Houkago no Idol ni wa Himitsu ga aru - Ch. 71 - Kuromiya-san and the Amusement Park Aftermath

[Friendly-Sentence710]

This shit was so peak...
was.

 

[TinsleyNocturnal]

GODDAMMIT HIRUNO! YOU FUCKING LOSER! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!

 

[Sunji27]

It's a coincidence

 

[KriegGuardsman]

At least it didn't come to a misunderstanding. She knows he's being considerate of her and her career. He's also more aware of her and the (to him only a) possibility that she likes him, too. Unfortunately this might be a situation where she needs to make that final move, and make it apparent to him that she's willing to do what it takes to have both her career  and a relationship with him. Otherwise he's going to choose self-sacrifice for the sake of her happiness, as is the expectation in their culture.

Man, fuck Japan

 

[KriegGuardsman]

It's almost like the story has a conflict or adversity that the protagonists must overcome in order to achieve a happy ending, god forbid.

It's not like the whole manga hasn't been pointing out just how stressful the expectations of the job have been for her, how she's had to sacrifice so much of her high-school life to pursue this career, how it warps her social life despite her best efforts, so on and so forth...

AFTER ALL THAT SHIT HE STILL SEES HER AS AN IDOL AND NOT A PERSON?? YEAH FUCK HIM.

Rei should find someone with balls instead

 

[RoxasJ]

Right. Here's where I drop the series. It's been...something alright. Buildup just to throw it all away, effectively wasting all our time for the past 71 chapters. No thanks, I'm already reading enough dumpster fires as it is currently.

 

[HatoSensei]

Is the new meta milking a series like the creator of rental girlfriend?

"new"?

Is this your first romance manga?

This has been a thing for decades. It is the same principle on why Detective Conan has been going on for 30 years and the core mystery never gets resolved.

The more you can stretch the main plot device out, the more volumes you can sell. And most romance manga have literally nothing going for them other than the "when will get together" mystery.

They keep going forever until sales tank, it gets axed, and the author then releases one chapter which has the confession and another one for "X years later" - if you are lucky.

Honestly, for all that people complain about it, most romance readers are here JUST for the suspense. It is why Rental Girlfriend is still popular, despite how trash the characters and plot are.

It's not like the whole manga hasn't been pointing out just how stressful the expectations of the job have been for her, how she's had to sacrifice so much of her high-school life to pursue this career, how it warps her social life despite her best efforts, so on and so forth...

I agree with you.

But the author is doing a shit job when it comes to depicting her side of things, or how her career affects their relationship.

There is zero difference between this manga and any other random "popular girl friends with loner" manga out there.

In other words, it needed to be more like Oshi No Ko, but fails to do so.

 

[misopogon]

This one has long overstayed its welcome

 

[Rafalga]

But the author is doing a shit job when it comes to depicting her side of things, or how her career affects their relationship.

There is zero difference between this manga and any other random "popular girl friends with loner" manga out there.

In other words, it needed to be more like Oshi No Ko, but fails to do so.

There is also the fact that she has absolutely no plans to lessen or drop her idol activities. She absolutely loves her job and literally said that it is her number 1 priority so i don't know why she wants MC to confess in any shape or form. They can't date. She said as much herself. Is she looking for emotional validation? I would rather read about his toxic as fuck home situation and him growing out of it with personal effort. She is nothing but another major burden on his mind. We've seen no positive effect she has on his life unlike hers. This is way too one sided.

 

[jolynehoestar]

Man I guess authors need a job too, get that bag girl but damn you really shitted with this arc. So disappointing

 

[savetheprince]

ok next event after new year : valentine
dont fumble it boy

 

[mattteocastro]

"new"?

Is this your first romance manga?

This has been a thing for decades. It is the same principle on why Detective Conan has been going on for 30 years and the core mystery never gets resolved.

The more you can stretch the main plot device out, the more volumes you can sell. And most romance manga have literally nothing going for them other than the "when will get together" mystery.

