Manga Review: Skip-Beat! Volumes 7-8-9 by Yoshiki Nakamura
Note: This review contains spoilers for previous volumes. If you are unfamiliar with the series, you may want to read earlier reviews instead.
Quick recap: Kyoko Mogami dropped out of school and moved to Tokyo to support her beloved Sho as he tried to break into show business. A couple of years later, the now rising star let slip that he has never liked Kyoko back, just using her as a free servant. Enraged, Kyoko has vowed to get revenge by defeating Sho at the one thing he truly cares about, public popularity.
Despite no training in the field or immediately obvious talent, Kyoko managed to get a internship at the LME talent agency, because she amused eccentric president Lory. Kyoko and another young woman with difficulties due to attitude, Moko, have been assigned to the “Love Me” section where they do humiliating chores in an effort to get noticed.
In the previous volume, Kyoko had been acting as a manager for prickly rising actor Ren Tsuruga while his regular manager is down with an illness. (He is secretly her childhood friend “Corn” but hasn’t filled her in on that.) He notes that her acting is getting better, and Kyoko admits that she’s been learning to act not so much for revenge, but because she actually enjoys it for herself. It’s really the first thing she’s done not because it would please someone else or she has to as part of supporting someone else.
Ren mentions that Kyoko doesn’t have to overdo studying for her high school entrance exam since she doesn’t actually need 100% in all subjects to get in. She realizes that she was hung up on that because she’d been trying to please her absentee mother, and relaxes a bit. She’s still giving her all to the manager role, though.
With a more relaxed attitude, Kyoko actually gets 100% on her entrance exam (it helps that the high school for entertainment majors she’s applying for isn’t academically rigorous.) She shows her uniform to the owners of the restaurant she lives over and works in when she’s not in other jobs. We then skip ahead a couple of months.
While Kyoko’s generally been enjoying her classes and learning a lot, she’s one of the few students who attends regularly, most of her classmates often being off on gigs. She’s not even sure they know her name. The big exception is an aspiring actress named Mimori Nanokura, nicknamed “Pochi.” (It roughly means “Spot” and is a dog name.) Mimori is a bit of a bully, and wants to enjoy teasing Kyoko over her lack of show biz work. Kyoko is used to way worse from elementary school with Sho when the other girls were jealous of her closeness to him, so this just rolls off her back. (And also she still has her weekly evening job wearing a chicken suit.)
The soft drink commercial Kyoko did with Moko is finally out, and people on the street are taking note of the more conventionally attractive Moko in it. Kyoko is dismissed as plainer and less “celebrity”. After that she meets up with Ren and his regular manager Mr. Yashiro. Ren has generally good things to say, but has stamped Kyoko’s workbook with a “100 points” stamp with a “-10 points” stamp because he couldn’t be assed to work out how to do a “90 points” stamp. He doesn’t quite understand why Kyoko takes this so hard.
But there’s a new job on the horizon. The “Love Me” girls are requested for a music promo video starring…Sho Fuwa! Moko’s already busy in a J-drama, so instead of her, Kyoko will be working with Pochi.
Sho is pretty sure this “Kyoko” is his Kyoko, despite her relative glow-up, and is prepared to crush her so that she won’t be able to get her promised revenge. But it’s possible that it’s a chance resemblance and Kyoko is a pretty common name. And initially Kyoko’s wearing her gaudy pink “Love Me” uniform and deliberately acts like an airheaded fangirl so he’s not sure.
Kyoko meets Sho’s producer Haruki Asami, who she’s surprised to learn is a woman (the name is usually male) and Sho is flirting with her as much as he does his female manager. When Pochi enters, Kyoko goes into fangirl mode again in an attempt to hide that they’ve already met and prevent Mimori from saying her family name.
The music video is about a devil (Sho) who sees two angels (Pochi and Kyoko), and falls in love with one of them. She reciprocates and is on the verge of falling from grace. The other angel kills the devil to protect her sister. There’s no dialogue of course, as Sho’s new single will be playing over this. When she learns the plot, Kyoko gladly volunteers to be the killer angel.
Mimori has a big crush on Sho, who is willing to be polite about it (especially as she has a nice rack) even though he prefers slightly older women. Unfortunately, the lunch box she’s prepared for Sho has one of his least favorite foods, one he can only tolerate with lots of salt, and Kyoko flicks him some salt, confirming her identity as naturally she’s the only one who knows this.
This causes a lot of stress on set, as it’s obvious that Sho and Kyoko have bad blood but neither is willing to explain the situation. Pochi is only slightly comforted by Kyoko insisting that she was never Sho’s girlfriend (she only thought she was) and Sho truthfully agreeing.
