'Skip Beat' ~ beating my previous record

I should have learnt my lesson well - NO MORE watching animes based on ongoing manga. what am I doing again? without a second thought I gave a try to 'Skip Beat' believing that 1. a 2009 anime cannot be based on a manga that is still running in 2013, and 2. an average shoujo would not be able to capture my heart. oh, I was wrong - and I do not even know whether this is a good or a bad thing
I have surpassed myself. while in school and first years in university I used to watch no more than 3 episodes a day. then sometimes, when I had free time, I could watch up to 8-10, spending several hours near the screen. my biggest record was probably around 15 episodes, like it happened with 'Working', when I was both interested and free. well, I watched 21 episodes of 'Skip Beat' in one day, after watching the first 4 the day before.

plot and characters

to my surprise, though some achievements of Kyoko were a bit far-fetched, which made 'Skip Beat' look close to average shoujo about a heroine who, by her spirit, gains everyone's love and respect and overcomes all the obstacles, in general 'Skip Beat' is not THAT far from reality. yes, 'twas a bunch of miracles that the LME agency's boss felt interested in Kyoko, and that she learned many useful things while being brought up in Kyoto, etc. however, at least the number of such 'convenient' developments and their scale was not as great as I could expect

moreover, this is an incredibly wise move of the authors to make it so that Kyoko, fortunately, had no reverse harem around her, and even the number of girls who felt jealous of Kyoko because she received some special treatment from some guy was pretty tolerable

then, again, we do not have typical main characters here. Kyoko is not just a 'yooosh gambaru zo!' girl. I mean, she shows much more human feelings than a shoujo main heroine would. first of all, she is able to fall in love sincerely - unlike heroines who sway and cannot choose between their variants. next, Kyoko's condition was brilliantly portrayed when her love and dreams were crushed. her anger, despair, hatred etc. etc., her process of creating her new self are not momentary, her feelings remain through the whole series - while usually they die within a number of episodes and are never again revealed later. she does not try to make friends only because she loves everyone on this planet, but because she never had a female friend. she does not tenderly calm down a crying child, but says that no one comes to help only because a girl is in tears. when someone is unfair she feels hurt, and when someone picks a fight she responds. and of course, she cannot get rid of her desire of revenge easily. for me as a spectator, even if a characters behaves 'wrong' but is led by his strong feelings, 'tis better than if a character becomes a saint, but empty inside

now, we do not even have typical 'love interest' here. well, I could say the same for other characters. I could describe them for a long time, but to make it simple - they are human, though bizarre a bit
oh, and I have forgotten... 'Skip Beat' is funny! really funny. I did laugh a lot at the unexpected plot developments or some characters' lines, but you know... not every anime creating team can allow making SD, simplified faces like here ↓ and make fun while creating a shoujo series

though the characters are the way they are due to the original manga, this does not change the fact that watching 'Skip Beat' never left be bored. I love the LME's president with all his eccentricity

graphics
here I find only one problem. along with beautiful girls with long lashes

and wonderful backgrounds

I see this ↓

such type of men is usually a sign that the work belongs either to the genre that starts with the letter Y (or at least S-A, if you know what I am talking about), or at least determines a very certain direction - pleasing girls, which mainly means the work is shallow. I was truly happy to see the graphic style had nothing to do with the quality

seiyuus

however, I cannot ignore who is Ren's seiyuu - mr Konishi Katsuyuki. well I have already put up with it - Kosugi-san, Ono-D, Toriumi-san, and many other seiyuus with this type of voice are frequently participating either in hentai, or in yaoi/shounenai, or in both, and not in series I could acknowledge as good. 'tis time for me already to learn how to put up with this

the seiyuus I knew were only Miyano-san, Enomoto-san and Kawasumi-san. the others were new to me. and I was not even in the least disappointed. Inoue-san as the protagonist was simply great. I would probably also praise Hayamizu-san for her performance of Kotonami. too bad her list of works is not long

music

unfortunately, I am not able to say much about the background music - I do not remember it. however, OPEDs were good. opening songs were probably nothing outstanding, but still above average. first ending was a very nice hiphop song, and the second, though I did not like the song itself, contained pretty good lyrics fitting the anime's plot

conclusion

am I absolutely satisfied with 'Skip Beat', then? no, unfortunately I must say I am not. and the reason is not the 'and I believe that tomorrow will be better than today' ending. the reason is that the creators made this ending too abrupt which leaves an unfavourable impression. just 10 minutes before the end we see a hint on something important, and then it just ends... moreover, in manga the moment ending the anime was only a beginning, while in the anime we are just made to face the fact we will see nothing else. plus the fact that the 'standard' length is not 25 but 26 episodes. in other words, I cannot but thing the team of creators did not do their best. thought their 'not-best' is not-bad