Manga / Skip Beat!

Ren, Kyouko, and Shou.

After graduating from Junior High, Kyouko Mogami follows her childhood friend Shou to Tokyo to help him pursue his dream of being an idol. Although Shou doesn't help her at all and even mistreats her, Kyouko still believes that all her efforts (working several part-time jobs, paying all his expenses, acting as his housemaid) will be eventually repaid with love and gratitude.

Until she learns, from the mouth of Shou himself, that he has no feelings towards her, and the only reason he asked her to come with him was because he knew she would act as his personal servant for nothing.

Another woman would have cried right then, or pleaded for explanations... but instead this revelation opens the sealed Pandora's Box inside Kyouko's heart, unleashing (and materializing) all the demons she had kept inside her for years. She vows to have her revenge, but Shou simply mocks her and scoffs that the only way she could hurt him would be if she became as famous as he is.

So she decides to become as famous as he is.

The rest of the series follows Kyouko as she determinedly works her way up the ranks of show business, improving her performance skills, making friends and enemies galore, butting heads with talented and handsome fellow actor Ren Tsuruga, and most of all trying to rebuild her life anew now that she's out from under Shou's thumb.

A shoujo manga by Yoshiki Nakamura, Skip Beat! began serialization in 2002 in the monthly magazine Hana to Yume and is still running to this day. An anime adaptation aired from October 2008 to March 2009 for 25 episodes, and can be legally watched on Crunchyroll. There is also a Taiwanese Live-Action Adaptation that aired in winter 2011.

A successful Kickstarter campaign to dub the series and bring it over to the U.S. on DVD was made by Pied Piper Inc. (the same company that bought over Time of Eve) in March 2016.

For a more recent manga about the world of acting, compare act-age.

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Provides Examples Of:

• Abusive Parents:
  • Kyoko's mother is distant and neglectful, not to mention emotionally abusive. She doesn't care where her daughter is now, and may not have seen her in years, since in one flashback Shou's parents were seen wondering whether she was ever coming back to get her, and Kyouko seems to have spent much of the latter part of her childhood living at the ryokan. The most recent chapters of the manga reveal that this may ultimately be a subversion on the part of Kyoko's mother too due to the complex circumstances around Kyoko's conception and birth, which lead to severe mental instability and Kyoko's mother choosing to give her up due to a belief she could not love and care for her as a parent should.
  • Subverted with a young Ren/Kuon, who because of his initial reluctance to talk of his past and his angst about having to escape his father's hands is believed to have this, but when his father was actually introduced, the man was a very loving dad; turns out that both of his parents are so loving they don't let Ren breathe. Ren was angsting because his parents were kind of busy and he was having trouble finding his own identity when they were so famous, and this resulted to him being treated as an outcast by his peers.
• Adaptational Villainy: Kyouko does an In-Universe example when she is cast as one of the villains in a remake of a late 80s drama. The character is a Rich Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who harbours some major resentment towards her cousin, who is the heroine, and both her own older sister and mother (also villains). She uses the facial scar her character got from an accident, which her sister caused on purpose, to emotionally blackmail both her and their mother, who has always looked down on her youngest daughter. The original actress interpreted the character as an apparently timid girl who was not ashamed to use the Wounded Gazelle Gambit near constantly, using bangs to conceal her Evil Scars. Kyouko instead plays the character as a bitter, resentful teen in perpetual Passive-Aggressive Kombat mode, openly showing her scar and having a more "in your face" attitude. Kyouko's justification is that, while the original interpretation was valid and all twenty years ago, she couldn't see the daughter of a rich family sporting such a big facial scar now: if you had gotten such a scar twenty years ago, you would have had to live with it, but nowadays you could easily get a plastic surgeon to erase or minimize it. Since the scar blackmailing is fundamental to the character and the plot, Kyouko decided to play her as the kind of person that would have kept the scar on purpose.
• Almost Kiss: Many, many times.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: Well, sort of:
  Kyoko: Oh, this is like a confession of loooove! I can’t beliiieve I said I liiiike Moko!!
• Anywhere but Their Lips: Related to the aforementioned Almost Kiss, this seems to be a pattern for Ren and Kyoko. Ren at one point kisses the Corn stone^note which is roughly the equivalent of Kyoko's emotional center, kisses Kyoko on the cheek after she gives him a Valentine's gift (causing her to space out so completely that he has to pretend it was nothing but a casual American gesture), and an in-character Kyoko gives Ren a hickey on his neck and kisses his forehead. Finally (sort of) subverted when Ren-as-Corn kisses Kyoko on the mouth, though she doesn't realize that he's really Ren.
• Art Evolution: As expected of a series that been in publication since 2002, Nakamura's style has evolved over the years.
  • Overlaps with Only Six Faces to a degree. Nakamura had one facial model that she reused for pretty teen girls/young women, one for attractive teen boys/ young men, one for children, one for older women, and one for older men - relying on hair styles to do the work of identifying characters.
  • Particularly egregiously, any male character that was meant to be read as "attractive" was drawn with a triangular face resembling a slice of pizza. After more than a decade of drawing male characters like aliens, Nakamura's style has softened so that the once pizza-shaped faces now resemble eggs, or human craniums instead.
  • Proportions were also elongated to the point of Noodle People for 95% of characters. Most main characters are still ridiculously slim and spindly-limbed, but in the intervening years Nakamura has also expanded the variety of body types that show up on reoccurring characters - Chiori's manager is one of the few reoccurring characters to be drawn as a realistically heavyset middle-aged woman, and the taisho's wife has also consistently been portrayed as a plump motherly figure.
• Bad Job, Worse Uniform: The "Love Me" uniform is a glaringly pink jumpsuit.
• The Beard: Kana actually calls it using Ren to "block the wind", so that nobody finds out she's a lesbian as "society's strict with people like [her]"
• Beauty Is Bad: Played with. Kyoko tends to assume this in the wake of her relationship with Sho, but she sometimes turns out to be wrong.
• Becoming the Mask: The intention, more or less, of bringing "Tsuruga Ren" into existence at all. To the point that he now does the Spider-man thing in his internal monologues and refers to both his birth name and his current name as separate people with their own sets of emotions which can be put on and off like other roles. Apparently Kuon decided to die after whatever exactly happened with Rick's death, and the only way to deal with those emotions is to consider Hizuri Kuon an ex-person and become Tsuruga Ren all the time.
  • His identity crisis issues, documented from around chapter seventy, have been getting more complicated with the addition of Cain Heel, especially to an observer like Kyoko. Although the character doesn't add much input of his own, he encourages violent situations that give Kuon trouble and romantic-potential ones that strain Ren's self-control.
  Ren: Ever since living life as Tsuruga Ren, until now Kuon's emotions had never been brought forth, not once.... When I returned to Tsuruga Ren, my emotions were steadily altered.... To me, both sides are so important, and yet I will have no choice but to choose one sooner or later. (Chapter 167)

  • Chapter 167 spoiler above? Counts as progress on his part.
  • More recently he has been seen conversing with his mirror, which held the image of his repressed self. He seems to be aware that this is just a metaphor.