We also get a little clarification of Sho’s feelings. He did, in fact, think of her as a friend, and didn’t mean to hurt her, but in his self-centeredness didn’t think it was a problem to exploit her as a servant. (He didn’t realize that she was hiding her tears from him, and as long as she was smiling he thought all was good.) He’s got twinges of guilt but can’t acknowledge them or apologize, as that would mean he did something wrong.
Despite all this, and after a couple of bad takes, Kyoko makes a breakthrough in her acting and the music video is completed.
Next up is a short silly bit with Maria, Lory’s granddaughter. She convinces Kyoko that they should get Moko some kind of present as congratulations for landing a drama job. But then Kyoko realizes that she knows nothing about Moko’s preferences or what she might need. What kind of best friend is she?
This goes off the rails when Moko shows up looking extremely depressed and not even noticing the other two girls are there. She refuses to explain. Maria and Kyoko dress up as spies to follow Moko around, and are surprised to see her don two very different looks for two dates, one of which is with a man old enough to be her father. Surely not compensated dating?
That evening, when Kyoko is being a waitress at the restaurant, who should come in but Moko, sporting a third look, and with a third man who she calls “Father.” And she’s acting rather contemptuous towards him. Moko’s not happy when she realizes she’s in a restaurant where someone she knows works.
But the next day, she’s still not explaining what’s up. In a bad mood, Kyoko goes to walk it off. She’s suddenly yelled at by a small child who recognizes the Love Me uniform and therefore reasons that she must be Kanae Kotonami’s (Moko’s real name) partner. He’s unreasonably hostile.
This child is Hio Uesugi, a third-generation actor, one of the most famous grade-schoolers in the country, and a total nepo baby. He claims that Kanae injured him on the drama, and has threatened to use his family connections to destroy her, and anyone who dares side with her, that is, Kyoko.
As part of unraveling the problem, Moko is forced to reveal to Kyoko and Hio that she’s part of a large and poverty-stricken family that basically sponges off her because she’s the only one with both a steady income and good financial judgement. Those “dates” were emergency acting jobs for people who needed to be seen in public with a girlfriend or daughter, which Kanae took because she’d been suspended from the drama.
Hio realizes that he’s been a brat and welcomes Moko back to the job, though he still has a ways to go before he’s mature.
Time for a new plotline. Ren meets with Lory, who is concerned with the actor’s future. Ren’s a very good actor, yes, but he’s not good at conveying “love.” Part of this is because he’s never been “in love.” He’s dated plenty, but never felt an attachment to his partners. Up until now, Ren’s roles have not emphasized romance, so his other talents have sufficed. But because Ren’s now old enough and handsome enough to be a romantic lead, people are going to cast him as such, and Lory thinks he’s going to muff it.
Kyoko finally fills Moko in on the Sho situation. She also clears the air with Ren about what was going on with the music video.
Kyoko has been called up to be in a drama herself, a remake of a classic, “Tsukigomori”, that Ren will also be in. Lucky! But she hasn’t seen the original or read the novel it’s based on, so she’s just got that volume in her hand when she accidentally runs into the director, Mr. Ogata, a pale man who looks frail and weeps easily.
Our heroine is less thrilled when she learns that she’s been cast because Mr. Ogata saw the music video and felt that her “dark angel” was the perfect match for the role of Mio Hongo, the disfigured villainess of the romantic drama. (She’d only heard “rich young lady” and thought she’d be playing a much more ritzy role.) Ren’s been cast as the romantic lead, over Lory’s objections but since he knows that Kyoko’s also in the cast, Ren insisted.
Will Kyoko be able to endure a villain role? Can Ren express the emotion of love convincingly? What new characters will appear? Tune in next volume!
One thing that might not come across in my description is that this is a comedic shoujo romance manga. Yes, there’s all the melodrama you’d expect from the romance genre, but Kyoko’s overreactions and some of the other characters’ behavior when not in melodrama mode reveal that it’s supposed to be funny. Kyoko’s literal “inner demons” which sometimes become outer demons make a strong combat in these volumes after having been relatively quiet in 4-5-6.
The character art continues to be good, and there are some interesting costuming choices. Backgrounds tend to be vague or entirely missing, though.
There’s a lot of story left, as the manga is up to 49 volumes in the American edition and still running in Japan, so while there’s a bit of overall story progression in these volumes don’t expect any firm resolution of major plot points any time soon.
If you like your romantic heroines flawed in ways that are actual negative traits, this continues to be a fun series recommended to shoujo fans.
