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. With unflinching clarity, Usami expertly transforms Akari's devotion into debilitating disconnection. Usami's] writing is extremely fresh and she has high literary ability" -- Akutagawa Prize Judges --This text refers to the paperback edition. But Usami’s depiction of Akari’s fangirling isn’t unthinkingly positive, she also highlights the ways in which fangirls are open to commodification and commercial exploitation.

Its a book that may not be for everyone, but its one that I do have a deep understanding for and I loved the message that the author was trying to bring. Very recently he has turned into a fallen teen idol, with our main character defending him religiously, as she did every since he played Peter Pan. Idol, Burning is a novella exploring stan culture, mental health and identity against a backdrop of the stressful high-performance culture of the Japanese education system. Idol, Burning is an equally compelling and disturbing look at how young women today can experience the confusion and exhaustion of modern life, and how fandom culture offers a mirage of fantasy and comfort. We never learn if the assault took place - or indeed if it took place at all - imbuing the narrative with the same feeling you get when you're 30 pages into a rumor filled subreddit.Idol, Burning is a barnburner and a prayer and a testament to the lengths that we'll go to reach for our dreams. Akari immediately begins sifting through everything she can find about the scandal, and shares every detail to her blog—including Masaki's denials and pleas to his fans—drawing numerous readers eager for her updates. Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published. 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. the writing is good, the translation was great, but I’m not sure what the overall storytelling goal was.

Her devotion to him never sways, even when rumors about Masaki having assaulted a fan begin to circle.A vivid depiction of the joys and despairs of teenage fan culture, Idol, Burning is urgent and all-consuming . 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. Still, besides her "merch acquisition syndrome" costing ridiculous amounts of money, she is quite harmless, while she Manages the bare minimum of being human. Offering a vivid insight into otaku culture and adolescence, Idol, Burning is a brilliantly gripping story of obsession, coming of age and the addictive, relentless nature of fandom culture.

it seemed like the author actively wanted to avoid the parts that would have made this story interesting. It makes for a fascinating coming-of-age story about obsession, and a vivid insight into otaku culture. It’s narrated by Akari, a 16-year-old, high-school student, who’s submerged herself in an obsession with her oshi (idol) Masaki, a member of J-pop band Maza Maza.The author merely comes up with a vanilla take on this (online bullying is bad, we should consider how the people accused of things like this feel, etc). But the organized, knowledgeable persona Akari presents online is totally different from the socially awkward, unfocused teenager she is in real life.

Thus, in the end, you don't get closure, especially since the relationship between her mental struggles and her obsession with her idol was awkward and not well fleshed. From the sociological point of view, Idol, Burning (2020) is a valuable source of information on oshi culture and fandom in general. It is forbidden to copy anything for publication elsewhere without written permission from the copyright holder. Because not only is the author just a few years older than her protagonist (and, therefore, a fellow traveller of the same world) but we also learn that the poignant, compassionate portrayal of Akari is based in part on Rin Usami’s brother, an intelligent child let down by the education system. Whilst Akari's obsession is unhealthy at certain times, it also shows how hobbies like these had helped saved lives too.

Akari, a high school student, is an author of a popular blog about Masaki Ueno, a member of the J-Pop band Maza Maza. The prose is distant and restrained, and while I usually like this type of style, here it just compounded my disinterest. Rin Usami captures the insularity and obsessive nature of "stan culture" with aplomb, and if you've spent time in any sort of online fandom over the years, there's a lot you'll recognize in here.