As a worldwide partner of 2020 Tokyo Olympic Game, SK-II presents a campaign which relate to the spirit of game, especially to the female athlete. Recently, they created an animated series entitled “VS”. Originally made in SK-II Studio, the series has 6 episodes. The series itself depicts several typical problems in the society, in particular related to an athlete in the ‘battlefield’ that become big challenge they should encounter either during the game or before/after, and even in their personal life. But in general, those themes that are represented in each episode can be associated to what women experience in the society as well as the issues that become a barrier.

Let us take a look to each episode and elaborate what we can learn from:

1. VS Pressure” = How to Battle Hesitation in Our Mind

The first one, SK-II portrays a Japanese table tennis player, Kasumi Ishikawa, who is struggling in battling herself and her self-doubt. With a lot of critics, self-thinking about “can I really do this?”, such a hesitation can really become a “pressure” for us when we are trying to pursue our dream. Thus, the hesitation itself will be the hardest opponent that we have ever encountered. However, at the ending part of the episode, Ishikawa got a huge power to successfully fight against her doubt that has been disrupting her focus to catch her dream. As result, we know that too much dreaming sounds nonrealistic, but if we really want to be a winner, we really have to focus and don’t listen to what people say about us, just keep moving forward to gain what we want. Then, pressure is just a small portion in being a success, hence we are so powerful to get through that easily.

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2. “VS Rules” = Remind Us to Firmly Follow Our Heart

This episode picturizes the beauty standards in Japan. Doesn’t mean to discredit Asian or Japanese culture, but beauty standards in Asia is still exist in the society, even the civilization has been developed. Mahina Maeda as Japanese surfer feels so pressured by the rules within the beauty standard which strongly drives her to be uncomfortable, also the rules itself are not representing herself. She considers that the beauty rules are contradictory to her character especially as an athlete which should remain be powerful and strong. However, in the end of the episode, she gets up and firmly persistent to be what she wants even it’s not following the rules. Then, Maeda realizes that rules doesn’t make her stop to get what she wants, so she makes her own and follow her heart instead of the rules. This episode solidly remind us that we don’t need to always fulfill the society’s expectations, otherwise, we can really make our rules and use our intuition to behave, act, and catch our dreams.   

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3. “VS Obsession” = Don’t Forget to be Who We Truly Are

Sometimes our rival is not about challenge. A fame, being popular, showered by so many compliments; are also a foe. Why? Because that could ruin our focus to achieve our dream, especially to maintain our success. In this episode, Liu Xiang is starred as professional swimmer who is diving into an image-obsessed world. She has so many fans and people really admire her looks and appearance, but the attention and admiration aside herself as swimmer, thus she gets strayed away from being who she is. Luckily, she can stand up for her persistence to keep being on track as swimmer. From this episode, what we can learn is no matters how many fans we have or compliments we get, we have to keep moving and focus on what we’re doing. The very important one is to always keep being ourselves and don’t let a fame become our opponent to against our identity.

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4. “VS Machine” = Human Connection Wins The World

In a robotic world in the future, a Japanese Badminton duo, Ayaka Takahashi and Misaki Matsutomo, are programmed with machine-like mindsets and are fight against each other to achieve cold, cheerless perfection. Despite of that, they learn to resist and break free of “The Machine” by standing on what truly defines them; the human connection they share. From this episode, we can understand how sport team works especially for the double or mix double as in Badminton. Because playing with strategy is not enough to win the competition, making connection between one to another including a feeling and intuition is way more important. Hence, it will let the team have smooth, energetic, powerful, and well-linked game. Because athlete is also human being who have emotional traits to let the game become balance between skill, teamwork, logic tactic, and feelings altogether as one big spirit; not robot who can be set up perfectly and doing everything on demand without enjoying the game or feeling the excitement.

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5. “VS Limitation” = More People+More Power=Real Success

If as individual player faces problem that only involve one person, him/herself, but as a team, the challenge becomes even harder. In this episode, it depicts Japan Women’s National Volleyball Team (Hinotori Nippon) how they overcome a problem as team. Tactic, plan, teamwork, and gathering spirit are very essential. Otherwise, they are facing a limitation; limit to move, limit to act, and limit to maximize power. Hence, a team needs to push their limit to fight against limitation by unifying their power and joint forces to nail the game.

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6. “VS Trolls” = Don’t Lose Focus!

‘Overthinking’ happens anywhere and to anyone, including an athlete. Simone Biles as the main character of this episode is picturized how athlete facing some barriers, for instance to confront haters, bullies, and shamers which drives her to think negatively, and this negative vibe can disturb her focus and move. But she decided to move on and fight to defeat those insolences, hence she positively proves that a victim can be a victor. What we can learn about this episode is, even though there are a lot of negative comments about us, we still get positive spirit from other people that loyally cheer us up and have supports from another source. As results, trolls have both sides: can trap and throwing us to a deep well, or, can pulling up to have more spirit in moving forward. As long as we can distract our mind to always be in the positive side, we will always get through the obstacle and win the game and continually be a winner.

We can acknowledge that SK-II not only wants to increase its branding to the public, but also giving inspiration to people especially to women which are still deemed to have limitation, tied by rules, and unrelease from inhibition. Consequently, those 6 episodes of “VS” by highlighting hashtag #ChangeDestiny demonstrate that: it is okay to speak up, tenacious on our principles, emit our true color, and keep in mind to have well-maintained connection to other people in order to be able to make good cooperation both in the professional situation and also non-professional matters.

Through this series, we can also see that the ‘enemies’ that the athletes encounter are actually something that people see and confront in the daily life, undoubtedly for women. For instance, athlete’s typical disturbance that we can take from each episode are: lack of focus, tiredness, egoistical traits, feeling unconfident, even experiencing insecurity and facing popularity. So, if you can think that those challenges are faced only by the athlete, no, definitely incorrect! Those definitely also happens to women in every country in every continent in the entire world because in real life, women are still facing a number of stigma in the society, just like what you have seen from each episode’s conclusion above. Therefore, these 6 inspired stories will never be taught in any schools, except from SK-II, because SK-II understands what women feel about those stigmas that are still rooted in the society. Also, this series proves that there’s still a beauty brand like SK-II who’s hugely concerned about it, hence willing to empower and support women to have a strong spirit every time facing any kind of challenges (or those like the athlete have been experienced) and know what to do to get through it.