  • Also Kyoko's character-creation method, though most of the time she's good at snapping out of it again. The early stages of Mio and especially Natsu were pretty alarming, though.
  • Basically, the way the story treats 'acting,' our leads are naturally spending all their time on the verge of a (mental) Shapeshifter Identity Crisis, and Ren's extra issues just increase that past the boiling point.
• Beware the Nice Ones: The Series! Kyoko was an Extreme Doormat but when she snapped, she got scary.
• Big Eater: Kuu regularly eats enough for twenty or thirty people at a sitting. At least he can cook.
• Big "NO!": Combined with Gratuitous English in the Japanese dub when Tsuruga gets a cold.
• Bishie Sparkle: Ren pulls these off whenever he is giving his best, fake charming smile. It frightens Kyoko because she knows what's really hiding under those sparkles. When he's actually being genuine, he pulls off the Love Bubbles.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Shou is the main example, but plenty of the actresses Kyouko works with that don't get a name act like this. Basically, if there's a Jerkass in this series, they'll be one of these.
  • Chiori starts off as one, but true to most people who come in contact with Kyoko, she comes out of this very quickly (for the most part- she still writes scathing criticisms in her Poison Notebook, but they're much less personal than they were at her introduction).
  • Kimiko, oh so much. In an attempt to throw Kyoko off her game during an audition, she very sweetly and innocently convinces Kyoko that she's the woman Ren is in love with by telling enough half-truths to make it sound true, and when that doesn't work she stops playing nice, instead drugging Kyoko and attempting to throw her off a building.
• Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: Kyoko and Moko are repeatedly mistaken for this.
• Break the Cutie: Kyoko, and, possibly, Ren.
• Brick Joke: Yashiro's status as a Walking Techbane of all things, used maybe once the entire series as a threat against Ren returns in one chapter◊.
• Bridal Carry: When Kyoko breaks her ankle, Ren finds her and carries her up to the nearby film shoot. She quickly protests and demands that he put her down.
  • Although unlike most Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like, Kyoko was solving the 'get up the hill' problem herself (badly), and considered the scenario something of a forced one-sided Enemy Mine, since at this point she really, really disliked him. (And he seemed to enjoy his freedom to torment her.)
• Broken Bird: It's kind of a trend for any female cast member who gets more than a single story arc's treatment. Heck, it's the entire reason for the Love Me section to exist.
  • Also male cast members, including Director Ogata with his panic attacks and Ren before he was Ren. Ren still, really, but being Ren is his way of coping.
• Broken Hero: Seems to be a running trend, but especially Kyoko and Ren.
• Broken Ace: Ren, we increasingly discover. Not only does he pull out more and more absurd numbers of talents as we go (speaks several languages, powerful martial artist, does his own stunt driving) but his issues just keep spooling out. At first it was just that the mask of perfect courtesy parted for Kyoko and the actual human being showed through, but the current Ren could even be considered psychotic.
  • Summary of Ren's issues: His Parental Issues were huge from around the age of ten, due to his doting parents being busy and his father's reputation intimidating. He was apparently bullied for being interracial. He had a hard time making it in Hollywood due to being a brat. These things gave him identity and anger issues. Then his best friend chased him into traffic while he was working on beating up a bully, and died, and he cracked up and became catatonic. Takarada pulled him out of it with an invitation to come to Japan and reinvent himself as a different person, and thus Tsuruga Ren was created. Unfortunately Kuon's issues have festered while he was busy being Ren, and his temper is becoming truly dangerous.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Lory Takarada. The heights of his insanity have extended to a giant pirate ship on wheels in the street on a normal day, as a means of transport, and bringing a brass band and elegant masqued garden party onto a movie set when just stopping by for a quick word, but the pythons and camels and dating sims and the constant insane costumes just don't stop. Plus the special arrangements he made that allowed both Ren and Kyoko to change their lives by joining his company. But? The company he founded is one of the most powerful in the business.
  • He also used to get top scores on exams by guessing.
  • He believes in the Power of Love to the point it almost seems to make him some kind of Reality Warper. Considering the other fantasy elements that somehow exist in the setting, it wouldn't be that surprising.
  • He's also single. Presumably a widower, since he has a granddaughter.
    • He never has "second thoughts," by his own admission. Which means, of course, that he wakes up, thinks, "Today, I want to dress like a cowboy/Prussian nobleman/pirate," and, since he's rich enough to get away with it...
• But Not Too Foreign: In-universe this trope seems to have been the secret of Hizuri Kuu's success, first in Japan and then in America, as he's half-Caucasian. (Probably somewhat more than half since he's blond, but the official word is half.)
  • A more complex and meta case is his one-quarter-Japanese son Kuon, who due to a bit of cultural myopia on the part of the creator experienced a specifically Japanese form of racism during his adolescence in Los Angeles and then, as Tsuruga Ren, managed to dye his fair hair dark, wear dark contacts, and pass himself off as full-blooded Japanese.
    • Whether the fact that 'Kuon', who is presumably much more American in behavior and outlook than the new identity, also appears to be something of a raging psychotic is connected with international stereotypes is unclear. Though there are a lot of stereotypes floating around.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Ren for Kyoko (partially because she won’t let him). Eventually Kyoko develops feelings of her own and her own difficulties in admitting them, even to Moko.
• Care-Bear Stare: Kyouko does this to Moko many times, to the point where Moko does it to herself even when Kyouko isn't around.
  • Also, Ren's "heavenly smile" seems to operate like this, since it usually sends Kyouko's demons running away in terror.
• Celebrity Resemblance: Subverted - more than once. A character will note that a celebrity looks like their childhood friend. It turns out that they really ARE that childhood friend (whether or not the observer figures it out) with the help of a new hairdo and acting lessons. Seen when Shou sees Kyouko in the soda commercial and once when Kyouko spies Ren taking a solitary walk.
• Celibate Hero: Kyouko, of the "bad past experiences" variety.
  • Also (apparently) Ren, who is by now the other main character, with the private comment on the subject that "I'm not allowed to have anyone so close to me now."
    • It's unclear whether he's actually not had any girlfriends since he was fifteen (which would have had an odd effect on his reputation) or just hasn't managed to keep any very long. As a kid he was always getting dumped.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Mimori towards Sho, Maria towards Ren.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Kyoko. No one can understand quite how her mind works, but Shou when he tries can get at parts of it, Kanae and Ren are getting better all the time. Also, Maria.
  • Young Kuon, too, as revealed in recent flashbacks. He may have found Kyoko's 'Palace of Scrambled Eggs' nonsense to the point of hilarity, but around age fourteen he made the same kind of leaps of Insane Troll Logic to which she is still prone. And it was hilarious.
    • He's still a doofus, he just doesn't know it. Part of his worth as a character is that he and the world take him so seriously, but the people who know him best and the audience are aware of moments like 'heavenly hand dance' and that time when he slaps his hand reflexively over his forehead to avoid a 'flick' from his father right after ranting about "when your son was still innocent and cute."
