Manga Maniac Cafe For the Geek in all of us

Title: Skip Beat! Vol 18

Author: Yoshiki Nakamura

Publisher: Viz

ISBN: 9781421525983

May Contain Spoilers

Kyoko’s battle of wills continues with Koo Hizuri, a Hollywood star with an ego the size of Japan.  He finds shortcomings in everything that she does, and treats her with an utter lack of respect.  When Koo insults Ren, Kyoko’s demons take offense.  Suddenly the tables are turned on Koo, and now he’s the one on the hot seat!

I love how Kyoko manages to win people over, despite being a total nutcase.  I mean, seriously, if I met this girl, I would turn and run screaming in the other direction.  She possesses a volatile temper, has little demons floating around her, and can put on such a convincing performance that a veteran actor is totally fooled by her.  You never know what she is going to do next, and that unpredictability makes her a little scary.

She also has the ability to turn on the charm, and even a celebrity isn’t immune to her wiles, but best of all, she doesn’t even know she’s doing it!  After a very rocky beginning, Koo can’t help but begin to admire her.  At first he was just using her to get at Ren, but when that doesn’t work, he gets sucked in by Kyoko’s charisma.  When she’s feeling down and out because she thinks that Sho’s star is pulling further ahead of her own, he immediately notices the change in her and challenges her to be a better actress.  This gives her something other than Sho’s skyrocketing popularity to think about it.

It’s driving me crazy that the history between Koo and Ren wasn’t explored in this volume.  Ren gets a bit of shock when he encounters Kyoko role-playing as Corn.  Though I enjoyed the encounter with Ren, Koo, and Kyoko (and the stuttering Yashiro), I did find that my interest was starting to wander the slightest bit during the middle of this volume.  I want more pages devoted to Ren and Kyoko, and less to meandering plot lines.

Grade: B-