Review: Skip Beat! vols 1-34 by Yoshiki Nakamura

A little more than a month ago, I toddled off to my local library and plucked SKIP BEAT! off the shelf. I’d never heard of it before, but it met my two important criteria for the comics I choose on a whim: it was the first volume in a series, and it was written and drawn by a woman¹.

It changed my entire world.

Those of you who follow me on Twitter have no doubt noticed my feels-laden tweets about it all. SKIP BEAT! quickly joined the likes of SAGA, BONE, and STRANGERS IN PARADISE as one of the comics; a lovely, rare occurrence, and something to gush about from the rooftops.

Which, fair warning, is what I’m about to do, at great length and with the occasional gif from the anime or elsewhere.

But perhaps you're clueless as to what SKIP BEAT is all about. Fear not! I can explain!

Sixteen-year-old Kyoko Mogami² follows her childhood friend and uber-crush, Sho, to Tokyo so she can help him on the road to stardom. She buys all his albums, stokes his ego by hanging his posters all over their apartment, and works two jobs so she can keep him in the manner to which he’s become accustomed (because heaven forbid Mr Big Singer Man should dip into his own pay cheque once in a while). Blinded by love, Kyoko is happy to accept a few scraps of affection from him--until she overhears his true opinion of her and realizes he’s been using her all along.

Enraged, Kyoko swears off love and vows to get revenge against Sho in his own sphere: showbiz!

Easy to say; hard to do. Kyoko soon realizes it’s tough to become famous, even if you’re willing to dress up in a chicken suit and/or join the number one talent agency’s deathly embarrassing Love Me Section, a group devoted to developing its members' loving instincts by assigning them odd jobs that let them give back to the showbiz community. Things only grow more awkward for her when she begins working with Ren Tsuruga, the agency’s top star, who takes acting very seriously and has nothing but disdain for someone with Kyoko’s motives.

The next thirty-four volumes are THE BEST THING EVER OMG.

They’re so very much THE BEST THING EVER OMG that right here, right now, for the first time in the history of the world, I’m going to write three reviews.

I think Lory, Kyoko’s boss, would be proud of me for such flamboyant excess, not to mention my deep and enduring love for all things SKIP BEAT!.

We shall begin, of course, with a Short, Gushy, Ungrammatical Review so’s you can get an at-a-glance idea of what SKIP BEAT is all about. From there, we’ll run through a List of Things You'll Find In SKIP BEAT in case you ain’t much for short, gushy, ungrammatical paragraphs. And finally, for the main event, I present to you a Sensical Review in which I gush for an ungodly number of words.

It is not for the faint of heart.

Review: Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

Endings mean everything.

*

Late in 1953, Boy Novak flees her abusive father for the comfort and beauty of Flax Hill, Massachusetts, a town of artists. Unused to family life but eager for it all the same, she marries Arturo Whitman, a widowed jeweler who comes complete with parents, siblings, and the main prize--a beautiful little daughter named Snow. Boy craves a daughter just as ardently as Snow craves a mother, but their relationship sours when Boy gives birth to brown-skinned Bird, who proves the Whitmans have spent the last few decades passing as white.

*

I was desperately in love with BOY, SNOW, BIRD by page fifteen.

If you've known me for any length of time, you'll recall how rarely that happens. I'm a suspicious reader. I withhold my love for as long as possible lest the book in question prove unworthy of it. It's a bitter thing, falling in love with a book that turns on you. The sense of betrayal runs so deep that I, for one, find it impossible to shake off even years after¹. It never goes away. It never really gets better.

BOY, SNOW, BIRD immediately reminded me of another book I loved just as intensely, and continue to love without regret: THE SECRET HISTORY by Donna Tartt. It's not that the two are anything alike, except insofar as they're about young people who lust after something outside their everyday experience--a common plot indeed. It's that they smell the same. They have the same underlying bouquet of competence and complexity and ultimate tragedy.

I loved the book all the more because I was sure Boy would know exactly what I meant if I said this to her.