• Coincidental Dodge: Erika trying (and failing) to injure Kanae, after the CM audition. Repeatedly.
• Cool Big Sis: Maria views Kyoko as one.
• Crash-Into Hello: Kyoko and Ren, the first time they ever had a one-on-one conversation.
• Cut a Slice, Take the Rest: Kuu Hizuri's habit, thanks in part to him being a Big Eater. Kyoko learns to anticipate his appetite though.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Downplayed example. Many of the people who are initially dismissive, hostile or rude toward Kyouko warm up to her quickly once she earns their respect.
• Determinator: Kyouko. The leitmotif phrase about her being "a scary kind of actress" not only refers to the eerie dark aura she exudes, but to her obsessive dedication and getting so deep into Method Acting she gets Lost in Character.
• Diegetic Visual Effects: At first, the Kyoko Apparitions (or Kyoko's demons/Grudge Kyokos, depending on the translations) seems to just be an exaggerated expression of Kyoko's thirst for vengeance, but is revealed to be actual spirit manifestation that can affect other characters and their surroundings. In several instances, Kyoko uses the apparitions to steal a random stranger's bike, and to haunt/curse Sawara so that he'd let her into the LME talent division. Later on, Reino — who claims to be a psychic — actually takes one of the apparitions hostage to threaten Kyoko.
• Doting Parent: Turns out Ren had these, although they were also very busy a lot of the time. His father particularly is a complete 'baka-oya' who adores his family beyond all reason—and in consequence is a little overbearing sometimes. To the point of being jealous that his son cares enough about Kyoko that upsetting her is an effective way to get to him.
  • Asked for one specific trait of his son, the man winds up standing on a chair, declaiming the grace, beauty, and talent of his progeny.
• *Drool* Hello: In one of the extra pages installments of the manga, Maria has a rather large, remote-controlled, robot spider she uses to scare off women who get too close to Ren. Guess how she introduces it. Go on, guess.
• Embarrassing Rescue: When Sho rescues Kyoko from Reino, it just makes her more angry at him because of this trope.
• Enjo Kosai: In one of the arcs about Kanae, the other characters believe she is doing this because they see her with other males, among them an older man. Yes, there are paid relationships, but not of the type the others thought: Kanae was simply playing Replacement Goldfish with the men, so they could learn to act with a girlfriend, discourage a persistent even stalkerish admirer, or, in the case of the old man, reconnect with his own estranged daughter.
• Everyone Can See It: Kyoko and Sho, except they're not seeing what they think they're seeing; Ren for Kyoko, except Kyoko and Ren send mixed enough messages to the world that these people then get very confused.
• Fairy Tale Motifs: Surprisingly, Kyouko still believes in the most classic Fairy Tales; most of her mindset was shaped by the (evidently Bowdlerized) fairy tales she read in her childhood, with "Cinderella" being the most prominent example. Many of her imagination spots shows her as a Princess Classic surrounded by cute fairies (who look like a cleaner version of her Inside Demons). She even genuinely believes that a boy she met in her childhood was the Prince of Fairies. The scary implication is that she was forced to cling to those beliefs as a way to ease the pain of her difficult home life, the ostracism from her peers, and to give herself hope. If she still believes, it is because she doesn't know any better way to console herself.
• Falling into His Arms: During the Dark Moon arc, Kyoko loses her balance while reaching for a high shelf in Ren's kitchen, and he catches her. Almost Kiss and Ship Tease ensue.
• False Rape Accusation: A weird example happens when Reino accuses himself of raping Kyoko after ruining her dress, because he knows that being Defiled Forever would ruin her reputation and thus her chances of being an actress/idol.
• Fangirl: Yashiro is a rare male example, but nevertheless, he is as active in his Ren&Kyoko Shipping as a proper fan girl can be.
• First Kiss: Kyoko loses hers to Sho. Who did it for no other reason than to twist her mind and make her only think about him. You'd think someone who's been on the receiving end of Kyoko's temper and onryo-gundan, he'd know better. Ren makes her believe that it didn't count though."
  • If one goes along with the last sentence, then her first kiss was with "Corn". Both he and Kyouko also somewhat acknowledge the fact that this time, it was a proper kiss.
• Fluffy Fashion Feathers: Some of the outfits.
• Food Porn: All the time, mostly with sweets, usually cooked by Kyoko. A lot of it in the party arc and the Kuu arc, since her main job at the time was to feed his ridiculous appetite, but since cooking is one of Kyoko's most successful social maneuvers and Ren's tendency to skip meals if left to himself is a frequent excuse (of Yashiro's and Lory's) to shove him and Kyoko together, the food just does not go away. Looks yummy, too.
• Forceful Kiss:Shou on Kyouko in Chapter 145.
• Fourth-Wall Mail Slot: There's a little comic excerpt based on the cover for chapter 93, which features Ren embracing Kyoko with his "emperor of the night" face on - the comic reveals that they're doing a photoshoot, with Ren stating that the pose was a request from a reader. This doesn't leave Kyoko any less flustered.
• Friend Versus Lover
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Kyoko does it to Moko, when she's all but given up in the face of her old enemy Erika reappearing.
• Gonk: Kenichi "Ken" Katagiri, the "crocodile-faced lawyer" who runs Viride General Law Office, is perhaps the only character to date who's been drawn with a purposefully off-putting appearance. His face is so scary that a very young Kyoko would run away and hide whenever she saw him, terrified that he would eat her. Despite his looks, he's shown to be a man up upstanding character. He's also Kyoko's mother's boss, and the reason Kyoko was raised by the Fuwa family. Sho's mother is Kenichi's younger sister, and Kenichi was the one who suggested that Saena leave Kyoko with his younger sister in the first place.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: Kyoko has these, though the “good” ones hardly ever appear.
• Good Parents: As a surprise twist, Ren turns out to have more or less had these, although their fame and the lifestyle that goes with fame wasn't good for his mental state and his mom had a problem with force-feeding him her bad cooking.
  • Yashiro, too, apparently, though each of his parents have had one mention each.
• Gratuitous English: The only thing funnier than the "Love Me" section is just how much difficulty the VAs have in pronouncing it. And most of those difficulties were predicted in the manga.
  Kyouko: Rugby section??
• Green-Eyed Monster: The fuel of several characters. Kyouko was the victim of such an attitude from her former female classmates, due to her closeness to Shou (another thing she blames on him).
  • Kyoko herself also has this reaction when she imagines that Moko has a boyfriend. An inner debate between Curse The Hypotenuse and I Want My Beloved to Be Happy ensues.
  • Kyouko again had it when she played Setsuka who lost her temper by how clingy a fellow actress was to Cain aka Ren. Her inner thoughts before and after that suggest that it was at least partially "Kyouko" that got angry.
• Groupie Brigade: Kyoko has to get Ren through one of these during her stint as his substitute manager.
• Gyaru Girl: Kyoko pretends to be a kogal by using distinctive slang and an airheaded persona so that Sho doesn't figure out that it is her.
• Hero Stole My Bike: Kyoko does this to some poor sod when she's assistant-managing for Ren and needs to get him to his next gig on time.