They keep going forever until sales tank, it gets axed, and the author then releases one chapter which has the confession and another one for "X years later" - if you are lucky.

Honestly, for all that people complain about it, most romance readers are here JUST for the suspense. It is why Rental Girlfriend is still popular, despite how trash the characters and plot are.

I agree with you.

But the author is doing a shit job when it comes to depicting her side of things, or how her career affects their relationship.

There is zero difference between this manga and any other random "popular girl friends with loner" manga out there.

In other words, it needed to be more like Oshi No Ko, but fails to do so.

No it isn't my first romance manga, the thing is that because I know the current state of the genre I stopped reading romance manga in general, since I found better or decent romances in manwha or manguas, but that's the thing, this is something that got even stronger because of series like rental girlfriend, it's obvious is been a thing for a long time.

 

[Darkshade13]

It's almost like the story has a conflict or adversity that the protagonists must overcome in order to achieve a happy ending, god forbid.

It's not like the whole manga hasn't been pointing out just how stressful the expectations of the job have been for her, how she's had to sacrifice so much of her high-school life to pursue this career, how it warps her social life despite her best efforts, so on and so forth...

There's no need to be a dick about this. Especially when you're criticizing and patronizingly correcting me about something that wasn't even the point I was making in my original post.

My problem isn't with there being conflict or the recognition that her career has and will made unreasonable and ridiculous impositions on her personal life. It's entirely that I hate how the trope of both the MC and, I think if we look back, her manager buy into that idol culture bullshit about how idols aren't allowed to have personal relationships entirely because the industry encourages and weaponizes the idea that lonely, desperate fans imprint their parasocial relationship with the performers as having more value/importance than romantic feelings and therefore it is considered an affront/disservice for the performers to have personal lives that shatter the illusion that the fans are the most important people in the world. The "idols belong to everyone" or "idols having relationships is a betrayal" or "you owe it to your fans to be pure" or "us loser normies who aren't in the idol world are too low of an existence to stand next to someone who's glorious/famous" or the like. It's trash as a plot device because, to me it's even more trash as a real thing that is encouraged and supported in the real world. I know it's a plot device because it's a real thing. But because it is real and I'm sick of seeing it I just can't stop from rolling my eyes hard when it crops up.

If this had just been the manager, say, getting annoyed that her wanting to spend time with her friends was cutting into her practice time and possibly hurting her career, that'd be fine. But I'm pretty sure we saw the manager thinking to herself that she had to cut off the potential for the FMC to want a romantic relationship and now we've got the MC doing that stupid pedestal behavior of believing that he has no business wanting a friendly or romantic relationship with her specifically because she's an idol and that makes her "special".

 

[alfirizkyr]

I'm not sure Hiruno's looking at Rei as an idol in the way a fan does. I'm sure he's not mistaking his own feelings. He hasn't come to terms with it, but he's not mistaking it.

He sees her as an idol in the way that being an idol is a profession. Rei's manager made clear that even her interpersonal relationship was a very important part of her career, and she also made clear that she was still fully committed to this career track. He's not putting her on a pedestal for being an idol, he's keeping her career priority in mind.

As Rei said, he was being considerate. He realized that any honest answer would be the answer he wanted (as he was still unsure about how Rei felt), but he knew the repercussions weren't worth the risk, at least until he had further clarity.

It's why he prayed to understand what Rei was thinking, as it's really the last piece of information he needed to know to consider the entire situation and judge his own feelings.

Rei herself was definitely ambitious enough to want to tackle both her career and romance at the same time, and I'm not sure she's too dense to realize that they're incompatible under the current form of parasocial idol culture, but I do kinda wanna see her take all this into serious consideration going forward.

She realized Hiruno was being considerate about his reply and she realized that she was putting him on the spot for something that would've been unrealistic under the circumstances. That's a good start.

 

[DerpyVenom]

so far this manga is or was like a roller coaster, it goes to the peak but instead of going down the other side, it went backwards.