Skip Beat!

Synopsis:

Devoting her entire life to supporting her childhood love, Kyoko Mogomi has done nothing but wait hand and foot on the man she thought she loved, Shotaro Fuwa or "Sho" as he likes to be called. But when Sho grows bored with his life he decides to leave for Tokyo to become an entertainer and asks Kyoko to go with him and she gleefully agrees not knowing what Sho really has in store for her. Upon their arrival, Sho begins to pursue his new career leaving Kyoko to work multiple jobs, rent an expensive apartment to fit his needs, not to mention cooking and cleaning, all to support Sho's rise to stardom as a musician living nothing of her life for herself. However, upon delivering lunch Sho at the studio he works in, Kyoko overhears Sho telling his manager that he's been using Kyoko as a live-in maid and stepping-stone for his rise to stardom. Instead of shedding any tears Kyoko bursts out in a fit of anger vowing revenge upon Sho, but not by physical harm but instead by entering showbusiness for herself and destroying his career.


Reviewer: Endosanity
Number of episodes watched: 25


Review:

Revenge, a dish best served cold. I love a good revenge story, one filled with hardships and complications to meet the ultimate end goal... to make your victem suffer and regret what they did to you with every fabric of their being. To me, Skip Beat started out so well and showed some serious potential. Only after a few episodes I also wanted to see Sho suffer as Kyoko was scary when pissed off, we're talking so scary that when she looks at the viewer you almost want to turn your eyes away from that accusing scorn. Unfortunately, about half way into the series, you start to realize the show started to move Kyoko away from her hatred fueled revenge plot to more of a trip of self discovery. I gotta say I was rather let down by the fact that this anime started to head off in a new direction as Kyoko starts to regain her compassion that was lost when Sho betrayed her. From here on in the show starts to become more of this realization of how Kyoko truly is underneath the surface but this isn't what I wanted, I wanted to see this naive girl turned cold-hearted bitch destroy a man's life... the man she once actually cared for. I wanted to see Kyoko push Sho down so hard the he has a complete mental collapse and decides to jump off the nearest bridge... but no. Instead, Kyoko starts to reflect on how her ulterior motive affects her showbiz career and those around her and everything turns into this personalized documentary of what goes on behind the camera and how there's more than what you're watching on-screen. With this change of events in the show, that look of death that Kyoko had in the beginning was gone no matter how much she scowled at the screen, the piercing gaze now only serves to remind you of that frighting girl you now probably miss from the beginning.

The animation is decent and I really liked Kyoko, when she was Hell bent on making Sho pay for wasting her life away. But as she grew soft, I lost interest, and it made it quite hard to continue watching. And on top of all this, Skip Beat is left with a bunch of loose ends and no real closure so that suggests a second season but I haven't heard anything and as it is... Skip Beat is rather hard to recommend. If this anime stuck to it's original roots... it would have been a different story.

Skip Beat (opening)

Recommendation: |Below Average|


Media Type: Crunchyroll free internet streaming
From: Crunchyroll
Spoken Languages: Japanese
Subtitles: English

Watch the entire series here: Skip Beat!


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