【推しの子】Volume 2 | Free to read until January 27th, 2026 (JST)

[GolyBidoof]

Welcome to the 推しの子 Speed Run Book Club Volume 2!

Part of the Speed Run Book Club series!

As in the Volume 1 thread, the goal of this thread club is to read the second volume of 推しの子 until January 27, 2026.

Volume 2:

• Bookwalker
• ebookjapan
• cmoa

Currently, the manga is not free (or on Kindle Unlimited) on Amazon.

Vocabulary list for Volume 2 on Manga Kotoba

【推しの子】2 | L29

JP summary

「この芸能界において嘘は武器だ」
地方都市で、産婦人科医として働くゴロー。芸能界とは無縁の日々。一方、彼の“推し”のアイドル・星野アイは、スターダムを上り始めていた。そんな二人が“最悪”の出会いを果たし、運命が動き出す…!?
“赤坂アカ×横槍メンゴ”の豪華タッグが全く新しい切り口で“芸能界”を描く衝撃作開幕!!

EN summary

Best-selling Japanese manga that has been adapted into multiple awards-winner anime. The story of a doctor and his recently-deceased patient reborn as twins to a famous Japanese musical idol, Ai Hoshino, and navigate the highs and lows of the Japanese entertainment industry as they grow up together through their lives.

The second volume should be easier to read than the first volume, still, feel free to try it through Mokuro!

Hint! If you’re having difficulties reading at difficulty levels as high as this one, the best way to make your life easier is by scraping your manga with a script, such as this for Bookwalker, and then running manga through a script such as Mokuro in order to enable lookups of the more specific terminology.

Since this is a speed run book club, the formal end of this book club will occur on 2026-01-27T14:59:00Z, but feel free to continue with us afterwards, and if you’d be interested in continuing with a spin-off book club for the remaining volumes, let us know and the threads can be created!

Still with us on the book club?

• I’ll be joining together with the book club!
• Joining after the book club has finished!
• I’ve read the manga in the past already!
• I’m reading the manga in English, but I still want to discuss!
• Just lurking/discussing the plot!

Please use this thread for volume 2. All spoilers should go behind blurred spoiler tags or in the a hide details drop down.

Thread Navigation
Volume 1 | Volume 3 (extra) | Volume 4 (extra)

[GolyBidoof]

Even before starting, the character listings:

I can’t get over the names of 星野愛久愛海 and 星野瑠美衣
i get that this 愛久愛 is supposed to be アクア, but is this part 海 supposed to be “marine”? xddd

Chapter 11

Looking at the cover of the volume and having the hindsight of what happens in the story next, this panel is particularly funny to me:

get yourself a twin brother who is so overprotective of you at 14 years old

Chapter 12

Ruby is my favorite character in the whole story and she’s just a real gift when she’s so shameless and out there and annoying other people xddd

Chapter 13

blush

C:

Chapter 14

this isnt how it works, the time is always becoming longer after you’ve failed the previous time xdd

i get it that the writer wanted to introduce a strong and cunning character, but cmon xddd

either way, pretty funny scene ^^

Chapter 15

One thing I really like about this series is how it doesn’t stray away from an idiom and will always insert one if it’s possible, I probably need to go through the Kanji Learner Course to find more of those ^^

also…

…you’re both 14 just in case xdddd

Chapter 16

Aqua’s start of the Joker arc

Chapter 17

…the insults from and to fourteen-year-olds just hit different xddddddd

i wonder what was ゴロー feeling like when アクア needed to say this xddd

Also, we made アクア smile, all that it took was a permission for one sociopathic episode ^^

Chapter 18

Imagine, アクア is saving all of his savings just to do DNA tests for people related to his mom, what a golden child

And WILD DANGANRONPA THEME STARTS PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND

Chapter 19

me anytime something amazing happens xdd

amazing reaction picture btw C:

Chapter 20

Twitter makes Kana realize that アクア might not be the most mentally healthy person out there ^^

So easy to be convinced btw xddddd

ahh, can’t wait, it’s in minus five years from today ^^

Finished my Speed Run Book Club entry!

I’ll probably create a 君に届け thread now, but it was fun to see this story in a manga format as well ^^

I’m still of the mind that ルビー is the best character and there’s another person they’ll probably introduce in the next volume that I really like as well ^^
The pacing of the second volume felt much rougher than of the first one, but I think that the best this manga has to offer is still ahead of us, so if any of you wanted to spin up a spin-off 推しの子 bookclub to read the whole manga, we can do it sometime in the future!

[Malinkal]

Finished yesterday but took literally like zero notes
Here’s my notes

Summary

監督親元で寄生虫してたんだ．．．

Told u

comments

I really liked the section with 今日アマ filming, especially when かな gets to live up to what she wants to do. This volume in general I liked both here and in the anime, I’m not the biggest fan of episode/volume 1 but think it picks up steam a lot after that. Maybe in future when I have unlimited time and money and I’m fluent in Japanese I can binge the rest of the manga, but not now..

