I generally love romance, and read a ton of shoujo for romance, so I'm not saying this because I generally dislike romance. The problem I have with it is that literally all the men chasing her are trash, and I can't help but feel that Kyoko's absolutely right to think she should never fall in love again, even though part of the point of Skip Beat is supposed to be that she needs to learn to love again cuz love is just so important or something. Sho is made to be a cad from the beginning, so it's not really unexpected that he's a terrible potential partner, though he also rather majorly escalates his terrible-ness around chapter 150, so that in my mind he's no longer just a completely selfish jerk taking advantage of her, but more of an actual abuser playing mind games on her. Then there's Reino, a literal stalker that attempts to rape her. Then there's the cannon love interest Ren, who for me is also a giant no. It's common with romance for the romances to be unrealistic such that if look at it critically at all, the relationship is creepy or even abusive (Twilight, anyone?), and Ren X Kyoko is DEFINITELY in this category. So plenty of people will read it, and not be bothered by it, but I'm sure there will be others like me who will pick up on the fact that 1. Kyoko is constantly scared of Ren 2. Ren is VERY possessive of her even when he has no reason to believe she's even interested in him at all 3. Ren constantly uses textbook gaslighting and emotional manipulation on Kyoko in order to make her do what he wants. It's the kind of thing less critical readers get into, because they like the dark, tragic, even a little dangerous, love interests, but I just can't like this relationship, because Ren is just so often mean to her, or not looking out for her best interests, rather he prioritizes his own jealousy and desire of maybe winning her over someday over anything else, and I feel like Kyoko deserves a NORMAL relationship, when her only other sort-of relationship was actually her just being used very badly.
Other negative points include:
* The silly subplot where the grudge Kyokos are actually real and can be sensed by others, when the rest of the story is grounded in the real world, and all the other silliness is just comedic exaggeration.
* The art. It gives the impression at first of having pretty good art for shoujo, but once you notice the character's proportions are pretty inconsistent and often exaggerated to the point of ludicrousness you can't unsee it. The male characters in particular tend to have comically long torsos and even more comically long limbs topped with teeny tiny heads.
* Details about living as a half-Japanese/half-caucasian person in America are crucial to the plot and completely, ridiculously wrong, which also makes it hard to take seriously. Though admittedly, this part hit me harder personally because I AM a half-Japanese/half-caucasian person living in America.
