Genres

ruby's review already has an excellent synopsis, so I'll skip that here. I was really impressed by the author's depictions of Akari's thoughts and emotions through the whole book. Akari's mind often drifts during stressful times, and the imagery used in these moments is very meaningful and memorable. The book does a great job representing the emotions of idol fan culture, even before they're taken to the extreme.

Language wise, I found this book fairly challenging. I had to look up words more

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rubysays

June 18, 2022

Language Learning

Entertainment

An exploration of idol culture and the way that idol culture affects the fans themselves. Focuses primarily on the protagonist Akari, a high-school girl fan of an idol who was cancelled online after allegedly hitting a fan. Despite this, her life still essentially revolves around him - she works part-time for as many hours as she can to buy merch and tickets. Akari's obsession with her idol comes through very clearly in every aspect of her life, as she surrounds herself with blue - his image col

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catsays

April 30, 2023

The difficulty of this book is interesting. There's words I hadn't encountered before due to not being into idols and not really that tuned into the Japanese internet / pop culture, but honestly there aren't that many of them - they just are often a crucial word to understand the sentence.

The larger difficulty is with the writing style which darts around in time, place, topic, and speaker. It's always narrated by Akari, but sometimes you have to pause for a second to determine if she's quoting

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nix3lrated

September 13, 2024

Language Learning