![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
manga: Beauty Pop Vol 1-2
Feb. 11th, 2009 01:06 pmThe end of the Viz shoujo I read over the weekend.
Kiri is the daughter of a hairstylist and naturally gifted, but doesn’t want to enter the family business. Despite this, she regularly gives people who are upset about their looks makeovers from goodwill. The most popular group at her school is trio of three boys called Scissors Project. Each boy is the heir to a salon, and they regularly choose a girl to give a makeover to. These girls have an amazing rate of then confessing to the boys they like, and acquiring them as boyfriends. The S.P. boys also reject girls who aren’t already pretty, or who don’t fit certain guidelines that they want to work with. So Kiri takes pity of these girls and gives them makeovers. Since she can make the less-pretty girls look as good as the prettier girls S.P. works with, and wears a cap that hides her features, she gains a reputation at school as the mysterious X. Naturally, one member of S.P.-Ochiai-decides he has to make her join, while another-Narumi-essentially declares her his mortal enemy.
I rather like Kiri and her unfashionable clothes and odd hair bob and stoic and absentminded detachment, not to mention her complete disinterest in S.P. Unfortunately, despite the back cover copy, Beauty Pop isn’t really about Kiri, but is actually about the rather generic trio of bishounen who make up S.P. If you’ve seen any group of manga male buddies, then you also know these characters, especially if you’ve ever read anything resembling a reverse harem shoujo. Also, two of them are kinda jerks, and all three seem pretty shallow. I’m also not thrilled with how many of Kiri’s makeovers seem to be Kiri giving a girl a makeover so she can impress or confess to a guy who was a jerk to her.
Not bad, but not really great either, and rather boring (for me) when it focuses on the generic bishie trio, which is most of the time. I suspect it will appeal more to people who like the male buddies aspect of shoujo. I don’t dislike that aspect, I’m just tired of how much shoujo sidelines the heroine to focus on it.
Kiri is the daughter of a hairstylist and naturally gifted, but doesn’t want to enter the family business. Despite this, she regularly gives people who are upset about their looks makeovers from goodwill. The most popular group at her school is trio of three boys called Scissors Project. Each boy is the heir to a salon, and they regularly choose a girl to give a makeover to. These girls have an amazing rate of then confessing to the boys they like, and acquiring them as boyfriends. The S.P. boys also reject girls who aren’t already pretty, or who don’t fit certain guidelines that they want to work with. So Kiri takes pity of these girls and gives them makeovers. Since she can make the less-pretty girls look as good as the prettier girls S.P. works with, and wears a cap that hides her features, she gains a reputation at school as the mysterious X. Naturally, one member of S.P.-Ochiai-decides he has to make her join, while another-Narumi-essentially declares her his mortal enemy.
I rather like Kiri and her unfashionable clothes and odd hair bob and stoic and absentminded detachment, not to mention her complete disinterest in S.P. Unfortunately, despite the back cover copy, Beauty Pop isn’t really about Kiri, but is actually about the rather generic trio of bishounen who make up S.P. If you’ve seen any group of manga male buddies, then you also know these characters, especially if you’ve ever read anything resembling a reverse harem shoujo. Also, two of them are kinda jerks, and all three seem pretty shallow. I’m also not thrilled with how many of Kiri’s makeovers seem to be Kiri giving a girl a makeover so she can impress or confess to a guy who was a jerk to her.
Not bad, but not really great either, and rather boring (for me) when it focuses on the generic bishie trio, which is most of the time. I suspect it will appeal more to people who like the male buddies aspect of shoujo. I don’t dislike that aspect, I’m just tired of how much shoujo sidelines the heroine to focus on it.
