Is Niji motivated by wanting to protect Remu or wanting the best for Remu (and just following these goals in terrible and misaligned ways)?

My answer to that would also be no. My assertion was that she believes her idealized version of Remu is real, that she believes that her actions are ultimately in Remu's interests, and that she will likely feel bad if she realizes this isn't the case. This is different than saying her "true motivations" are only that she wants the best for Remu, something I ever said. I said she was motivated by wanting to attain something she thinks she needs. One can feel bad when they realized they behaved selfishly and harmed other people - feeling bad doesn't require that one never had selfish feelings.

I could be misunderstanding, but I don't think this is a celebrity stalker situation where she came up with the fantasy and then pursued Remu. It appears more to me like that Remu became part of her friend group, Remu was a safe person who filled a need in her life, and from there she started to push more fantasies and expectations upon Remu as she started to think of Remu as necessary for her.

This means it was never a total fantasy - there was some real world basis and history to their relationship that was positive enough for them to become close friends. We also saw this more explicitly with Azuki and Meguru, where they both connected with each other in a genuine way before the relationship deteriorated. I thought they made it abundantly clear that Remu and Niji did have a positive history, with Niji being seen as the mom and caretaker figure in the class, even if we haven't gotten a flashback for their history as friends yet. I likewise thought it was clear that there would have been some reason Meguru and Azuki originally got emotionally invested in each other, even before we saw the explicit flashback.

last edited at Oct 5, 2025 10:03PM

I could be misunderstanding, but I don't think this is a celebrity stalker situation where she came up with the fantasy and then pursued Remu. It appears more to me like that Remu became part of her friend group, Remu was a safe person who filled a need in her life, and from there she started to push more fantasies and expectations upon Remu as she started to think of Remu as necessary for her.

Yeah - I think there is a misunderstanding. Celebrity stalkers are of course the first thing that comes to mind when we talk about stalking. That's completely natural, since those are the cases that newspaper and TV reports will happily cover - but the vast amount of stalking happens of course between completely normal and everyday people. They can start out as work colleagues, casual acquaintances, or friends. And the psychological mechanism that motivate stalking can of course pop up in slightly different contexts as well.

In the case of this manga Niji doesn't stalk Remu at the start - it's rather that we see her slip more and more into this sort of thinking/behaving. They are regular friends at the start, with Niji working through her feelings through the work of fiction she is penning, but we can also see how this fiction is becoming more and more important to her, how the intense emotional attachment to the fiction begins to affect her, and how it starts to gradually replace real life. We also see how this kind of unhealthy thinking is starting impact her actions and behavior - culminating in her crossing a moral boundary in this last chapter.

Also I wouldn't even go so far as to say that she truly believes in doing what's best for Remu. It might be that we are completely on the same side here, but the phrasing just doesn't sit right - since it does make it seem like you are saying that this is her motivation (which you have clarified you don't want to express with this). I would rather say it like this: Niji tells herself that she is doing the best for Remu to justify her own immoral actions. This might all just be word games at this point though. It seems like we mostly agree on what is going on.

Now I can't really tell where this is going to lead. It is possible that the manga will make her come to her senses, and truly regret her actions and thoughts - but I could just as well see this manga going to some dark places with Niji completely losing it. Like I said - I don't really think that we'll see murder or physical violence based on how the story has been so far, but it has touched on some pretty heavy topics. It is possible that not all characters come out of this story clean or partially redeemed - and Niji is currently the one character who has been pushed most towards being an outright villain.