Sunday, January 22, 2012

Skip Beat!

Todays review is going to be a short one because I actually watched this anime months ago and just never got around to reviewing it. But I can still remember the important bits like whether or not I liked it and what it was about...mostly. For all you busy interwebbers who popped onto the site during a 15 minute smoke break my feelings toward the anime are summed up quite nicely in the following picture from Skip Beat! (what's with all these animes having exclamation marks in their titles anyway?). Most of the way through I felt like the guy on the right; relaxed and pleased. But then when the show ended I felt like the girl on the left; surprised, disgusted, frustrated and confused. To find out what went wrong we'll have synopsize the plot (is synopsize a real word? Don't know, don't care). 
*Needless to say there be spoilers ahead*


At the start the girl on the left is best friends with some jerkoff who's hoping to be a famous singer (or actor or something; it was never clear and time has not improved it). Now when I say "best friend" I mean it in the anime sense whereby they grew up together and she nurtures him as a motherly figure whilst harboring secret desires to marry him. Unfortunately for her the guy is well aware of this and instead of reciprocating said feelings he takes advantage of her and utilizes her like an unpaid maid. That is, until she overhears him carelessly affirming this to his manager. So she snaps and swears revenge, declaring that one day she will outshine him and use her possition of public adoration to crush him. And so the stage is set. Along the way she eventually gets signed up to a talent company and becomes something of a protege under the companies biggest star , who she had always unfoundedly hated because his popularity rivalled that of her now ex-best friend.

Phew well that was all hard to explain. Anyway, a sort of romantic mutual respect developes between the 2 pictured characters as the girl discovers a talent and love for acting that eventually replaces vengence as motivation. When she finally confronts her rival she manages to show that her passion has elevated her beyond his level and he starts to question his feelings for her. Then it's back to the romance plot for a few episodes and then bam! The end. Fuck you and thanks for watching.

It's actually quite forshadowing that the title has the word "skip" in it because that's exactly what the plot did, it skipped. It skipped right over the end like the budget evaporated and it left all the loose ends dangling depressingly in the cold, howling wind so that all our established good feelings towards the show can fashion them into a noose and hang themselves. Because lets not beat around the bush here, Skip Beat! is an anime for girls. Soppy old girly girls who've just been dumped and need something romantic to watch while they eat raw cookie dough and menstruate. But that said I was actually enjoying it. It wasn't fantastic but it was engaging and easy to watch alone in bed at the end of the day. But if you have an anime like this and slowly develope a romantic connection between 2 characters then you simply have to address it. It could end with a relationship, sex, marriage, mutual suicide, anything really just so long as the romance is fucking addressed and tied up in a conclusive package for us to take away. But Skip Beat! did not do this. Skip Beat! just stopped. I actually had to go online and check if I had all the episodes or whether there was going to be another season or a movie. But no, it was fucking over leaving me completely blueballed and wondering what I'd done to deserve this abandonment. But you know what Skip Beat? It's not me, it's you! Everything that happened was because of you. You took my heart for granted and then tossed me aside like a piece of trash, like I was nothing. You promised me the world and then you broke my fucking heart. But the joke's on you now Skip Beat! Because I'm going to post this blog and tell the whole world that you're nothing but a cock-teasing, heart-crushing whore!

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