Nakamura Yoshiki - Skip Beat, vol. 12-13 (Eng. trans.)

[oyceter]

Hrm. I think I may stop keeping up with this series even nominally; shounen tropes just don't seem to work that well with me unless I'm intrinsically interested in the subject. (Yes, it's a shoujo series but the acting power-ups and exaggeration of competition is so shounen.)

Spoilers out-emote each other

I have to admit, Kyoko-in-chicken-suit listening to Ren will never not be funny.

How much older is Ren? I'm sort of glad he recognizes the skeeviness of being attracted to a high-school girl, as opposed to other manga heroes out there *cough*Moon Child*cough*.

Mostly, though, I'm a little bored by the whole jdrama subplot and how each of the actors is getting into their characters or not. Although it does make me want to watch the jdrama they're filming! (On second thought, maybe not, given that it involves a teacher/student romance.) And though I know the whole "Ren can't act romance" is totally a way to get him to act with Kyoko and acknowledge his hidden attraction for her, I'm not sure I entirely buy the premise, or how he expresses it through his acting. Particularly the piano playing bit! I laughed and laughed at that.

I am amused by all the out-thinking everyone is doing, which reminds me of Death Note, only less fraught—"He's thinking I'm going to react this way, so he's acting that way, but I will actually react this way!"

But overall, I'm not amused enough to keep going, sigh. Like I said, I think the shounen tropes don't interest me enough when I'm not into either the subject matter or the characters.

Comments

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I think Ren is supposed to be 20-22. Young enough that it'll be fine in a couple years, but old enough that right now, it's "OMG NO BAD!" territory. (Which seems to be how the mangaka approaches it, so it doesn't bother me where it would elsewhere. Now, if he starts aggressively pursueing her-like, say, the "hero" in I Hate You More Than Anyone-it'll be another story.)

I think when I posted on Vol 13, I was promised that we were moving past the "learning how to act your character" thing. Though I haven't read vol 14 yet, so I can't say for sure.

[oyceter]

Yeah, I think the age difference is less the problem and more of it is the division between high school and having a job.

[swanjun.livejournal.com]

I like this series a lot, but I agree that volume 13 was very, very silly. All of the reaction shots to the acting test were just ridiculous. Hopefully we will indeed be moving beyond that in the future, though I've not read volume 14 yet myself.

[oyceter]

*nods* I mean, I can also see how the exaggeration of the acting can be fun—I love the same tropes in food manga, where each dish is the new Best Thing Ever and each ingredient is rarer and more awesome than the last. But I guess it just doesn't work for me with acting because I'm pretty uninterested in actors in general in RL.