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SKIP_BEAT
Nov 1, Dec 21, 2012
Rev: Oct 9, 2016
shoujo = (roughly) girl-stuff
"Skip Beat!", the
shoujo manga (and
anime) by Yoshiki This is about the 16 year old
Nakamura Kyoko's rise in the world of
"show-biz"-- initially motivated Yes, "show-biz":
by a desire to show-up her one wonders about
ex-boyfriend. the connotations
of the original
Japanese phrase.
Kyoko is actually a fairly complex
character-- burned and cynical,
and yet superstitious and credulous.
She's very mercurial,
switching between
cynical anger and She's energetic and disciplined,
naive superstitions but that almost goes without
in an instant... saying in shoujo fiction.
She's curiously ungrounded, (Everyone genki? Good!)
interested in charms and
curses, a believer in
fairies, and yet she's SUN_BLAST
not-unintelligent, and she's
certainly competent in many ways.
Everything in her life up to this point
revolves around an ex-boyfriend that
she wants nothing to do with, and so
when she looks inside herself she feels
hollow, there's nothing there except
the ex-boyfriend and related things.
She feels a need for self-reinvention,
and becomes an absolute genius of
self-reinvention: every new acting role There's a suggestion, but
she performs becomes an entirely new only a suggestion, that her
persona to the point where despite ungroundedness is the source
some major successes, no one can ever of her acting ability: she's
recognize her on the street. already loosely connected to
reality, always on the verge
of getting lost in daydreams.
The president of her agency
is of the opinion that she
needs to learn to want the
audience to love her...
So Kyoko becomes successful Clearly the president is
peforming "Evil Woman" roles, out-to-lunch in this area
where her job is to make the (and in many others), but
audience hate her. no one ever calls him on it.
Everything she touches seems to
become darker and more intense--
she has a deep well of resentment
and hatred to draw on.
But then she also
does a fine job in an
animal suit on a
variety show, playing
a chicken named "Bo". One cut above
a "banana job".
BETH_LISICK
One interesting angle on this
story: feminist or not?
At the outset, Kyoko is thoroughly
dominated by a man (at first in love, In worm-turned stories
then in hate), and that makes the you have to start with
story a little hard to get into. a worm: engaging the
reader is tough.
But one of the things the story is
about is Kyoko's struggle to get
past this: is she motivated solely In the way of pulp fiction,
by revenge, or is she learning to there's a strong undercurrent
like the work for it's own sake? of having this both ways:
Kyoko herself may rise above
Kyoko starts with mere revenge, but she *will*
almost nothing to have that revenge.
work with, but she
succeeds in bulling For example, Sho Fuwa leaves
her way into the her when he begins to become
LME agency, and famous... so she switches to
further doesn't Yeah, "the an even more famous male,
wait for the agency lame agency". Ren Tsuruga, Sho's hated
to promote her-- It's hard to competition. She does not,
she auditions for a tell if that however, *chase* after Ren
television was intentional. (for this, or any other
commercial on her reason), they're simply
own initiative. thrown together by the logic
of the situation. It's
This is the precise opposite purely accidental that this
of the usual passivity on drives Sho crazy-- and Kyoko
display in the traditional is too nice to gloat over it.
"romance novel".
PETTY_TRIUMPHS_CLEAN_HANDS
ROMANCE
And-- through a rather poorly
I've seen some remarks on handled coincidence-- it
the internet (from "the turns out that Ren and Kyoko
feministotaku") commenting met each other years ago,
that while (as usual) most when they were children: Ren
of the female characters realizes this, Kyoko remains
have bitchy, angry ignorant, as of volume 37 or so.
relationships with each
other, here at least, This sort of thing
they're (usually) fighting is perhaps the most
over acting roles rather "anti-feminist" thing
than men. about the story:
Kyoko is often clueless
None of the commentary I've seen about what's really
bothers to comment on the going on.
traditional issues the 70s
feminists used to obssess over: On the other hand,
there's a balancing
Kyoko is skilled in food prep element: Kyoko has a
(almost no men are), and her secret of her own.
deepest desire (save revenge)
is for cosmetics. SPOILERS
She impresses people with her She has a "secret identity"
ability to handle "difficult" as a chicken:
children.
She has a regular gig as
Kyoko is a virgin, a talk show mascot,
Ren is experienced. dressed in a chicken suit.
Backstage, Ren ends up
Men who are "just playboys" pouring his heart out to
are regarded as bad, but this chicken, and receives
if they don't play at all some romantic advice, all
they're not really men. the while remaining
Women, on the other hand... ignorant of the chicken's
true identity.
