Skip Beat has been an incredibly frustrating series for me; and not because it was incredibly bad: instead it’s been incredibly good. It’s a true breath of fresh air in the Shoujo genre, I became a fan of it instantly… and yet every single tiny flaw tends to stick out like a needle here. Ack.

While from the outside this series doesn’t look anything special: shoujo series about a girl who enters the idol business have been done before, but never in the way that this series has done. By a lack of a better description: this show has BALLS. The amount of guts it has continues to surprise, and to be honest, I can’t think of any other shoujo series that has a better sense of comedic timing than this series has. It’s amazing how careful and yet how witty this show is when delivering the jokes. It knows exactly how to deliver its jokes. The show is definitely on its best when two people with incredibly clashing personality are in bitch-fights against each other. It’s guaranteed hilarity!

And that’s the thing: if there’s any series that deserves to progress flawlessly, then it’s this one, but it’s such a bloody shame that the drama-bit of this series is shaky. While better than your average romantic comedy, the drama especially in the middle suffers from being WAY TOO RIDICULOUSLY CHEESY for its own good. The incredibly soppy drama unfortunately takes itself seriously, and doesn’t seem to realize that it’s incredibly formulaic.

The problem with this series is its trademark bitch-fights: while hilarious to watch, it becomes horribly dull when characters aren’t either trying to scratch each other’s eyes out or teasing the hell out of each other. The biggest offenders are the two middle arcs, about the chief’s daughter and the commercial filming. In such a hilarious series, these arcs break the flow terribly and are a pain to get through.

The romance also starts out incredibly shaky. Kyoko, the female lead, doesn’t just happen to run into one of the most respected actors in the business, she also grew up with the friggin guy when she was just a child. Especially the latter is jarring, since it wasn’t needed (or used, for that matter) at all in order to spark up the romance between him and the lead female.

THANKFULLY, though, this series does pick itself up as it goes along, resulting into a bunch of episodes of awesomeness in the final third, and it closes off with a strong arc. Unfortunately, it then proceeds to end the series with one helluva cliff-hanger. Kyoko herself is a really diverse character that has a huge amount of different sides to her character. Unfortunately, some of these sides feel forced. And that’s the bloody thing with this show: for every great point it seems to have one flaw or so to bring it down.

Nevertheless, I recommend this show for those looking for a great shoujo-series. Great shoujo-series like this one are very rare, especially since most shows of the genre feel like a simple rehash of an existing formula without much of an own identity. Skip Beat, while too soppy for its own good at time is a genuinely funny series, and we can only hope that a second season will be made some day.

The reason why there aren’t many reviews of pure slice-of-life series on this site isn’t because I dislike the genre, or anything. Instead, when I need to drop series to prevent myself from watching too much at once, these shows also seem to be the ones to go down first. This season I felt in a bit of an experimental mood, though, and I decided to stick with the third season of Minami-Ke, even though I never watched more than one or two episodes from the first two seasons. What I got was a pretty enjoyable series about the lives of a bunch of sisters, living together and their classmates.

While I could go all anal and be like “zomg, it’s nothing but fillers so it sux0rz”, but even though there’s hardly any continuity, and all of the different stories are just random strings of five minutes packed together, it’s in this case perfectly enjoyable to watch the antics of all of the different characters in this series. While it’s not as gut-achingly funny as other comedies, I found that Minami-Ke Okaeri was often able to put a smile on my face.

This is a typical show that never really hits any highs or lows, and instead is just enjoyable to watch and perfect if you’re feeling lazy and have half an hours or so to burn. The Minami-sisters are quite likable, and they’re funny while not trying to be. This review is short because there’s not much else to say about it, but I’m definitely going to check out the first season, which is rumoured to be even better.

When it started, Ride Back was a strange beast. With its concept of uniting strange motorbikes with arms with military totalitarianism, I was on one hand charmed by the characters, on the other hand it just kept testing my suspense of disbelief with overly coincidental plot twists that were only introduced for the sake of the story. Nevertheless, now that I’ve finished this series, I don’t feel like whining anymore. Ride Back rocks, despite some of the sacrifices it had to make.

