Drama Review: Skip Beat!

Happy Friday! I can't believe it's already another weekend tomorrow. I'm so excited! Anyway, I mentioned before that I love weekends because I watch some dramas, right? Well, I decided to introduce you to one of the drama that I follow right now, it's called Skip Beat or Extravagant Challenge.

Skip Beat is an on-going Japanese shojo (Shojo means it's a story about a young girl's life) manga written by Yoshiki Nakamura that was first released in 2002. The story revolves around a 16-year-old girl named Kyoko Mogami and how she developed into a great actress as a result of a broken heart. The story started when Kyoko discovered that the only reason her childhood sweetheart, Sho Fuwa, brought her with him in the city is for her to become a personal maid and to provide money for food and rent while he climbs the ladder of becoming a singer. Heartbroken, she vowed to become a great star herself so that she can overshadow Sho in the entertainment industry as a form of her revenge.

I don't know when it will end but I love following the story of Kyoko and I specifically love the way the characters are drawn. It's very pleasing to the eye and perfect for my type of anime drawing. It is similar with Fushigi Yuugi. I love the angles they create =)

For those who also wanted to read the manga but can’t understand Japanese, you can read an English translated scanned version on websites like Ten Manga for free. 

See how gorgeous the drawing is? ^_^

Also, due to its popularity, they decided to create an anime adaptation and it was aired on October 5, 2008 and it run for 25 episodes. I have watched this too and the whole Season 1 of Skip Beat anime covered Volume1 to 11 of the manga ending with the story of Kyoko and Tsuruga Ren (the black haired one) filming for Dark Moon. Fans like me are still waiting whether there will be Season 2 or not. I hope there will be ^_^

So, what started me with reading the manga and watching the anime is this:

I am a fan of Super Junior and when I found out that Choi Siwon and Lee Donghae are gonna act together in a live action drama I was hooked. Siwon is gonna act as Tsuruga Ren and Donghae will do Sho Fuwa. Now, I also got curious because Skip Beat is gonna be aired in Taiwan and those two are Koreans so I didn't have a clue how they will go about it so I decided to watch.

The first episode is kind of a disorienting experience for me. Halfway through, I noticed that they are Mandarin dubbed! The voices are different and I wondered if I was hallucinating haha but yeah, since they are not good in Mandarin, they are acting with Korean script and then some other people are hired to dub them over. I think this is what made me sad and also caused the mixed reviews from viewers coz they have some difficulty in expressing the emotions of the characters since the one acting and the one doing the voice over are different people.

But aside from that, I love this drama! Ivy Chen is great. This is the first time I saw her and I am glad that I am not disappointed. She was able to potray Gong Xi (Kyoko Mogami) flawlessly. Her expressions are spot on and her actions are funny like in the anime so I love watching her especially if she's having those weird self talk voodoo thingy haha ^_^

This drama is currently airing every Sunday so I just wait for 1-2 days for the English subbed episodes at Kimchidramas  DramaCrazy. Fan-made subtitles are my first choice whenever I am looking for English subs because they tend to be a lot more grammatically correct than those you find on pirated dvds you can find on the streets. It lessens the headache caused by incorrect spellings and jumbled words that you'll get from face cds hehe.

Now, I am just waiting whether this drama will end with the same thing as the anime or they will push through and end somewhere else in the manga. They are still on episode 13 and I'm not sure whether this drama will be 16 episodes or more but I'm crossing my fingers that it would be like Meteor Garden which consisted of 30 episodes..I guess it would all depend on the viewer ratings but I'm still hoping ^_^

Even though I already know what will happen next because I am reading the manga, I still love watching the live action one because they follow the anime very truthfully and that means a lot to me. I really hate those drama producers that create a new story based on a book but they just get the title and names of the characters and nothing else... so yeah I am happy with GTV right now because they really followed the story in the manga.

P.S. since the manga is still being updated, I don't have a clue who Kyoko will end up with but I am hoping Ren would be the one ^_^

If you were able to reach this point, thank you so much for reading my very long post. I hope I can have some comments here that also love to watch Korean and Taiwanese dramas like me hehe. Till next time, bye! ^_^