With the suckness that  is this half of the 2nd season of Shugo Chara!, it’s good to know that there’s the awesomeness of skip beat to look forward to. The 2nd episode lived up to the expectations set up in the 1st episode and more.

I actually enjoyed the animated verison of this part of Skip Beat more then the manga verison. Then again, I wasn’t really a fan of this arc in the manga, and didn’t really become a rapid skip beat fangirl until the Ruriko arc.

Summery

Kyoko has moved in with the Darumaya owners. The Tashio is ignoring her though, because he doesn’t like that she got a makeover. Kyoko goes out waiting around for an acting scout to “discover her”. This random guy tries to sell her make up, which causes Kyoko to go nuts having a Shotaro flashback, scaring the guy away. She calms herself down and starts to race away on her bike. Meanwhile, Sho sneezes (because Kyoko was talking about him). His manager mentions it might be because Kyoko was talking bad about him, and that he should be wary of angry women. Sho counters that it’s impossible for her to make it in show business.

Kyoko goes to LME talent agency and tries to get an appointment with one of the department heads. Sawara walks by and decides to interview her. When he finds out that there’s no section of the agency he tries to kick her out. Ren comes along and asks what’s going on. Kyoko gets annoyed for a second and then remembers that now Ren is no longer her enemy since she now despises Sho. Ren hears that she wants to become famous without doing anything and helps Sawara to kick her out.

Kyoko sits outside the buliding all day to the surprise of both Sawara and Ren. At the end of the day, Sawara checks out the window to see that she has finally left. However, Kyoko was waiting for him behind a pole. She basically stalks him until he agrees to let her join the audition to become a LME Talento. Sawara is surprised by how calm she is when she hears about the audition.

As Kyoko is walking out of the office, she bumps into someone spilling her papers. The person turns out to be Ren. She gets angry at him for hinting that she wants to join show business for a frivolous reason, and tells him that she wants to get her revenge on Sho. (He has to look up who Sho is in his cell phone ^_^). He tells her that she shouldn’t believe “that guts are everything”. His expression makes Kyoko nervous. Later on in her room, she adds Ren to her hate list right after Sho, and dreams about how they will treat her when she becomes famous.

The next day, Kyoko goes to the LME audition. She is impressed with how beautiful the other applicants are, and despairs over her own chances. To calm herself down she starts to make Voodoo dolls. Another young woman comes into the audition waiting room with a little girl in tow. She is freaking out asking who’s kid it is. She sees Kyoko and throws the girl at her accusing her bring her child to the audition. Kyoko yells back that it isn’t her kid. The young woman says she knew that, but she was angry at Kyoko for doing something plain like sewing at audition and tells her to leave. The young woman leaves.  Kyoko gets over her shock,  and is about to throw some grudge demons the young woman’s way, when she sees the other auditioners, fussing over the little girl who’s crying. Kyoko pulls the kid’s cheeks and tells her that women and children can’t always get help by crying.

Sawara at the judges table, worries about what will happen if Kyoko doesn’t get in. All the auditioners go into the assembly hall. The only judge that isn’t there is the president of the agency, which worries Kyoko because Sawara told her he was the one she really had to impress to join LME. The president, Lory, suddenly appears with a whole fleet of dancers.

The auditions start. The most impressive person so far has been Kanae, the young woman who Kyoko met in the waiting room, with her ability to memorise an entire script. Kyoko, however made a bad first impression by saying she wanted to join LME “to catch up to Sho Fuwa”, which made the judges and auditioners believe she was a star chaser. Lory is the only person that thinks she might want to catch up to Sho for another reason.

Ren asks Yashiro if he knows how the audition are going. Yashiro is surprised because he never cared about the auditions before now. Ren wonders how Kyoko is doing…

Kyoko prepares to go on, with her talent of..vegetable peeling which surprises everyone in the assembly hall.

Thoughts

They had a panel in the manga, showing Sho throwing away Kyoko like a used tissue, but it wasn’t as big a deal as the anime made it. Cool.

Aww. Don’t worry Kyoko, Tashio will get over it soon. He’s a big softie, on the inside really.

Heh. Going back and forth trying to get people to notice her. Only in Kyoko’s mind would this plan work. ^_^

The make up obsession returns!  Fuyu Maiden  mentioned in her blog post of the first episode of Skip Beat! that she couldn’t understand Kyoko’s make up obsession. It’s probably because a) Kyoko’s a girly girl at heart, and b) she wants because she’s never been able to afford it.

