Jan 13, 2026
ok thankfully my alarm bells were a false positive
As the story goes on it looks like it's a mix of Hakaze being a bitchlord and the narration backing this up (because she is a bitchlord), so once I got used to it, it wasn't too bad. I'll admit that the barrage of names with no faces to attach them to confused me at first, but at this point I know who's who. I legitimately thought Rina/Reina was a typo and was ???? and while I get it now... I mean... bold choice I suppose.
To be quite honest, I don't think any character is likable so far, but this is one of the cases where this isn't a bad thing. I'd take a bitchlord over bland protagonist no.4986956. It's also pretty apparent that it's by design, which I think helps "sell" Hakaze. If nothing else, she's a pretty cool, flawed, strong protagonist, and I'm very interested in seeing where she goes from here. If I had to nitpick about something, it'd be that the Ren sections feel kind of too randomly horny. She comes across as this IDGAFer and then when Ren shows up, she's all o///o 🍑, and like, yeah, sure, he's ultra mega love interest hot, but... so? As someone reading a romance, you can describe someone as beautiful all day long, but I can't SEE him. I can't get that eye candy. You gotta sell him in a different way. To be honest, it kind of feels like she's reacting in certain ways to tick off the romance box rather than it feeling natural.
As for Ren, he's probably the weakest aspect of the story for me. He's aight. I think part of this is that other characters are so much stronger by comparison, and he's... you know, the LOVE INTEREST (unless Harua the twink is getting a redemption arc). I would say that he's above average in the general spotlight romance HFverse, but that's because the bar is in hell, and I count my own mid shit as average. He's a hard worker which is cool, is a layered bitchlord which is also cool, is notably smart which is very cool, and he's love interest good looking which is aight. But... you know. He's just not measuring up to everyone else. I'm assuming we'll get some kind of tragic backstory where she shared her umbrella while he was moping during a rainy day and that gave him Hope (slightly symbolic), but even then, I'm not sure if that'd sell him. We'll see. They don't have negative chemistry, but... yeah, sorry, Harua and Hakaze unironically fit better together for me.
Speaking of, like I said before, I'd say that other characters are pretty interesting so far. It's obvious that there's a ton of lore behind their interactions which has thankfully not been shoved down my throat in flashback scenes, so I'm legitimately looking forward to seeing the whole picture. Idols isn't something I usually indulge in, but the story is good enough to keep me reading despite not being that versed in the topic 
also a music producer THIRTY YEAR OLD is extremely based
I have found a Gem