I like かな and アクア the best I think in the anime and here. Ruby is cool too but she’s not my speed, too energetic

@GolyBidoof

fourteen-year-olds

Maybe at the start but they began high school now, no? So アクア should be 15 and かな at least 16 since she’s second year

[GolyBidoof]

@Malinkal

I like かな and アクア the best I think in the anime and here. Ruby is cool too but she’s not my speed, too energetic

Energetic is one thing, but for me ルビー has this energy of hijacking every frame where she appears in and then even not wanting to make it about herself, becomes the center of a given frame, and I’m always like “yesss slayy queen”.

Aside from 高坂穂乃果 in Love Live!!, I don’t know that many characters who simply are the spotlight whenever they appear and don’t have to be insecure like “man, i don’t know if i can make it… i don’t know if i am up to the task”, they know they’re up to the task ^^

(if you’ve got any recommendations of similar characters, I’m always starved for them!)

[eagleflo]

@GolyBidoof

is this part 海 supposed to be “marine”?

This is the most キラキラネーム of them all… yes, it’s アクアマリン. Clearly 海 is “marine”, you see…

[Malinkal]

@GolyBidoof

(if you’ve got any recommendations of similar characters, I’m always starved for them!)

Hmm there’s this character, kind of niche, you might not have heard of…

星野アイ

Kind of reminds me of Ruby for some reason

[GolyBidoof]

The first episode of the third season came out and I watched it today! For reference, if you wanted to skip to where the anime is right now, it’s the beginning of Volume 9 - chapter 81 ^^

If you’ve only read volume 1 and 2, a decent few characters will come as a surprise to you there, but since my favorite character is getting a lot of screentime in the first episode of the third season, i’m happy C:

[downtimes]

Started with volume 2. Up to Page 41 (first 2 chapters). Not much happened for now. The story is much more chill. Only thing I wrote down is:

That’s an ass move to deceive ruby like that and block her from any opportunity

[downtimes]

2 more chapters down. I enjoyed these chapters very much. I kinda got lost in the flow and forgot the overarching story a bit to be honest ^^. The humor is now much more to my liking.

13

Such great humor, the live at home 40 something year old guy tries to talk dreams and hopes into a middle school kid that is thoroughly unimpressed. All while the mother bursts into the room every few minutes with some nonsense and interrupts their conversations XD.

14

Oh, wow, the interactions between aqua, ruby and kana are so fucking funny. Kana is so needy, such a funny character. I honestly still have no feeling for Japanese names. For some reason, I expected the producer to be female (鏑木勝也)

[Malinkal]

@downtimes

For some reason, I expected the producer to be female (鏑木勝也)

From what I’ve seen, when 也 is part of a first name, especially when on the end, it’s almost always a male name

@downtimes

Kana is so needy, such a funny character

Kana is definitely my favourite character now, reinforced by reading it after watching the anime. Very needy but also has grown a lot already just between volume 1 and 2, and feels more like a normal person

[polv]

@GolyBidoof

i get that this 愛久愛 is supposed to be アクア, but is this part 海 supposed to be “marine”? xddd

@eagleflo

Clearly 海 is “marine”, you see…

I didn’t simply realize that 愛久愛(アクア) (thinking along the line of 愛久(アクア)), but indeed 愛久愛(アクア)海(marine)

Furigana sometimes aren’t confined to the specific Kanji or Kanji group.

Anyway, only アクア was said to have 凄い名前, not ルビイ. Maybe it’s because it follows ateji.

第二章 is named 芸能界, but I still don’t know the name of 第一章.

Several interviews in 第一章 (first volume) are already light spoilers for upcoming volumes? (particularly かな) Looking forward to what may happen in Vol.3-4, though.

(I purchased Vol.1-4 for 100 yen in Bookwalker, noticing free-to-read later. Not sure about 5-16, but no discount.)

I can’t remember how ガラ携 passcode is supposed to work…

[downtimes]

I did 3 chapters today (15, 16, 17). Now up to p135. Wanted to do only 2 but the story flowed so nicely and wanted to see how the shoot would go. Don’t regret nothing. Nice scene.

The only thing I noted down for these 3 chapters was: Uh, katakana speak

@Malinkal

I really liked the section with 今日アマ filming, especially when かな gets to live up to what she wants to do.

True

[downtimes]

Finished. Oh my god, the next book is called 恋愛リアリティショー編. Aqua in such a show o_O…
Not much to say. Preferred the second book over the first. Felt much more cohesive and less jumping around. Humor was better. The feel is totally different from the first volume. Not sure what to make of that yet.
不知火フリル also a キラキラ name for sure…

I’ll continue with the 3rd volume, not sure if I’ll manage to also do the 4th in the remaining time.