• Heroic BSoD: The series starts out with one, in essence. Kyoko temporarily shuts down when Sho reveals his betrayal and she reboots as the Voodoo Doll-toting Woman Scorned who we all know and love.
  • Tsuruga is prone to them. Most notably after the car-chase scene incident, when he reverted to active catatonia, but also in the backstory he was having a Flash Back to at the time, and to a lesser extent when having things like Love Epiphanies or after he realizes he lost his self-control. (I.e. when 'Setsu' shouted for him not to kill Seaweed-head.)
• Hollywood Voodoo: Kyoko and Maria are very apt to do the stereotypical voodoo doll thing, among other styles of black magic; in fact, that is what mutually bonds them in first place.
• Hostility on the Set: Plenty of in-universe examples:
  • A misunderstanding between Hiou and Moko during their filming of the Minamori Miyako series led to Moko throwing Hiou across the set and Hiou threatening to end Moko's career for child abuse.
  • Chiori initially held a massive grudge against Kyoko, due to Kyoko's "seemingly" effortless rise to fame. She offered Kyoko bad advice (which ended up working out in Kyoko's favor) and sabotaged Kyoko's wardrobe and dressing room (which Kyoko ignored). When Kyoko didn't respond to either of Chiori's tactics, Chiori snapped and pushed Kyoko down a flight of stairs. Things have gotten better between the two since that point, with Chiori mellowing out and even looking up to Kyoko as a mentor figure.
  • Actors Ren (disguised as the actor Cain Heel) and Taira have been at each other's throats since the script reading for their film Tragic Marker. Ren's "Cain Heel" persona is aloof and disinterested (the director has asked him to keep his distance from the cast and crew, in order to make his performance as an undead serial killer terrifying and unexpected), while Taira is a hot blooded ex-gang leader who thinks Cain isn't taking his work seriously. They get into numerous verbal sparring matches that culminate in an incident where Ren nearly kills Taira in a murderous rage. What starts out as stage combat practice turns into an all-out brawl, during which Ren puts Taira in a Neck Lift over an unsecured ledge on the film set. Taira is convinced he's about to die and pulls Ren off the ledge with him, but a last-second intervention from Kyoko convinces Ren to throw Taira into a safety net and use the momentum from the throw to land safely.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: At 190cm, Ren tends to tower over most men, so naturally Kyoko looks tiny in comparison.
• I Am Not Spock:invoked In series. Kyoko is very unhappy to discover that, thanks to her performance as Mio in Dark Moon, all of the job offers that are coming to her are for antagonists - and all of them request that she "just act like Mio."
• I Didn't Mean to Turn You On: Poor Ren. Thank goodness he has the self control of a monk.
  • Kyouko still has no idea.
• Idol Singer: Kyouko has to deal with a particularly bitchy one. Shou is the male version, and his musical rival Reino is part of a Visual band.
• Inconvenient Attraction: Kyoko feels this way about her feelings for Ren, to the point of the mental equivalent of jumping off a cliff. This is mutual as Ren has a similar feeling about his affection for her. In both cases, even as they come to terms with their feelings, they still are not exactly happy about having them.
• Inspirational Insult: The plot starts because Shou, on dismissing his childhood friend Kyouko, calls her a plain, boring, worthless girl with no talent, and that the only method of revenge she could use against him would be beat him in the entertainment world, which for a girl like her would be impossible. Kyouko, furious for having been duped into being her servant by him exploiting her devotion, has since set herself into proving him wrong on all of those points, so far with a certain degree of success.
• It Doesn't Mean Anything: How Ren hand waves the kiss on the cheek he gave her and Kyouko's kiss with Shou away.
• Jerkass: Sho, so very much. In the beginning of the story he is totally an idiot when out of his idol act; now, thanks to Character Development, at least is sightly more considerate towards Kyouko and less of a jerk towards the whole world. As of Chapter 145, he's reverted back to this.
  • Reino: A Sho look-alike with an insane crush towards the main character, a stalker and a wannabe rapist.
    • Also a psychic who could apparently blow Ren's secrets out of the water but finds him too scary to bother, and who can take Kyoko's hate-demons hostage.
• Lap Pillow: Kyoko does this with Ren when he needs to 'nap.' His last-minute replacement request when he realized he was about to hit on her and this would scare her away forever. However, Kyoko's the one who ends up falling asleep.
• Large Ham: The president of LME Takarada himself. Aside from often being shown in clothes that are basically costumes of whatever he feels like wearing that day, getting fencing lessons from an exotic master of the art, other times walking around in public with huge props (including background dancers or similar) fitting with his costume and generally having a large entrance. The first time he was revealed, a good dozen of dancers burst into the room and Takarada appeared in a spotlight.
• Like an Old Married Couple: Kyoko and Sho are labeled as this when they are reunited post-breakup and immediately start bickering. Both deny it vehemently.
• Like a Son to Me: Ren to Takarada, a bit. Kyoko is like a son to Kuu, now, due to creating her own impossibly adorable version of 'Kuon' as an acting exercise, and getting it improbably correct because she chose to model her act initially on 'Corn.' Then her Parental Issues appealed to the large part of his identity that's tied up in being a parent, and then so it was.
• Like Father, Like Son: First introduced with Director Ogata, who turns out to look and speak and think so exactly like his father that he's started to doubt he actually exists as a separate person. So he naturally sets out to remake his father's greatest success, because that'll really distinguish him.
  • As it turns out, Ren had a very similar problem growing up, though not to that extreme, which explains why he knew the right thing to say to Ogata. In the same remake, he is (unbeknownst to everyone but himself, Takarada, and Kuu) playing his father's original role, and his inability to improve on the original performance in a pivotal scene nearly destroys him.
    • Since then, he has also been enthusiastically compared to a character his father played early in his career, to great acclaim. There is no escape from Hizuri Kuu as a lead actor who strongly resembles him.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Kana Kusunoki is as popular as Ren is, seen as Japan's Number One Ideal Wife, is extremely beautiful, but is actually a lesbian.
• Little Girls Kick Shins: Kyouko may not be a little girl, but she still pulls this on Shou when they’re reunited post-breakup.
• Long-Runner Tech Marches On: Plenty of it. The comic has run continuously since February of 2002, but in-series a little more than a year has passed since Kyoko moved to Tokyo:
  • In early chapters, everyone uses flip phones. In act 32 Kyoko is given a flip phone by LME so she can carry out her duties as Ren's temporary manager, and chapter 48 shows Yashiro threatening to brick Ren's flip phone with his Walking Tech Bane abilities. As of chapter 246 (published in early 2017), Ren has a modern smartphone capable of sending text messages (and presumably of sending videos, which he offered to do when Kyoko had to leave Guam before him).
  • In chapter 168 (published in early 2011) Kyoko still has a flip phone, but she's shown to be able to search the web on it (while attempting to look up a recipe for a rice dish Ren said he wanted to cook).
