Jan. 22nd, 2012

bluejeans07: (Chi's Sweet Home is with ME)
I'm not a huge fan of romantic, modern day shoujo manga, the characters and situations are always a bit outlandish to me, usually too far for me to suspend my disbelief. There's only so much I can take of girl and boy falling in love and getting into a relationship with hijinks, rivals, and way too many misunderstandings on their rocky road to Happily Ever After. But I wanted something fun and easy to listen to while I did some freelance, something that doesn't involve too much action that I wouldn't be too distracted from my work to study the way they set up the scenes, and yet interesting enough that I'd be entertained as I worked. And I currently have a free 30 day trial of Crunchy Roll, so I thought some anime would be do the trick. Weirdly, I was also in the mood for something set in high school, something with uniforms but wasn't moe or had girls with boobs bigger than their ginormous eyes. And I heard various things here and there about Skip Beat so I figured I'd check it out.

I'm now completely and utterly addicted to Skip Beat. And it's all the fault of their completely insane and likable heroine Kyoko Mogami. The setting is that Kyoko moves out with her boyfriend to Tokyo in order to help him to become a famous musician, but ends up being used in the process until he throws her away. This causes every single part of Kyoko to break and unleashes a side of her that she had carefully kept hidden: a selfish, psychotic side hell bent on getting revenge on him. Her rage is so intense that she pretty much can control it to choke other people, damage property, and just be FUCKING BADASS. And that rage only fuels her determination to become more famous idol than him, and she goes to some fairly extreme lengths to succeed (MORAL lengths of course). However, because of the way she is now, she is missing the key ingredient about being a celebrity: loving others and seeking the love of others in return, so the agency she is accepted to creates a new section called the LOVE ME section where she does VERY odd jobs and earns points toward making her debut. In the midst of this, she slowly discovers who she herself really is. After having lived a life where she only sought to please others, she ends up creating a new life for herself that makes her happy.

This series is ridiculous and full of INSANE characters (the president of the company in particular), but it's just so much fun and the heroine is someone that I can't help but relate to that I'm really, really enjoying it. And of course there is a handsome love interest, Ren Tsuruga, that's destined for Kyoko to get with, but his glasses wearing assistant, Yashiro is more my type. I don't really have that much of a service kink, but I do like characters who observe the main players in the game and tries to move them around himself (Kyouya from Ouran comes to mind here). What makes Yashiro even more endearing is that the two main characters are just SO INEPT about their feelings is that his clever schemes FAIL ALL THE TIME. It's hard to play the game with the pieces don't even work properly! XD

Anyway, Skip Beat. Completely unrealistic portrayal of the Japanese entertainment industry, but it's a very fun fantasy that have two main characters who are VERY anti-love but are very pro-goals and achievement! The heroine isn't lame, stupid, or inept, she does have very low self esteem but is slowly realizing just how awesome she is, and damn, she gets things done. The hero is... well, okay I'm not so into Ren, but the anime is only 25 episodes and only really hints at what his issues really are. And Yashiro is AWESOME! <3 The entire anime series is available for free on Crunchy Roll and the manga has been released by Viz Media for awhile now. I haven't read much of the manga but my local library has most of the series so I can't wait to start reading it! :D

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