In the end, Ride Back is a character-study of the female lead: Rin Ogata. It’s about many small things: criticism against military entering politics, simple motorbike racing, and terrorism; it’s about how a seemingly innocent action can have disastrous consequences and trying to find one’s true potential. and the beauty of Ride Back is that somehow, it all makes these widely diverse themes into a whole in only 12 episodes. The show very subtly evolves from light college adventures to a dark story about terrorism, but the whole thread of Rin’s development keeps it on one track and it prevents the series from dragging on, and while it may seem like a bit questionable as it goes on, the series comes together wonderfully in the end.

I also really must praise Madhouse’s visuals yet again. They went with another different art style this time, and especially the character-designs look really good and down to earth. There’s a slight issue that the CG doesn’t mesh in with the rest of the visuals, but even that could have been done much, much worse. And the series’ soundtrack also is a very powerful one.

So overall, I ended up liking this series much more than I thought. It’s got a questionable start, and does tend to pull some random coincidences simply for the sake of its story, but Rin’s development is rock-solid, which is especially rare for such a small 12-episode series. It’s no instant classic, but it’s yet again a worthy addition to Madhouse’s excellent repertoire.

Gundam 00 was the first long Gundam series that was split into two halves of about 25 episodes, rather than continuing for a full run of 50. In te end, it turned out into a decent series: it does the job it’s supposed to do, but it wasn’t anything really outstanding. The second season unfortunately was a bit weaker than the first.

While the first series had some interesting politics in the beginning, the second season drops the politics aspect completely and instead focuses much more on delivering solid action and the story becomes much more character-focused. Central to the story are various different conflicts between opposing sides, and these really range from utterly abysmal (Saji and Louise whine way too much throughout the series) to engaging and pretty good (Allelujahh and Marie). Especially Setsuna deserves credit, as he grows into a solid and capable male lead.

This approach has its good and bad sides. As I said: whenever the good characters take up the spotlight, the series becomes pretty enjoyable, but in the end the second season is just too formulaic. There are too many random battles that don’t stand apart from each other; they hardly ever resolve something and usually end up with both parties simply retreating. Most of the major villains lack development (especially the innovators, who apart from Regetta have as much personality as a paper bag), and all in all, this second season could have also been done in 13 episodes without losing much of the content or impact.

So in the end, this really is a series for those who want lots of solid action. If you’re not into that, then there really isn’t a lot left to watch in this series. The animation pretty good overall, but for me it was hardly ever really aestetically pleasing; the soundtrack is excellent, though. It’s not a bad series by far, and it has some pretty enjoyable parts (my personal favourite being the fall of the elevator), but there are lots of better mecha-series out there.

Short Synopsis: Ribbons and Setsuna finally face off against each other.
Episode Rating: 7/10 (Enjoyable)
Not the most impressive finale, but I’ve seen a lot worse endings this season. Obviously it was going to be overly cheesy, Setsuna and Ribbons were bound to fight to the death, and in the end Ribbons predictably dies and Setsuna somehow survives in true Disney fashion. Everyone lives happily ever after, blah blah blah, but there were some nice touches in this episode, like how the creators really wanted the show to end in a fight with Exia, rather than 00-Raiser.

I wasn’t too happy with how easily all of the conflicts in the middle east were solved. I mean, it’s not like Ribbons caused those, and the whole reunion of the middle east came really from nowhere. Also, what was that clone doing among the Azadistans? Also, what the heck was the purpose of Mister Bushido in this series? He was pretty much useless for the largest part of he series. One thing that I did like was Patrick’s wedding. That was sort-of cute.

Overall, I can’t really say that I’ve become a Gumdan-fan over the past year and a half, even though I tried. The original Mobile Suit Gundam was Excellent, but the others I’ve seen (Zeta, Wing and 00) all left things to be desired and were just too formulaic. It’s a shame, because all started out in their own way, and had an excellent and promising first half, but in their second halves they just all degrade into a string of random fights that aren’t really that much different from each other. I originally planned to patiently watch all of the gundam series out there, but in the end I’m only going to check out the rumoured really good ones: War in the Pocket, 08th MS Team and Turn A Gundam.