  • There are a few chapters dedicated to Ren's jealousy that one of his Dark Moon coworkers has managed to get Kyoko's e-mail before him. Ren is mildly upset that Kyoko sends this coworker a "decorated e-mail" from her phone, as Ren doesn't even have Kyoko's e-mail. As the series progresses, Ren badgers Kyoko about sending him text messages with emoticons ^note emoticons are faces constructed out of text characters, like :-) or \(*o*)/.
    • Hilariously, when they do eventually exchange emails with emoticons, they both misinterpret the meaning of the other's message because of them.
  • Chapter 220 (published in early 2015) shows Kyoko's mother reading Kyoko's biography on the LME website. No previous mention had been made about Kyoko having a page on the LME website, or about the LME website at all.
  • In chapter 242 (published in late 2016), Kimiko Morizumi is shown using a tablet computer with a keyboard dock.
  • In chapter 256 (published in early 2018), Sayou (the Ruby of Erika's "Jewel Troupe" henchmen) is shown using a modern touchscreen smartphone on the same page as Kyoko using her old fashioned flip phone.
• Love Bubbles: Kyoko's fantasies are full of these. Ren also pulls them off when he's legitimately happy or appealing, it burns Kyoko's evil demons.
• Love Epiphany: Ren has one about Kyouko and it almost sends him into a Heroic BSoD.
  • Likewise, when Kyoko starts to think she might have feelings for Ren, she also nearly goes into a Heroic BSoD.

• Love Triangle: Ren is in love with Kyouko, who can't love anyone 'cause her heart is full of hatred towards Shou, who eventually develops feelings for her, too. In conclusion, a pretty hard rebus to solve!
  • As of chapter 200, Kyoko has also fallen in love with Ren and Sho no longer holds the dominant place in her heart. However, she's still too afraid to pursue any kind of relationship, so the triangle is still intact as far as Ren and Sho know.
• Meaningful Name: Ren's actual name, Kuon, means 'eternity', tying into the Arc Symbol of the eternity sign that shows up in the interactions between himself and Kyoko.
• Method Acting:invoked As stated above, this is Kyoko's main way of acting. Occasionally she gets Lost in Character. Examples include:
  • Her early acting as a test-substitute for Ruri has Kyoko play a ryokan worker and sit in seiza on what is a heavily sprained ankle, yet retains a pleasantly smiling face towards 'the customer' Ren, as per her being taught to act like that by Shou's mother years ago. Despite being in tremendous pain while putting weight on the ankle, she doesn't slip up once... until the director realize she's pale, sweating and yet still remains in character, stating she will 'not leave her place until the customer leaves', which is when Ren steps off the stage and Kyoko faints.
  • Sho's music video in which she uses her own relationship with Moko to understand the sadness of killing a man her best friend loves and having her friend forever hate her, but also relishing in the joy of saving that same friend.
  • Kyoko does this when she gets into her character for Dark Moon. Everyone's shock is real because they didn't know how Kyoko would present her character. It was so unexpected and shocking that Director Ogata falls to his knees.
  • Kyoko got Lost in Character in the Box R arc. In character, she and some other girls were supposed to bully a girl in a cruel manner. Kyoko is so caught up in character that she begins to goad the rest of the girls into bullying the girl for real, forcing the girl to drink cup after cup of tea and nearly choking her. Even Kyoko is amazed at how far she went when she finally breaks character.
  • Enforced by Takarada when she played Setsuka Heel. Since she was supposed to always be the sister, she ends up in a 24h Setsuka-mode for almost a week and only slips out of the role whenever something happens that actually troubles or irritated Kyouko enough to break character.
• Mukokuseki: Especially in regards to hair color - the majority of characters are Japanese, and most of those characters have naturally dark hair. Those who don't have dark hair usually have an explanation for it:
  • Kyoko starts the series with black hair, and is shown going to the salon to have it dyed a more trendy chestnut/ cinnamon brown (though it's closer to orange in the illustrations). When she shows up to audition for the role of the ninja Momiji in A Lotus in the Mire, the Producer dismisses her and two other girls with brown hair outright, because that hair color isn't conducive to playing a character in a period drama.
  • Although Sho's hair is usually drawn a more golden color, flashbacks to his childhood reveal that he had dark hair up until some time in middle school.
  • Kuu Hizuri, who is half American and half Japanese, has bright blond hair. His natural hair color is unknown, but he dyes his hair to match his wife and son. Ren Tsuruga has only ever appeared in public with dark hair, but his natural hair color is "sparkling" blond. Additionally, he wear colored contacts to make his spring green eyes appear dark in order to pass for 100% Japanese when in reality he is only a quarter Japanese.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Most of the stunts Kyoko pulls, including the Artistic Radish Peeling with BURNING POWER. And the less we talk about her imagination spots, the better. Incidentally, Daikon (as in radish) can also mean a Bad Actor, Kyoko probably didn't see the significance of this when she used it in her audition.
• My Beloved Smother: Mostly parents in the setting tend toward the neglectful end of the spectrum, but Kuu's parental love is intense enough that he's jealous of the girl his son likes, and even Takarada calls his love excessive. He doesn't appear to have been intentionally controlling, just incidentally overbearing, but there haven't been enough flashbacks to be certain.
• My Acting Is Stronger Than Yours: This is Kyoko's motivation when it comes to even entering show-biz. Shou says she's too plain to ever beat him if she were to enter the business, so she's intent on learning how to act and beat him. It's also one of her main motivations, initially, when it comes to Ren. She wants to be such an amazing actress that she'll out-act him and have him acknowledge this.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: In-Universe. Kanae just doesn't like to work with children. Not because she's a Child Hater (she isn't), but because she has a lot of younger siblings and nieces and nephews who can only be controlled by playful brute force, and she knows that she tends to act the same way with child actors, which is inappropriate behavior when the kid isn't related to you. She has changed her mind a bit ever since she befriended Hiou though.
• No Hero to His Valet: Working in the Love Me section, which initially is a sort of dogsbody position, give Kyoko a close perspective on the private behavior of famous people, when they're not worrying about their images. A lot of them are jerks.
  • Before that, she knew all Fuwa Shou's private behaviors, although he was her hero then, despite not deserving it on any level. She invokes this trope in retrospect during the Bridge Rock incident and in the very significant salt-passing incident during his PV.
• Nosebleed: Kyoko has one in response to Moko asking her out for ice cream in an over-the-top tearful manner, and calling her by her first name without honorifics.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • Kyoko realizes early that Mimori Nanokura acts similarly to how Kyoko used to act - like a girl deeply in love with Sho, who is eager to please Sho and speak badly of people he doesn't like (Ren). Kyoko feels a bit ashamed about how she used to bad-mouth Ren despite not knowing him at all, realizes what a fool she was to not see Sho's nasty side and how he never loved her and at the same time pity Mimori, because neither does she.
  • Noticing that she and Kyoko share many traits and have similar ways of thinking prompts Kanae to warm up to her. This is also why she reacted strongly to when she first saw Kyoko sewing. It reminded her of her housewife-role and taking care of her siblings in the Kotonami household, which she is desperately trying to not get associated with.
