Beauty Pop

That said, as much as I liked the characters, the scenarios the author came up with were pretty weak and repetitive. When literally every single opponent has to lie, cheat, and steal to even have a chance of competing against the main crew, and there's nobody who's just honestly more skilled than them, there can be no real sense of growth in their abilities, or even a concrete idea of what their skill level is to begin with. Rival students, other genius beauticians, nationally famous professional stylists, everyone is on the same generic level of "not as good" as the main characters, and they all instinctively know that they can't possibly win through actual skill and will have to resort to underhanded methods no matter what. It's really kind of pathetic.

They can't even fulfill their roles as despicable foes properly, because the author isn't interested in having them face any consequences for their actions. Sabotage, institutional corruption, vandalism, attempted blackmail, outright theft of expensive cosmetics equipment; over and over, random acts of assholery edge into literal crimes, but rarely will anybody be expected to take any kind of responsibility for their actions. Occasionally they'll apologise, occasionally they'll be rewarded with a stylish new haircut, but more often than not they'll just carry on about their business like nothing happened.

As a result, the author portrays the beauty industry as a corrupt and spiteful profession, rife with bribery and backstabbing and egomaniacal blowhards who will foment intense and lasting grudges based on purely imaginary slights to their pride, desperately stamping out objectively superior talent by any means necessary. Somehow I don't think that's quite the message the author wanted to send, but that's what the manga ended up being about. Oh well.