at. Mio wasn’t what she wanted to do either, but she was good at Mio. Not so much Natsu. Again, I’m sure that’ll change next volume, but it was still nice to see here.
And as depressing as this was, Kyoko herself stayed strangely positive, not seeing failure, but only looking for a chance to improve. All the retakes and ill opinions make her seek out advice from Ren, and make her really think about how to fix things. I also like that she’s absolutely immune to bullying. It’s not so much that she doesn’t care about the opinions of those around her, it’s just that she seems to know that they’re wrong.
Still awesome stuff, and still one of the most addictive shoujo series I’m reading. Even at its most depressing, this is still high on my list of positive, pick-me-up reads.
