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Wednesday, October 28, 2020

Manga Review: Not Your Idol, Volume 1, by Aoi Makino



Rating (Out of 5):
~3.5

Publisher: Shojo Beat (VIZ Media)

Release Date: May 2020

Volumes: 2 (Hiatus)

Spoilers?: No.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. Powells. RightStuf.

Volume: 2.

 

Goodreads Synopsis

 

After that day, she stopped being a girl.

In the wake of an assault, Nina Kamiyama, a former idol in the group Pure Club, shuns her femininity and starts dressing as a boy. At high school she keeps to herself, but fellow student Hikaru Horiuchi realizes who she is. What secrets is she keeping? The shocking drama starts.

 

Review:

 

I was thoroughly warned of the subject matter in this series, which both made me curious and wary. With this kind of topic, it can be tricky to handle it. And I don't know that I've seen too many great ways in manga, so I was definitely interested. I needed to be in the right mind set, though.

Nina was a very popular idol, but one day when she was attacked, she stepped away from it all and didn't quite know how to recover.

There's definitely some petty drama being started here, with some jealous high school girls. There's also the suspense of knowing that Nina had a stalker, and that person might still be out there watching her, waiting to attack again. When a popular boy at school starts paying attention to Nina, and even supports her in her actions against sexual harassment on a couple of other girls, suspicion starts to form.

I'm intrigued by this series. It's handling harassment in an okay way so far, and then that cliffhanger has me curious for where it's going next. I'm also intrigued by how Nina is dealing with her femininity. From being an idol, in very short and frilly clothes, to dressing in pants and long sleeves and short hair, is a big difference. It touches on how these changes affected her, whether she likes them and how it might have affected the attack and how she feels about all of it. I definitely think there's more to see in all of this, though.

I'm intrigued, and I want to know more. This series is apparently on hiatus, though, so I'm not sure how much more or where we'll be leaving off in the next volume.

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