IDOL×IDOL STORY! - Ch. 48 - To Each Their Own Paths

[Senros]

I just realized the "Trusts" label on the line going from Yuri to Mimi in the chart at the end of each chapter. I love that.
It used to be "Hates", then "???" and now "Trusts" since chapter 44. I only realized it in this chapter and had to look up, since when had it changed.

 

[CommonTruth]

Time to indulge in a little bit of hyperfixation on stats in an idol competition manga 🤓


New rankings:
1. Tsumugi (+11) promoted
2. Ibuki (+7) promoted
3. Ritsu (-2) demoted
4. Urara (+6) promoted
5. Michiru (-1) demoted

6. Hitoe (+7) promoted
7. Mimi (-5) demoted
8. Yuuri (-5) demoted / eliminated
9. Koyuki (+7) promoted
10. Shiori (-5) demoted

11. Shuri (0) promoted
12. Hibana (-6) demoted
13. Anon (+1) promoted
14. Suzu (-7) demoted
15. Karin (-7) demoted

Eliminations (2 down, 9 to go):
1st Round: Mei (lowest ranked without team immunity)
2nd Round: Yuuri (chosen by Aria from losing team)


Like everyone else, I was caught off guard by the change in how ranking and team allocation was done in this chapter. To address the less significant change first: for individual ranking, contestants were divided into three blocks of five, with those who won their battles being ranked within the top five, those who lost being ranked within the middle five, and the reserves being ranked within the bottom five. Fair enough. More surprising, however... This time, individual ranking was meaningless in terms of which Star team contestants were assigned to. All those on the winning team became White Stars, and all those on the losing team became Black Stars. This has resulted in some funny discrepancies, at the extremes being 3rd ranked Ritsu becoming a Black Star and 13th ranked Anon becoming a White Star.

When contestants were ranked at the start of the training camp, and again when ranked at the end of the 4x4 Team Test, those who placed in the top half went to the White Stars and those in the bottom half went to the Black Stars. Although the teams in the first round were awarded 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place, the only real significance of that was that those in 1st place got immunity from elimination; it didn't have any bearing on whether contestants were assigned to the White or Black Stars. Indeed, 2 of the 4 teams in that round got broken up after being ranked, since they had contestants falling on either side of the dividing line. Not so this time: everyone's staying together, simply switching colors.

None of these changes are necessarily bad; things need to be shaken up now and then. But reading this chapter, it did feel like there was a scene missing where these changes should've been explained to the contestants (and by extension to us, the readers). Instead that seems to have happened off screen, and I'd been looking forward to the characters reacting to their new rankings. For example, Koyuki getting out of last place, or Tsumugi getting first place. Perhaps we'll see that next chapter.

 

[SatansBestBuddy]

hmm, interesting that on the white board you can see Shuri and Suzu paired up, even though they're one black star, one white star

maybe it's because all the other teams are three person groups, which can be evenly divided up when one person from each group is removed

 

[CommonTruth]

I guess if they always put the top rankers as white stars, eventually it won’t be a balanced competition at all. The black stars will be losing because they continually lost their best performers/leaders, and characters will lose their opportunity for growth.
And, that will be boring as a show/competition/story.


I imagine a team with Ibuki, Mimi, Ritsu, and Hitoe, people with already high skill floors, will probably be too strong as a team right now. Perhaps when other characters have developed more we could see this, but even then…

While you'd think it would be imbalanced to pit the top rankers against the bottom rankers, funny thing about that is that in the 1st round it was a Black Star team that placed first and a White Star team that placed last, and then here in the 2nd round the Black Stars beat the White Stars. Not all that surprising considering that underdogs overcoming the odds is a common trope, but it will be interesting to see if in the 3rd round the White Stars can actually get a win

 

[Tds-PdV]

While you'd think it would be imbalanced to pit the top rankers against the bottom rankers, funny thing about that is that in the 1st round it was a Black Star team that placed first and a White Star team that placed last, and then here in the 2nd round the Black Stars beat the White Stars. Not all that surprising considering that underdogs overcoming the odds is a common trope, but it will be interesting to see if in the 3rd round the White Stars can actually get a win

That’s because it’s only over a small number of rounds. The ranking is reflective of the previous round only.

My point is if this process is repeated for all rounds, this will lead to two imbalanced teams. The more well-rounded characters with high skill floor will semi-permanently occupy the white star team, followed by the fastest bloomers.
The late bloomers and those will lower skill floors will all be grouped up together in black star and this team will bleed members before they could grow.

Of course, the author can write a sudden growth of a character in the midst of poor team condition, but it will get stale if the same thing happens over multiple rounds because that character will then immediately move to the white star in the next round if the process of moving the best performer (highest ranked) to the white stars is sustained.

A simple analogy would be if you have 2 sports teams (football for example) competing over 12 rounds of matches and after every round the best players are put in one team and the worst in the others. It won’t be apparent in the first couple matches, but after 6 rounds or so, the match will stop being competitive.