More Sho demons? They only really show up in the first chapter of the Skip Beat! manga, but I don’t really have a problem with Hal Maker adding them in, as long as they remember to have Kyoko’s grudge demons there too.

Heh. I love Kyoko. Where does she even keep that bat? lol at how freaked out the salesperson is too.

Only Kyoko would not care about how many people thinks she’s weird. She just keeps on doing what she does. It’s one of the things that makes her awesome.

Silly girl. Being honest is important, but sometimes it doesn’t help your cause. Her life would’ve been so much easier if she had just said she wanted to be a Talento, but then there wouldn’t be any story I guess.

When the ladies get excited, and Kyoko looks like she’s going to have a headache, you know…

..Ren is in the building. ^_^ This his first real appearance in the anime, since he really didn’t get to do anything last week.

It takes her so long to remember that Ren is no longer her enemy. I never really noticed Kyoko’s slow reactions to situations in the manga, but now that I think about things like this happen a lot.

I often wonder how Ren managed to get Kyoko out of the buliding without her noticing. Does he have magic? It’s probably just his bishieness, which can memorise even Kyoko.

Kyoko shows off her extreme determination that stops her from quiting long after everyone else would’ve given up. She deserves to win the stubborn anime girl awards. (Even more then the stubbornness trio from Shugo Chara!).

Ah. He’s already thinking about her even though they just met. And so the great romance begins!

Poor Sawara. Thinking he’s nice and safe…..

..when nothing could be farther from the truth.

It’s scenes like this that remind you of the scarier side of Kyoko’s determined spirit. But hey it worked, and it was as amusing as hell to watch.

I take back everything I said about Kyoko not being cute for awhile, after the 1st episode. She’s still cute, and not even Shotaro could change that.

Sawara’s over the top hand gestures made me laugh. Another thing that really couldn’t be communicated in the manga that works in the anime.

Sawara should know by now that Kyoko isn’t an ordinary girl. A girl who chases after taxis, and manages to catch up to them, isn’t going to be intimidated by a little audition.

Heh. Ren. He can convey his low expectations of her, just by a small shake of his head and a sigh. There relationship early on in the series, is completely different from the point it is at now in the manga.

I love how the angrier she gets, the closer she gets to Ren.

Heh. Showould be crushed if he found out about this Good. Note to anime only viewers: Ren looks up stuff he doesn’t know about on his cell phone a lot in the series.

Poor Kyoko.  Old habits die hard don’t they? I don’t think anyone blames her though.

 I wish they had him smirk when he said it, like in the manga.

And they should have made him look scarier here. I mean he was freaking terrifying in the manga. Here he just looks minorly irked.

It’s still enough to scare the girl who’s not afraid of anything though, so I guess it’s all good.

Classic Ren. Intimidate or trick Kyoko, then smile gentlemanly and walk away as if nothing happened.

Loved the mini Ren on her shoulder. (More anime orignal goodness). ^_^

Kyoko’s first crazy fantasy. They really expanded on it from the manga too.

Laughing all night, is not a nice thing to do to the people who let you stay in their home rent free.

Ah. The birth of a running joke. I can’t wait until they show the ones she made of Ren and Sho for the first time.

The entrance of Kyoko’s gal pals. When I first saw Kanae and Maria in the manga, I didn’t like them. I believe my exact thoughts were, “an annoying loli, and a Madoka from Full Moon copy. Just perfect.” , but when they were reintroduced in the training school arc, I liked them better.

Proving that words hurt more then physical violence. ^_^

I love how she doesn’t make exceptions for children. (Side note: red seems to be Kyoko’s default background color.)

Poor Sawara. He’s a normal person, who has to deal with so many eccentrics every day.

..Especially Lory, who’s probably the most eccentric person at LME.

Yep. When someone makes Kyoko go “Wth?” you know they’re really strange.

Kanae’s mad acting skills are shown for the first time. I can’t really feel them though. Maybe next week when they do the reaction test, it will show more.

..Sigh. Only Kyoko would say something like this without realizing the immediate conclusion most people would jump to. Oh well, that side of her personality allows her to see solutions to her problems that other people wouldn’t.

And hey at least she has one supporter. I guess one strange person can understand another.

I was hoping they’d get through the auditions this week, but was also kind of expecting that they’d stop here. Kyoko’s pose is win though.

Preview

The auditions and their aftermath, as well as Kyoko’s roots. Plus the introduction of Corn. ^_^