@Nyali_artidjo_feng yeah, that’s probably what I dislike most about this story. Its one of those you can tell where the plot is going immediately. I’ve read that plot before, but with a better story.
@Mikubanzai the thing is, I can’t give her sympathy when she’s propagating the bulling and dragging other people into her problems because she’s kinda dumb (I mean the whole thing started because she fell into the most obvious trap setup I’ve seen in a highschool story. Really why would you hold something for the people that are bullying you?)
At this point, I just can’t give the mc any sympathy. “Because I’m being bullied”, doesn’t feel like enough of a reason for me to forget that this is kinda her own fault for falling for her an obvious trap, she’s not doing ANYTHING to even try to help herself (her parents aren’t being particularly abusive and seem to love her. Why no go to them? Or the school. If you’re in a bad situation and you have options, but don’t take them there’s not a whole lot anyone can do for you. A better situation doesn’t just fall out of the sky), and worse of all she had EVERY opportunity this chapter to tell Haruta the truth and stop him from getting hurt as well (or possibly even plan revenge). No, I’m not just gonna dish out sympathy to any character because the author says they’re being bullied. Now her bullies (the other girls) are the worst (thiugh kinda basic highschool bully bitches; why are highschool bullies in manga always the exact same? Is there like some law against giving bullies unique characters just making them different from everyone else’s manga bullies?) and I want them to burn in a fire, but that doesn’t make me automatically excuse literally everything she does. I’m about neutral with the mc and that’s going down steadily as she keeps making this idiotic decisions. An author can’t just throw something like “this character’s being bullied S Y M P A T H I ZE AND E M P A T H I ZE W I T H H E R” and expect readers to not still call her out for her bullshit. She has a loving family, okay faculty (I’m assuming. I haven’t seen any teachers. There might also be no faculty), and even Haruta is clearly very very (way too) nice and kind. She has multiple options to get herself out of the bullying. As of now in the story she is doing nothing to help herself AND propagating the bullying (which she chose to do, though coerced (and again she was only coerced because she was an idiot)). Not only that, but none of her bullies are within earshot of her, so she could easily tell him and at least stop him from being bullied (she’s seen how kind he is; she could even get his help and completely turn this story around). I greatly believe that bullying is the worst, but no one CAN help you if you won’t help yourself first. What she’s doing right now is akin to getting shot in the leg and not calling anyone, dialing 911, or at least performing first aid, AND THEN she decides to shoot someone else in the leg.
Honestly though, all that said, I’ll get mad at the author before I get mad at her character. I feel like there have been multiple opportunities for them to turn this story around and come out with something fairly unique and pretty interesting for a rom-com, but instead it’s like they’re too afraid and just following the generic plot outline (but don’t even know how to do that well), so we’re left with a story that continuously makes less and less sense. At this point I’m just reading for the male lead’s character (which is another leap in logic; that personality type + body type should be way more popular. To guys he wouldn’t be a threat (romantically; for most girls) and to girls he wouldn’t feel like a romantic interest (so they could relax around him; again generally speaking) and to everyone he’d just be kind, nice, fun, entertaining, and energetic). I mean just this chapter how he acted with that kid was awesome! Honestly, I just feel like all the girls in this manga take stupid pills in the morning (the mc and her bullies). Even the bullies whole plan is flawed and make no sense. I mean first off the bullies let them go on a date out of sight, so at any time she could have spilled the beans and they’d never know. A whole lot of the plan rode on trusting the person they bully every morning not being smart enough to tell adults and/or the male lead what was going on when she was by herself. Second off they specifically said that the girls okay with the plan (that hate Haruta) are after his super popular BEST friends, so they couldn’t let them find out. Okay, but they let the girl that knows everything and hates them out of their sight AND seem to fail to realize that regardless of if he finds out (which he would HAVE to for the Girl’s to get any sense of accomplishment out of this. I thought the whole plan was for all the girls to jump out and tell him one day and catch him on video or humiliate him some way. How would his best friends NOT find out what and who did that to him at that point?), if he has a broken heart his best friends are going to be pretty pissed and more importantly focused on consoling him (leaving no time for all those girls that want to be with them). Really this story is just so laughably bad at this point and I feel like it didn’t have to be. The author could have wrote this better or just ignored the generic plot setup entirely and went their own way. It also probably would have been a lot better if it focused on the male lead as the mc and had his friends more often (honestly, the only character’s I’ve seen so far that I liked). He could have just had her start out as friends with him, come to love his personality, and then start dating; that way we didn’t get any of this pointless, idiotic, and illogical (makes no sense) drama. I mean that was well, would be generic, but a MUCH better generic than this. Whether or not, I drop this depends on how much more frustrating the story gets (I only expect it to go down from here) and how much I want to see the male lead’s character be completely awesome.