Many things about this story
are well-crafted, others are
a bit weak.
"Acting challenges" make up The author shows a fair
a lot of the plot: our amount of creativity in
heroine must find some way coming up with different
to understand and project a contexts for these
character (usually through challenges: auditions,
some form of method acting), rehersals, classroom
and often must improvise exercises... in a
some dialog and action to notable early case Kyoko
demonstrate the character: is pressed into service
as a sort of understudy
A story about the in order to scare some One wonders if
creative process. humility into a prima that's always
donna. an unstated
Do you stick to the purpose of
script, or try to look It's never stated in having an
beyond the script? Do so many words, but understudy:
you give the directors it's clear that much *You* can be
what they're asking of the their best replaced.
for, or do you try to acting work is never
give them what they shown to the public.
haven't thought to ask (Oct 9, 2016)
for?
Many of these acting
challenge scenes have an
impressive multi-layer
quality to them: there's the
The author does a really good job of script and actors
maintaining relatively *slow* progress improvising around the
on all fronts. This is not a plot script; so there's two or
where the heroine gets a break and three levels of story
a star is born: there's always logic... plus there's the
another hurdle, another job that audience reactions:
needs to be mastered: Kyoko's sometimes the play has
progress is quite rapid, but she's hidden personal significance
not an "overnight success". for the onlookers.
Similarly, there's little doubt where And then, there's
Kyoko and Ren's relationship is going, us: the things we
but both of them are so intellectually see happen in the
determined not to go there, so committed story-within-the-
to not getting into *any* relationship story resonate
that it crawls along in a one-step with other elements
forward one-step back dance that's we've seen...
not (usually) unbelievable.
(A recurrent issue is the
idea that the really good
The main characters reluctance actors can provoke the
to have sex, is necessary to: responses they're looking
for from other actors,
o keep things on edge, in sometimes pulling them out
an unresolved state where of people reluctant to
the plot can continue to play along: the actor also
progress (or almost progress). directs, and sometimes the
other actors resent being
o keep the lead character in a steered around.)
"pure" state: unconsummated
desire is cleaner.
(There is, incidentally, no attempt
at generating any tension about LANDING_PADS
*who* she will end up with.)
This looks like
genre convention:
MYSTERIOUS_GIRLFRIEND_X
The main character
remains a virgin, As I understand it, virginal
even after living teens have become somewhat And I wouldn't
with Sho Fuwa for rare in Japan of late, but try to tell
years. genre conventions and reality this to
are two different things. AKB48 fans.
Sleeping over without
doing it is actually AKB48
a common occurrence
throughout the story... HEADGROOVE
And scoping around through some other
shoujo manga ("Izaranura Na Kiss",
"Boys Over Flowers", "Fruits Basket"),
it begins to look like the defining
characteristic of the genre: it's all ("Skip Butt"?)
about provoking the envy of other
women without acutally having to do
the nasty.
As for the weaker elements...
The one that I find the worst
is the later handling of
Kyoko's "grudge demons":
These originate in the time-honored
comedic schtick of angel on one
shoulder and devil on the other, but as
time goes on the wimpy "angels" are
entirely replaced by devils; so there
are these swarms of "grudge demons"
that she emits when she's in a foul (When in a fowl
mood, all of them with miniature Kyoko mood, she becomes
faces. a chicken.)
They no doubt had fun drawing these
things, and any graphic method of
indicating internal emotional
states is obviously useful in
manga. There are a number of jokes
involving people almost being able
to sense these demons-- e.g. when
they come out, a character in the
background may comment "wow, it's
cold in here all of a sudden".
This business works, to my eye, when it's
ambiguous whether the grudge demons have
some physical existence...
But the author decides that they *literally* This psychic character, by
exist... she introduces a character with the way, is a *second*
powerful psychic abilities who can see them: visual kei performer in
he actually grabs one out of the air and addition to Sho Fuwa, and
keeps it caged. he looks almost exactly
like Sho: the psychic has
There's something about this that's hair longer in the back,
completely wrong. It's too late in but that's often obscured
the story to introduce fantastic by the high collars he
premises-- likes to wear.
Once you're committed to doing straight Every time they cut to one
fiction, you can't suddenly have of these visual kei dudes,
Superman step out of a phone booth. there's a "wait which one
is this?" moment.
This is *really* clumsy
character design.
Even without learning to
draw a different face,
it would not have been
difficult to work in
some more obvious
distinguishing features
like heavy eyeshadow
and a nose ring.
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