  • Chiori's first big role was that of Akari, and she became well-known as 'the girl who played Akari'. Her fame was based around a single role and she was only offered roles for characters similar to Akari, leaving her to suffer from this stigma. She realizes that Kyoko's career is going a similar path — her first role was Mio and she became known as 'the girl who played Mio', but Kyoko was able to rather quickly shed the image of being no other character-type than Mio, much to Chiori's resentment.
  • After Saene tells Kyoko about her failure, and why she's so distant to her, Kyoko mentions that she, too, was once a complete fool and taken advantage of because she had been in love.
• Oblivious to Love: Kyoko. So, so much. The reason for this is the "love" part of her brain died, and she can no longer take a hint when she should. In fact, Ren regulary gives her ridiculous rules and suggestions (only the second kiss is a real one), solely to make sure that she doesn't just blindly walks along with someone flirting on her.
• One Head Taller: Kyoko and every Love Interest in the series who's not Ren. She's closer to his sternum.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Used a lot, mostly for drama. Most closely following the trope is when the part of Ren's violent meltdown in chapter 194 that Kyoko focuses on as showing things have gotten really messed up is that he's broken character to have it. The Tsuruga Ren she knows would not stop acting in the middle for personal reasons. Being OOC is OOC, and therefore serious.
  • This trope becomes a mass of confusion around Ren, who at one point had an OOC moment while he was an actor playing a different actor playing a different actor playing a psychopath. The moment consisted of his actual identity being more violently insane than the serial killer he was playing.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Kyoko's feelings toward Shou. Shou himself may feel this toward Ren.
• Only Six Faces: Add this with similar hairstyles and each character is basically indistinguishable from each other. Most characers being actors and thus often wearing wigs doesn't make it any easier. In recent chapters, the author has even commented that despite Kanae and the young, 20-something flashback version of Kyoko's mother being drawn similarly, they are in no way related.
• Overly Long Hug: Cain's lingering hug with his sister Satsuka in Volume 34 ends up disturbing the actors who witness it, and Murasame chastises them for being perverted as he forces them apart.
• Parental Abandonment: Kyoko's father is implied to be dead, and her mother just doesn't care about her. May not have seen her since leaving her at the Fuwa inn when she was six or so. Maria's mother died in a airplane crash, and she and her father are too hurt to try to get closer to each other.
• Parental Substitute: The Daruyama couple seems to be this to Kyoko very often, even if she claims to not understand what a loving parents/children relationship should be like.
  • Around chapter 107, Kuu steps in considerably in an emotional sense, although since he lives in America he doesn't become a day-to-day resource. It's not clear whether they're even in regular contact, but he is her 'father' now, and did a lot in a short while to help with the issues her mother gave her.
    • Which will be convenient if she eventually marries his son.
• Parents as People: Kyoko's mother, Mogami Saena, was a young, promising, uptight if somewhat emotionally stunted and naive attorney in a major firm handling a very important case. Her boyfriend at the time was her opposite: an easygoing, kind man who had failed the bar examination multiple times. He turned out to be a corporate spy who ended up taking key pieces of evidence left to Saena for review after befriending her, seducing her and drugging her. The lost evidence cost the case for the firm. Saena became pregnant with her boyfriend's child, Kyoko. In midst of the depression that ensued from her personal shame and feelings of failure, she missed the cut-off point for a legal abortion and in any case was emotionally conflicted about having an abortion. Her career was saved thanks to a senior partner and one of her coworkers who formed an independent firm and invited her to join. Saena did eventually become a very successful and well-respected attorney, if considered somewhat cold and unapproachable by most. The image of Saena as an extremely cold and inattentive mother as seen through Kyoko's eyes is thus explained, though not excused, by Saena's personal fear of being unable to love a child without reservation, lingering resentment over her lost career and personal betrayal, and the stress she likely experienced while being a small firm attorney starting over again.
• Parents Suck at Matchmaking: A villainous example. Shou's parents want him to marry their foster daughter Kyoko, so the two will inherit their inn. Shou doesn't want any of this and goes to Tokyo to become a singer; however, he takes Kyoko with him because he knows she'll work hard to sustain him and act as his servant. Subverted later: long after Kyoko learned the truth and decided to become a star to get revenge for his abuse, Shou feels jealous because of her friendship with his rival Tsuruga Ren. He becomes a Stalker with a Crush.
• Passive Aggressive Combat: Tsuruga and Kijima have a very faux-friendly one over calling or texting as proxy to who is closer to Kyouko. Ren, of course, rationalizes this as protecting her from someone who might innocently hurt her. Kyouko's "Mio" is also very much like this.
• Pimped-Out Dress: A few examples:
  • Kyoko and Mimori both wear very intricate angel costumes while filming the promotional video for Sho's song "Prisoner."
  • Kijima, one of Kyoko's coworkers on Dark Moon, had heard that Kyoko's hair and makeup in her role as "Natsu" made her look prettier and more mature. Since he's a consummate womanizer, he wrangles Kyoko into a salon prior to the Dark Moon cast party and tells them to make her look "twice as mature and beautiful." Apparently this included a long wig and a rental dress with long, fluttery embellishments and high heels .
• Poor Communication Kills: Or at least keeps half the plot running. Sometimes gets a tad ugly, like over the stalker thing. Generally in the form of Ren getting upset with Kyoko, but not always.
• Power Born of Madness: Kyoko has a series of dark powers, particularly being able to control demons and voodoo. Yes, really.
• The Power of Love: Lory Takarada firmly believes in this. The other characters...not so much.
• Precocious Crush: Hiou for Kanae.
• Pretty in Mink: Some of the outfits.
• Rags to Royalty: How Kyouko initially envisions her relationship with Shou.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Near the end of episode 12 Moko delivers an epic one to Erika.
• Revenge Before Reason: Kyoko struggles with this sometimes.
• Rich Bitch: Erika, Moko's childhood nemesis
• Satellite Love Interest: Meta/Deconstructed. Kyoko realizes that she was Sho’s Satellite Love Interest, causing a brief Heroic BSoD when she realizes that she has no identity of her own. A lot of the series deals with her working to rectify this.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: Ren and Kyoko.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: The modus operandi of two antagonists so far:
  • Erika Koenji, whose father is the head of the powerful Koenji group. Overlaps with Screw the Rules, I Have Money!, as Erika is portrayed as a Rich Bitch who throws her father's money around to get what she wants. She used this power to keep Kanae out of acting during elementary and middle school. She attempted to do so again during an audition for a role in a soda commercial that both she and Kanae tried out for:
    Erika: No. 1, Erika Koenji! My hobbies are horseback riding and traveling overseas. I'm good at elegant classical ballet, as you can see, which I dance like a pro!
    Top Manager of Kaindo Dorinko: Koenji! You're—
    Erika: The daughter of the head of the Koenji Group? My dream has always been to become a star and represent Japan. I have the confidence to become one! If you use me, the Koenji Group will do everything in our power to make this new product a hit!
