After Coincidentally Saving the New Transfer Student’s Little Sister, We Gradually Grew Closer Chapter 109 Discussion

This novel is really fun to read, up until ~c80. It's a lighthearted romance between a transfer student and a high school boy, as they bond over taking care of the transfer student's little sister together. The characters are decently well developed, and the romance is well paced as well. The MC feels a lot like the MC from Oregairu, and it raises lots of anticipation for the moral struggles of when to play the bad guy vs. Whether there's a better solution (the novel IMO ruins it after ~c80, as I mention later, but it's awesome up to that point!). The translation is also on point.

After ~c80, the novel takes a really weird turn, however, which is why I dropped the novel from 5 to 4 stars. I definitely recommend reading up to the point where the MC and the heroine get together! After that, the story gets really chaotic, and I'd say read with caution.

Spoiler

Suddenly, the main character's become an orphan who rose to become the star of a youth soccer team in middle school (that was also playing internationally), who was then adopted by the head of a major Japanese conglomerate, only to be thrown away in a political negotiation a week later. He's then forced to take responsibility for "betraying his friends" by abandoning all the friends and achievements that he, an orphan, managed to struggle and achieve. Apparently his absence (as well as the betrayal of their soccer team's coach for the MC's new foster father) caused his team to lose a match, and the shock of losing that soccer match was so bad that almost all of his (MIDDLE SCHOOLER!) teammates quit soccer for good? And the MC's goofball friend, who was only introduced as being part of a city soccer team, is a contender for the Japanese national soccer team, and the MC's foster sister is a yandere?

If you're confused by the above paragraph, TBH I'm confused too. I can kinda get where the author was coming from, but within the scope of ~5 chapters the author turned the novel from a lighthearted romance to a soccer drama with an orphan being brutally deceived as soon as he manages to achieve his dreams. And then getting blamed by everyone around him, including the family who ruined his life in the first place. And then the MC, who's normally stubborn as a bull any other time (like, in the annoying, please listen to the person you're talking to kin of way), suddenly becomes super impressionable and decides that he's the victim for all wrongdoings and that life is suffering.

It kinda works as a prologue to the MC's behavior in c1, but it kinda detracts from the rest of the novel IMO. The heroine's passive nature, which is perfect for a slice of life novel, suddenly becomes a drawback, since she's not able to help the MC overcome his past on her own. Instead, the MC has to struggle through everything, which the author does by making the MC get angsty for ~3-5 chapters and then come upon a relevation that "screw it, I'll marry that girl, no matter what they say." It's hard to focus on flirting scenes when there's a political drama going on about massive corporations gathering around this one orphan, deciding his engagements, posting about him on social media, and talking about him on the news.

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