Skip Beat! 5 by Yoshiki Nakamura: A-

From the back cover:
Kyoko lands a regular role on a TV show… as a giant chicken. Not content to settle for poultry recognition, Kyoko tries out for a big commercial. At the audition she runs into her Love Me-rival Moko, who’s having rival woes of her own. With a jealous rich girl out to bring them down, can Kyoko and Moko overcome their differences and act as a team to trounce the competition?

Review:
… Poultry recognition? I think that joke might be so bad it’s good.

This volume centered on an audition for a commercial and though I didn’t like the jealous rich girl at all—I’m kind of tired of seeing imperious rich girls randomly show up in manga (there was one recently in Ouran)—it turned out to be really cool.

The best bits were the last few chapters where, after performing one audition segment by reacting to Moko’s lead, Kyoko had to conceive of a routine herself and be the one to steer the scene, something she’d never done before. She ended up thinking of something clever (of course) that not only fulfilled the requirements of the routine but also seemed to expose a trust the girls had in each other’s abilities.

I really liked seeing these two begin to become friends. In any other series, these characters would probably be cast as the villains, but here they’re sympathetic. I was also happy at the result of the audition—I love that Kyoko’s path to stardom is slow, because it really allows one to rejoice when a good break finally happens.

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