Skip Beat Ep. 08 - Love Me ++

Moko's back! YAY! After her last foray into acting, Kyoko has added Ren to her list of people to gain revenge on. She goes back to LME and is given a guide to all the acting classes she'll have to take, but it's very expensive. She runs into Kanae (the black-haired lady from episode 03). To her surprise, Kanae has been made the newest member of the Love Me section. When she asks what happened at the audition, the manager explains that Kanae failed in the next stage of auditions, discussing how a sister who sacrifices herself for her younger siblings is unfortunate and foolish. President Lory was unhappy with her un-loving answer, but since Kanae is so talented, they decided to add her to the Love Me section to foster her love. Kyoko is overjoyed to have a partner and her demons keep Kanae from running away in embarrassment. Kyoko nicknames Kanae "Moko" for her tendency to say "mou." Love Me is asked to help out with another problem in the drama school. President Lory's granddaughter Maria is running around creating a good deal of havoc. Lory guesses that it might be related to a new play that the students are working on. At the drama school, Moko amazes everyone by memorizing the script and acting out all the roles perfectly. They're surprised because the Love Me section was rumored to contain rejects, but Moko has them all outclassed. Kyoko decides to use little Ren (voodoo) dolls to lure out Maria, since Maria is fond of Ren. Maria appears and is delighted at the detail in the Ren doll. Lory asks her why she's making trouble, and sure enough, Maria hates the new play. She says that the lead girl Angel caused her mother's death, and yet no one is angry at her for it. Instead, everyone forgives her, which is foolish. Even a child can see that people would hate her. Everyone is saddened by Maria's bitter words except Kyoko who applauds her and agrees that the sudden forgiveness is foolish. The students at the school then challenge Kyoko to act out the play in such a way that would show hate, but still lead to the same conclusion in the story.

So happy to have Moko back! She was catty and annoying, but she really becomes a great character, and seeing her with Kyoko in the Love Me uniforms was so much fun. A lot less happened in this episode than I expected, and I'm kinda disappointed by the lack of content. It feels like such a blip. Plus, the end of the episode is a terribly weak cliffhanger and I don't feel as much anticipation for the next episode, even though I know it'll be good. The vocal cast once again carries the show, with animation, music and SFX clean, but not outstanding. I wonder if Moko has some sort of eidetic memory? She memorized the book and the script, and she recognized that Kyoko's voodoo dolls were perfect replicas. That would be kinda cool.

--Ou-bento