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Skip Beat Shōjo Manga to Get Taiwanese TV Drama
posted on by Egan Loo
A live-action television drama version of Yoshiki Nakamura's Skip Beat! shōjo coming-of-age manga has been announced in a press conference in Taiwan on Monday. The story centers on a teenager named Kyōko who followed her childhood friend Shō to Tokyo as he pursues his show business dreams. Despite playing housekeeper for Shō, Kyōko overhears Shō dismissing her as a boring nobody. Furious, Kyōko vows to also become an actress and "defeat" Shō.
Two idol stars of previous Taiwanese drama versions of shōjo manga will headline this new production. Ariel Lin, the actress who starred in the live-action It Started With a Kiss adaptation of Kaoru Tada's Itazura na Kiss manga, will play Kyōko. Jerry Yan rose to international stardom in the Meteor Garden drama retelling of Yōko Kamio's Hana Yori Dango manga, and he will now take on the Skip Beat! role of Kyōko's acting mentor Ren Tsuruga.
The original Skip Beat! manga has been running in Hakusensha's Hana to Yume magazine since 2002, and 6 million copies of the first 20 volumes have been published. An anime version just premiered in Japan last month, and it is running on Taiwanese television nearly simultaneously with its Japanese broadcast. There are plans to release the live-action Taiwanese drama version in Japan on DVD and on the Internet. Viz Media just shipped the 15th volume of the manga in North America this month.
Source: Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web
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