  • Kimiko Morizumi, who uses her connections to get roles in television shows and movies. Yashiro mentions that she has "show business in her blood," meaning she has many family members who also work in the industry. Two have been mentioned so far: her father, who directed the second season of Purple Down and pushed for her to have the role opposite of Ren Tsuruga; and her uncle Jouji, the producer of The Lotus in the Mire, who is helping Kimiko get the role of "Momiji." Although Kimiko failed to score the part, rumor has it she pushed the girl who did into oncoming traffic. She's back for the second round of auditions, and so far it's been shown that she isn't above cheating and spying to get her role.
• Secret Identity: Ren doesn't know that Kyoko is the one inside the Bo costume, and Kyoko doesn't know that Ren is her childhood friend, Corn. Later that he's Hizuri Kuon, who she believes to have died when he was fifteen, thanks to Kuu's rather vague references.
• Security Blanket: "Corn," despite being a stone, manages to fall into this category.
• Seiza Squirm: During an audition, Kyoko has to sit in seiza with a broken ankle. She pulls it off beautifully for several minutes... and then faints but not until the scene ends, though!
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Yashiro and Ren.
• Set Behind the Scenes: The drama doesn't stop when the director yells cut — as Kyoko, Kanae, and Ren (and a whole host of other characters) are actors, a good chunk of the story takes place between takes of whichever film scene/ tv series/ soda commercial is currently being filmed.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Post-breakup, Kyoko and Sho end up saying this a lot.
  • Also, Moko would like you to acknowledge that she and Kyoko are NOT best friends (though she is starting to complain less about this).
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Kyoko never uses make up on herself, because she can't afford it. But when she does get made up she really surprises everyone around her.
• Shipper on Deck: Yashiro, Ren's manager. He is very persistent.
  • The President of LME has his moments, too. He tends to use less direct methods, however.
• Shout-Out: When Kyoko helps Maria arrange a party to express her gratitude to the people around her, they're approached by a mysterious benefactor only known as Uncle Long Legs...
• Show Within a Show: To be expected. Kyoko and her best friend Moko end up doing a lot of acting once their careers get off the ground; Ren was already an established actor by the time the series started; and Sho, who is a pop star, ends up doing commercials and promotional videos regularly. Most of the in-series shows are type 1, where "characters are involved in the production of the show." Some examples include:
  • Ring-Doh, a drama/ mystery film set near the sea, it stars Ren Tsuruga and LME idol Ruriko Matsunai. One of Kyoko's first big jobs for the Love-Me Section was to escort Ruriko to the set of Ring-Doh. The set also became the site of an acting battle between Ruriko and Kyoko, which was all part of a ploy to cure Ruriko of her spoiled personality and habit of quitting when things didn't go her way.
  • The Miraculous Language of Angels, a play selected specifically by LME president Lory Takarada for the drama trainees to practice. Also counts as a type 4 example ["the internal show... is eerily similar to the real show"] because the conflict of the play (a little girl views herself as the cause of her mother's death and thinks her family blames her) mirrors the conflict that Lory's granddaughter Maria is having.
  • Yappa Kimagure Rock, the variety show where Kyoko lands a regular job as a giant chicken.
  • Tsukigomori, a drama series from 20 years ago that focused on Katsuki, a man hellbent on revenge against the corrupt Hongo family, who are responsible for the murder of Katsuki's parents and brother. To enact his revenge, he hides his identity and becomes engaged to Misao, the daughter of the family's patriarch. But Katsuki's plans for revenge are complicated when he finds himself falling for her cousin Mizuki, who is a kindhearted girl despite being brought up by her cruel aunt and uncle. Further complicating matters is Misao's little sister Mio, a tragically scarred girl with hatred in her heart, who begins to notice the budding attraction between Katsuki and Mizuki. Starred Kuu Hizuri (stage name Shuuhei Hozu) as Katsuki and Hiroko Iizuka as Mio, directed by Hirotaka Date.
  • Dark Moon, a remake of Tsukigomori that retained the same premise but diverged from the plot about half way through. Starred Ren Tsuruga as Katsuki, Hiroko Iizuka as Ms. Hongo, and Kyoko as Mio. Directed by Hiroaki Ogata (formerly Hiroaki Date).
  • Box "R", a high school drama series about a good-natured girl who runs afoul of her school's biggest bully, a sadistic teen whose methods are a step up from the usual Stock Shoujo Bullying Tactics. Stars Kyoko as Natsu Kitazawa, the main antagonist; and Chiori Amamiya as Yumika, a member of Natsu's clique.
  • Tragic Marker, a supernatural horror/ thriller film about an undead serial killer called BJ who returns to wreck havoc years after being gunned down by the police. Notable in that for much of the filming, Ren needed to keep his identity a secret and lived under the guise of an actor named Cain Heel. Sensing that this might strain his already fragile psych, Lory created the role of Setsuka Heel for Kyoko to fill — Lory knew that Ren needed this role to beat his own inner demons, and he was willing to bet that Kyoko's influence would help Ren find some inner peace. Stars Ren Tsuruga (under the alias Cain Heel) as Black Jack/ Killer BJ and Taira Murasame as Koji. Directed by Konoe.
  • A Lotus in the Mire, a historical piece about the Wandering Samurai "Shizuma." Both Kyoko and Kanae are vying for roles in this production: Kanae because Lory told her to and Kyoko because she wants to co-star with Moko.
  • Purple Down and Purple Down II, both of which were television series. Ren Tsuruga and Kimiko Morizumi co-starred in the second season. Notably, Kimiko Morizumi's father directed the second season, and she was able to use her connection with him to get herself cast.
  • The Minamori Miyako Series, a murder mystery series. Kanae Kotonami and Hiou Useugi have reoccurring roles in the series.
• Smoking Is Cool: Cain Heel.
• So Beautiful, It's a Curse: When Ren is walking around Guam with his natural appearance as a form of disguise, heads constantly turn in the background, random strange girls approach him with invitations to tea in hopes of nabbing him, and ultimately he goes and hang out on the beach in hopes that he will be left alone there.
  • He escapes the forward girls by pretending to only speak Russian.
• Spell My Name With An S: A minor example, but the ou-versus-o romanization varies even within this very page.
  • Also LME's president's first name. Rory or Lory? It's often romanized as Rory or Rori, though it's implied to be Lory because the company is called Lory's Majestic Entertainment and according to the mangaka his name comes from the Lory bird.
• Stalker with a Crush: Reino, towards Kyoko. At first, he wanted to steal her away from Sho and anger him; nowadays, he's just in love with her dark and hateful side.
  • Also really likes messing with her. I mean, how many sadistic psychics get to hold people's emotional astral projections hostage in exchange for chocolate? He even states that he finds her demon cute and is saddened that he has to give it back.
• Stealth Mentor: Ren ends up as Kyoko’s, frequently giving her advice on how to succeed in show business, in spite of their mutual dislike for one another.
  • Later on, there's no stealth about it, and she's running straight to her 'esteemed sempai' whenever she feels she can't handle something. This eventually includes him training her to do the female version of the catwalk, which Yashiro appears to regard as a Mind Screw. Neither Yashiro nor the audience get to see him do it, though.
