【推しの子】Volume 3 [Extra!] | Free to read until January 27th, 2026 (JST)

[GolyBidoof]

Welcome to the 推しの子 Speed Run Book Club (Extra!) Volume 3!

Extension of the Speed Run Book Club series!

This volume is no longer a part of the official speed run book club, it is an extension of the book club, because of the new availability period.

Different from the Volume 2 thread, two new volumes have been added goal of this thread club is to read the third volume of 推しの子 until January 27, 2026.

Volume 3:

• Bookwalker
• ebookjapan
• cmoa

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

Vocabulary list for Volume 3 on Manga Kotoba

【推しの子】3 | 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 third volume is the densest volume of 推しの子 to date, with an average density of 21.34 words per page across the whole volume.

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 3. All spoilers should go behind blurred spoiler tags or in the a hide details drop down.

Thread Navigation
Volume 1 | Volume 2 | Volume 4 (extra)

[GolyBidoof]

Chapter 21

Geez, this level of possessiveness

HE IS A MALE xddd

…okay, I’m changing my mind, I also am possessive towards him
AQUA NOOOOOO xdddd

…matter settled, thanks ルビー ^^

Chapter 22

I’m still of the generation YouTube and it’s my favorite platform, but man, the fact they don’t even mention short content video is a sign of the manga’s age and it’s already outdated xdddd

ぴえヨンくん！ C:

Chapter 23

So aside from ルビー, Mem is my second favorite character and I’m looking for the scenes with her since the beginning, and she is iconic early on as well ^^

But man, poor あかね towards the end of the chapter…

Chapter 24

YES COMPULSIVELY GOOGLING YOUR NAME

…NOT YOU xddd

and okay, fair, TikTok mentioned xddd

Chapter 25

i’m all for twitter ban for people up to 122 years old btw xddd

…and 4chan too btw

Chapter 26

…yeah i can see why the density of text in this volume is so high

Chapter 27

this almost feels like a parody panel xddd

Chapter 28

parasocial simp or mommy issues…? xdd

…good thinking Mem, proud of you xddd

…this is a manga about compulsively obsessed people

GERMAN MENTIONED

Chapter 29

omg she learned how to act stars in アイ’s eves xddd

Chapter 30

SHE DOESNT KNOW YET

Finished volume 3! In general, there’s a really strong content warning of suicidal ideation in chapter 25, so if you’re vulnerable to those things, watch out!

This volume sets up some of my favorite characters in the series, and it’s fun to look back at where they started, they make the second season of anime arc feel even better in retrospect ^^

Anyway, I probably won’t read volume 4 today, this one took a while from me ^^

Good luck for those who are aiming to make it here and congrats if you did!

[Malinkal]

@GolyBidoof

Good luck for those who are aiming to make it here and congrats if you did!

This was a looong volume
But I liked it quite a lot

Summary

It’s a little bit weird how quickly it goes from -akane struggling -scene in storm -back to normal, honestly, but outside of that I think this volume has a good mix of impactfulness, information about online culture (boo), introducing lots of cool new characters, lots of making me think about stuff. I like.

@GolyBidoof

i’m all for twitter ban for people up to 122 years old btw xddd

There are few things in life I dislike more than twitter
It’s a bit different here in Japan compared to back home (especially since so many people stopped using it back home after events), but different doesn’t mean better ofc

[polv]

Some fun words / expressions (could be slightly spoilery)

• カイノミ a cut of meat (from 二枚貝の身)
• 集中砲火(しゅうちゅうほうか) intense criticism (the focus point of cannon firings)
• シャーデンフロイデ Schadenfreude is a term borrowed from German. It is a compound of Schaden (“damage/harm”) and Freude (“joy”).
• 言(い)い得(え)て妙(みょう) perfectly fitting phrase (巧妙 thing that can really be said)
• 無(な)くて七癖(ななくせ)有(あ)って四十八癖(しじゅうはっくせ) everybody has their くせ. Seems to be from sound play.
• プラマイゼロ plus-minus-zero
• 幼児期健忘(ようじきけんぼう) a physiologic thing for grown-ups (Childhood amnesia - Wikipedia)
• 取(と)っ替(か)え引(ひ)っ替(か)え one after another

(From Aedict lookup history. Yomitan lookups weren’t saved. Or otherwise if I recall something.)

Comment

I pretty like chutuber

Technically it’s a little worse than content warning, just as the term used in police news report at the latter half of the volume plays out. But she really recovers quickly after friendly support. How well that support on SNS works publicly would be retrospective from the narrator – not that much time has passed yet. (And bigger time jump back-and-forth at Vol.1 interviews.)

Many whacky SNS platforms and website names.

It seems that 第三章 doesn’t end conclude by the volume. (Two more chapters in at Vol.4.)

[downtimes]

Have done the first 3 chapters for now:

Thoughts

As expected, the relationship show will be hard for aqua.
What an unhinged chapter with them doing the YouTube collaboration with the chicken man o_O.
Chapter 23? P55, the random Kabuki line あかね recites threw me for a loop. Why the hell does she recite Kabuki, and what does that line imply? I just skipped it ^^.
Feels like her story might go a little darker soon.

[downtimes]

Finished volume 3 today. I have to say the middle part nearly lost me. It was all very wordy and felt like people standing around and explaining stuff to the reader in too much detail. And honestly, the content was just not that interesting. Most of it is obvious enough for anyone that regularly interacts with the internet. That part could have easily been shortened a lot.

24-27

24 was still okay it felt light the natural progression of her trying her best to not be a failure and going over board.

But 25 was really wordy. I read most of the internet comments and am not the best when it comes to Japanese internet slang. It also felt like the author really wanted to hammer their point into the reader.

@Malinkal

It’s a little bit weird how quickly it goes from -akane struggling -scene in storm -back to normal, honestly, but outside of that I think this volume has a good mix of impactfulness,

26 was a little better but still feels really preachy (有馬s part), her wanting to continue right after seemed a little strange honestly.

27 was where the book nearly lost me. Another wordy chapter and them all preaching and coming together to create the video. It felt off and uninteresting. The best part was Mems experience coming through again. But some parts felt preachy again.

28-30

28 was okayish, and I could feel the turn around. あかねs maniac research was kinda funny. But the forced “oh actually if I would say that on Twitter I would be done for” forced lines 2 times in this chapter still left a bad aftertaste. I get it, can we move on now?

29 feels back to better form. 有馬 getting jealous and aqua confronting his current situation being in high school and how he wants to handle that was sensible.

30 Oh I loved the Aqua and arima catch ball scene. Nice dose of humor. Super nice interaction. Sensible talk between them two. Not the biggest fan of the ending, but I see where he is coming from, trying to use あかねs understanding finding out more about the killer. Is he getting back to his main intention now?

Only 2 days left for the complete book 4? I don’t think I’ll do that. If the 3rd one had been as interesting as the second I’d might have gone for it, but I think I’ve read enough of the series for now. (Somebody can ping me when the 4th book is free for a while again )