It is I again, here with another review (:
Upon the suggestion of a friend of mine, I will be reviewing Beauty Pop today~
Beauty Pop
Story & Art by: Kiyoko Arai
Publisher: Shoujo Beat
Rating: Teen (13+)
Synopsis:(from back cover) Although a truly fired hairstylist, Kiri Koshiba has no interest in using her talent to pursue fame and fortune, unlike the three popular boys in the "Scissor Project" at school. Determined to become the best makeover team in Japan, they give showy makeover to handpicked girls. As much as Kiri tries to shy away from the spotlight, she finds herself responding to beauty's call...
Art Review: 5/5
The art is very cute, detailed, and well designed. In manga and anime, hair tends to all look the same, but Arai's attention to detail in the hair makes every hairstyle Kiri and Narumi execute so unique.
Story Review: I'm not usually one to read mangas about fashion, and beauty, and -epic pose- the quest to be the best hairstylist/designer/makeup artist/whatever, because those tend to fall into the josei genre, end up a bit boring in my opinion... However, this manga is very well done. Although the main events and twists of the story all revolve around hairstyling, the subcontext of love arises between and a love triangle unfolds between Kiri, Narumi and Ochiai. The extra subcharacters who add more tension to the plot keeps the reader flipping the pages. What amuses me so much is that in the manga, it's so dramatic, and yet if you even attempted to do half the things they do in the manga in real life, you'd look pretty ridiculous. The ending is cheesy however, *spoiler alert* (Highlight to see) Narumi and Kiri getting married was expected, I know you all saw it coming xD. *spoiler alert* To be quite honest, after reading this I got a bit more excited about hair, but then again, being fickle as I am, I lost that shine. -looks off into the distance- Overall, this manga was very cute and fun to read, I recommend you should, if you are a fan of shoujo manga.9/10, because the ending was MEH.
I was a bit disappointed too. Because the ending was very typical for shoujo, and therefore rather like a cop-out. I would have preferred something a little more unique, but it was a really great read, so that's just me being a grumbly critic. XD
ReplyDeleteThe ending was just too sweet and sugar coated.
ReplyDeleteSo much that I think I nearly became diabetic.
And same here xD
I think everyone wanted a better ending to this one
What I'm glad about though is it didn't drag out. I think 2 or 3 more volumes would have been too many and it would have felt like the author ran out of ideas. It was a good length for the story.
ReplyDeleteI know, which is why I respect this manga quite a bit for a shoujo
ReplyDeleteNormally I'll read it
And forget about it
I even forgot Love Hina (not much of a shoujo but whatever xD)
Never forgot this one
Never read more than 2 chapters of Love Hina! XD But I really like Mahou Sensei Negima! It's super good! I just kinda read around the fanservice, the plot gets quite good, and the characters are memorable. It starts off as a romcom with extreme fanservice about a 10 year old mage who ends up teaching at an all girls school. And basically the first few chapters are him having random failures at magic and almost blowing his secret. Then it quickly transforms into a more shounen-esque battle manga with him getting extremely good at magic and defending his students from various evil plots and whatever. It sounds terrible but it's actually good! O.o Also the art gets much better from the first chapter, which wasn't too awesome.
ReplyDeleteIt's in my top 10 favorite manga list. Which says a lot about it. I'm really picky about what I read, and generally like shounen without fanservice, so the fact that I stuck through more than 2 volumes to discover that it's actually really good is pure luck!
Complaints I have are that it suffers from copy-paste face, which is to say in the beginning the female characters all look very similar but with different hair. And the animes (yes plural, they tried many times!) are crappy. Only the newest OVA's that actually FOLLOW THE PLOT OF THE MANGA are any good. But it's too little too late, unfortunately. Because the only ones who could watch them and understand the plot are those who read the manga.
The original anime also had terrible quality animation on top of that, so yeah. Same for the second.
Wow, I did my own review/essay in a comment. O.o Sorry about that.
You need to make the font size smaller on the comments I think. XD
ReplyDelete...yeah maybe xD
ReplyDeleteAnd if I ever can't review something on time I could prolly get YOU to do it, lol
LOL I couldn't take that responsibility. I just started on a rant and couldn't stop myself! XD That tends to happen when I like something. But seriously. I recommend it to you, as I am enjoying it enough that I've read it like 3 times. XD And it's the only one of it's kind on my top 10 list... (stuff with fanservice, stuff with weird age difference romance plots, that sort of thing.) I actually don't even know what it's classification would be, because it kind of falls outside the terms shoujo, shounen, seinen, and jousei. Definitely not jousei though! XD It's like a skewed shoujo romance, with seinen fanservice, and a typical 'searching-for-my-missing-father and fighting-my-way-through-hoards-of-baddies' shounen plot!
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, my comment didn't look that long in the little box. And then the font size went up to like 18 when it was posted and suddenly it looked a lot longer. XD
That's what started this hobby of mine.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't bring much fruition but I'm opinionated and need some where to vent.
Yuck, jousei :c
And it was actually 20 pt
Now it's 16 pt xD
That's a bit better! Just compared to the font size of your actual posts it was laughably big.
ReplyDeleteAnd some Jousei is good.... I can't think of any right now. XD I usually like jousei more than shoujo! They're very laid-back, and are more mature (ie LESS STUPID) romance plots.
xD I suppose so but no body commented before (because I kinda suck) so I wouldn't really have noticed the size difference between my posts and my comments
ReplyDeleteAnd I've seen some and just thought, I hate the art style and the style of story is prolly not my thing. D:
I agree it's not for everyone. I just have really different tastes. For me to like something, I have to like the story, art, AND characters otherwise I will drop it. I'm more partial to shounen, but there are some shoujo pieces that really grab me. And Gokusen is my favourite jousei. At least I think it's jousei.
ReplyDeleteAnd you don't suck, you just aren't popular yet. You've been blogging for 2+ month, it takes a lot longer than that to gain popularity. Particularly with a manga review blog. People are less likely to comment if they read the review and agree with you on it. XD
ReplyDeleteOh gee, that helps -u-;;;;
ReplyDeleteOh well
I'm just bored :c
Then say stuff that's totally controversial!!! Tell them you loved something that is total crap! XD
ReplyDeleteJust kidding, but keep working hard and you will get noticed. You should put in the hits counter, it's an easier way of tracking how many people visit your blog. That's what I did. If I went by how many people actually COMMENTED on my posts I would assume that only 3 people read my blog. As it stands I have over 700 page views. Which can't have been done by 3 people.
...Unless they were extremely bored.
Do you stick to some sort of schedule? I saw you say something about a review being late or something.
Well I just watch on the stats page -u-
ReplyDeleteAnd I do xD
Every other day
Or in Abbey format
DAY 2's
Cause those days are just lovely for me :]
Speaking of the abbey: GO TO BED. It's a school night! >:D
ReplyDeleteWait, there's a stats page? O.o
ReplyDeleteNO.
ReplyDeleteI DO I WHAT I WANT CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE
I AM A PIRATE
YAR~
Anyways, yeah
Click Design, and then there's a stats tab.
I thought you would have seen that by nao ouo
Uh, I don't look at the stats page. I just post and edit posts. Once I designed my blog I didn't really do much else to it. :D
ReplyDeletexD I'm not doing much I just watch the views x]
ReplyDelete