How is it lazy? Stupid adults with gambling addictions who can't get their life together for shit often make the worst possible decisions with their money.
I've seen it happen multiple times first hand.
Thinking "Thats stupid no one would do that" is being naive at best.
And we need her to fail because failure builds character and helps us explore the darker parts of gravure culture, because gravure idols and photoshoots is the other theme the story revolves around.
Imagine if people called Dostoievski lazy because he made Raskolnikov kill the old woman because he needed a crime to happen in his book about crime.
Imagine if, after all of the psychological buildup, Raskolnikov didn't beat her to death - he used his knowledge of her peanut allergy and tricked her into eating a Reese's cup. I mean, kinda different yeah, but also wtf, why.
You missed what I was saying (dumb as it may be) on a lot of levels. I definitely did not say she shouldn't make a dumb decision, I didn't say "no one" would do it, I definitely wasn't saying that her doing something dumb/failing wouldn't move the plot. I think the author could have had her do some other foolish thing and fail in a way that would make more sense for the character - and it could have been something other than stealing the money, which was the lazy - ok that's harsh, how about obvious - choice. Then after taking the obvious choice you throw a curveball with a pretty weird (in my opinion) choice of having her do the whole bike thing.
Losing the money gambling (or getting beat down for it in the alley outside the pachinko parlor) would have been low hanging fruit but it would have made more sense. Call me naive, but buying the bike is WAAAY out there, because there's absolutely no way for her to cover for it mentally or logistically, and then conveniently losing it to move the plot in the next panel is just... whatever. Buying the bike is the bad decision you make when either a) you're going to dip from the entire scene, since everybody knows you're the one who did it, or b) you know nobody is looking for the money. It's not what you do when you're planning to come home to somebody who is going to look for the money. Long story short,
I didn't like it, lol
