Personally, I can relate to that on how obsessed I can be with books and some comfort animes that I took pleasure watching day by day. I was very interested, because I have an 18-year old daughter who is also passionately devoted to an idol group, although in a much more healthy way than the girl in this story. Usami's writing is one that I personally liked and its definitely something fresh that is written in a story form.

It would have been nice to see a deeper portrayal of a fan's life (not all of them suffer from untreated psychological problems). I found some of the detail of J-pop fandom a little distracting, mostly because it’s an area I’m already fairly familiar with; and. Akari’s inability, perhaps unwillingness, to articulate why she is so disinterested in school or to make her parents and sister understand her struggles with her studies, is a cause of additional stress on the family unit. Es ist vielmehr das Psychogramm einer jungen Frau, die weder in Familie noch in Schule oder Job Erfüllung findet.So loneliness, abuse, and agency are the themes around which the text revolves, and Akari's limited self-awareness, her oscillation between knowing that what she does is harmful and ultimately pointless and her holding on to the illusion while understanding that this illusions destroys Masaki - this complex psychological net, rendered in a convincing voice, make this an intriguing text. It's about someone in the public eye who commits a misdeed or makes an improper remark, and becomes the target of criticism, is scrutinised from every angle, and loses their influence. She frequently talks about him as her “spine”, she has centered her world around him, and allowed the rest of her world to atrophy and flake away. In einem sozialen System, das die Philosophie des Sollen's/Müssen's repräsentiert, haben es besondere Menschen, die nicht können, schwer. Her "friends" are not much help: I didn’t think she was fake or insincere, she just try to simplify herself as much as possible, with only her idol (a J-Pop band member) being a consolation.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. the main character seems to suffer from depression and uses her idol as a means of escape, but I couldn’t manage to get invested. Wspomnienie o idolu sprawia, że przenosi się do innego świata w którym może być jeszcze dzieckiem oglądającym w teatrze “Piotrusia Pana”, w tych momentach rzeczywistość przestaje mieć znaczenie. We can feel betrayed (as fans invested money for these idols), or we can feel lied too, but it showed how toxic this culture can be and how we are super independent for it as a coping mechanism to escape the realities of our harsh life.This certainly isn't a book you should be going into expecting an action-packed storyline - or even really looking for answers to the questions it raises - it is more an exploration into what it is to be a modern teenage fangirl, open to exploitation.

Its good to stan someone (especially another fellow human) moderately, but I find that if it helps you to stay alive, just enjoy what you can . By fleeing into a dream world, Akari also harms her family, who seems to deeply care about her, but doesn't know how to help her when she tries to evade contact with the challenges of reality; plus of course, Akari harms herself, because she abandons her own life for the idol world in which she also exists - alone.Rin Usami exposes the patterns of fandom culture that rely on our basic needs: to be noticed, to be important, to be loved. Akari is a high school junior obsessed with "oshi" Masaki Ueno, a member of the popular J-Pop group Maza Maza. It explores the sometime complex relationship between pop stars and their followers; it shines an ambivalent spotlight on cancel culture and pokes some sarcastic fun at the money-making pop music market (even Akari, obsessed as she is, is sharp enough to note that the industry exploits fandom.

Das alles wird ohne große literarische Raffinesse erzählt und ist leider schon in vielen Coming-of-age-Romanen erzählt worden und in vielen sehr viel besser. Akari has a hard time in her real life, not enjoying any kind of positive relationship with any of her family members, and frustrated at school where she can’t keep up with the others.

Akari is a rather empty character, a blank slate, which may as well be intentional given how easily she becomes obsessed with the life of another. This is a beautifully written novella that explores mental health, fandom and its impact on teenagers, and popular culture, against a backdrop of familial education and work pressures in modern-day Japan. In a way, this is a book about an abused man and a woman with severe mental health issues, both of them struggling to gain agency over their own lives: In the subtext, the de-humanizing system of idol culture and how it affects Masaki are revealed; Akari is both exploited financially by the entertainment company that employs Masaki and she contributes to his exploitation as a projection surface. Not necessarily because I related to the main character but because I've seen her behavior so plainly and painfully evident in K-pop stan culture. High school is a brutal world for Akari, the main character of Idol, Burning, where she doesn't excel.