• Stepford Smiler: Played with. Kyoko-Before wasn't quite this because she refused to be unhappy, or at least to admit it to herself. Ren is like this but as someone driven to be 'the best' has a lot of Broken Ace, plus extra identity issues. Amamiya is like this but only to get ahead; she hates everyone. And pretty nearly every character is hiding something.
  • The theme that the 'show-biz world' runs on image comes up a lot. Takarada and Yashiro are pretty much the only major characters not hiding anything about themselves.
• Stock Shoujo Bullying Tactics: Kyoko has dealt with the entire list, from having her desk hidden to being ignored by her entire class. She notes that that sort of tactic is so common that she couldn't even use it for reference for her role.
• Stripperiffic: Seen mostly on the male characters. Sho and his look-alikes, Vie Ghoul, favor outfits with sheer fabric. Also, this outfit.◊
  • In fact, the only female to dress like this is Setsuka "Setsu" Heel, a character portrayed by Kyoko.
• Stupid Sexy Flanders: Kyoko causes this on one of her cast-mates once.
• Super-Deformed: Kyoko can shrink into this at the slightest provocation with happiness, excitement or anger. Also, every remotely silly scene has the characters suddenly resembling lollipops.
  • The Ren chibis can be ridiculously cute and were central to his character development for a while, since they showed all the things that weren't his cool persona, like snarking with Kyoko in the 'false princess' arc, or sulking at "Bo."
  • The style is generally used to control the mood; i.e. three panels of awkward silence between SD characters produce much less tension than the same event depicted in full detail. The ambiguity of whether things written in smalltext are actually said aloud is also leveraged regularly in the manga, leading to a number of jokes and subtleties that can't be transferred to the anime because time is the primary constraint of anime, rather than space. Except in a couple of cases where the 'sub'text actually appeared in the background.
• Supreme Chef: Kyoko, increasingly.
• Surrogate Soliloquy: Kyoko confides in her Corn-stone, telling it her worries and sorrows. The previous owner apparently treated it in the same manner. Kyoko also frequently converses with her posters of Ren and Sho or her Voodoo dolls.
• Sweet Polly Oliver: Invoked when Kyoko is told to act as Kuu's son.
• Take Back Your Gift: When Kyoko refuses to confide in Moko, the latter gives back the Kyoko-shaped curse doll that the former had given her and declares their friendship over. Kyoko promptly changes her tune.
• Technician Versus Performer: Subverted slightly, in that Kyoko and Moko aren't technically enemies.
• The Perfectionist: Kyoko forced herself to be this, as it was the only way to get her mother's approval.
• Through His Stomach: Kyoko has a long history of using food to gain approval and affection from the men in her life. First with Sho, later with Ren and even with Kuu (although he's a father-figure). Kuu suggests that making food for her children would be a good expression of love, and Kyoko responds that that's true, since "making food is something that can be done just for show." (This in context manages to be a Crowning Moment Of Heartbreaking. The ice queen face on Kyoko is painful on its own.)
  • Ren made... something in Chapter 168 which he insisted Kyoko eat, possibly with this intention, though there's some kind of bizarre private motive involved. His food-prep skills take after his mother instead of his father, though, so it is not a happy occasion. He may have been partly messing with her, and he seems to want her there for moral support while he eats his own cooking for obscure emotional reasons. They did some bonding over it anyway.
    • The Omui Rice is revealed in a flashback in the next chapter to be related to the mysterious figure Rick, who seems to have been Kuon's mentor. Also revealed: Ren's mind always worked in strange and mysterious ways, and he used to be almost as bad as Kyoko about it.
• Trickster Mentor: Takarada loves and cares for his chosen protegees, and they live in fear of his weird manipulations and the awkward situations they frequently cause in the name of their eventual emotional well-being. Ren especially, as his special project, is in the habit of assuming he has ulterior motives for pretty much everything. Usually he cannot figure out what these are until much too late.
• Ultimate Job Security: The director for BoxR should have been sued or something by now; a lot of the stuff he's been allowing or demanding from Natsu's group is actual, literal, unstaged torture of the actress playing the victim. Quite apart from the potential to set her on fire in the first scene, she had tea poured down her throat so she could either swallow or drown, while her head was wrenched back by her hair... They play it as just one of those things that happen on the job!
• Uncanny Valley: Invoked in series, as quite a few onlookers are thoroughly disturbed by the "Super Real Tsuragu Ren Special Size Doll" Kyoko gives Maria as a present - and that's before she introduces the swappable faces...
  Yashiro: Am I the only one who thinks that doll looks a little too realistic?
• Unlucky Childhood Friend: Kyoko certainly at the beginning of the story was one. Now she'd be the Victorious Childhood Friend, except that she doesn't care for him anymore. Ren (while he was still Kuon/Corn) had a very important, if short, childhood friendship. But of course, only if the mangaka were to finally get them together.
• Unstoppable Rage: What gives Kyoko her occasional superpowers, except when it's a burning will to fulfill some kind of duty. Also, Ren has a problem with this sometimes. By which we mean once. With a goon who never got another name than 'Seaweed-head.' It preoccupies him rather, though.
  • It's not just once anymore. Apparently as Kuon he had a bit of a rage issue, and giving into it was what got Rick killed. The Stepford Smiler that was Tsuruga Ren is cracking to bits, and he's become prone to fits of violence. Thus far, a fight scene rehearsal segued into an actual murder attempt against an aggravating co-star, and he shoved Kyoko around for contacting Shou.
• Voodoo Doll: Odd for a manga about being an idol. Kyoko uses them alot, although some of her dolls, far from being creepy are actually rather cute.
• Wax On, Wax Off: The first part of Kyoko's sword training under Hio's grandfather Kotetsu Uesugi. After a brief assessment of Kyoko's swordsmanship, he tells her that she ought to stay off to the side and cheer for Kanae, even giving her a baton to twirl. Kyoko has no idea how to twirl a baton, but after four days of non-stop practice she can handle two of them at once. Instead of letting Kyoko back onto the dojo floor, Kotetsu gives her clubs and a gymnastics ball to practice with. Kyoko asks Hio if she's being shunned or if she's offended Kotetsu in any way, and Hio tells her that this is just his grandfather's method of training. The part that Kyoko wants to try out for is a ninja who uses two short swords, so having her get familiar with dual-wielding batons and clubs is only the first step of her training; Kotetsu eventually lets Kyoko participate in class with Kanae and his other students. And it turns out the the clubs had blades hidden in the handles — not only was Kyoko practicing how to manipulate two weapons at once, she was also learning the weight and balance of the weapon she would eventually take with her to the audition.
• Willing Channeler: Kyoko appears able to control the evil spirits that float around her, even holding people in place with them.
• Will They or Won't They?: Between Ren and Kyoko, to the point that a significant portion of the fan base has to take periodic breaks from the series due to sheer frustration.
• Why Did You Make Me Hit You?: Invoked by Kyoko and Moko when they're auditioning for an ad. The two were supposed to perform the roles of 2 best friends who got into an argument after one of them "stole" the guy the other has a crush on. Moko starts this by slapping Kyoko before breaking down in tears, forcing Kyoko to apologize.
• Woman Scorned: Kyoko, with good reason.

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