Shimotsuki-san Likes the Mob (WN) Chapter 277 Discussion

This is one of these cases where you kind of hate the story but can't stop reading it.

I'm not sure if the author did a good job or I'm just a annoying guy who can't drop stories like this.

Let's start to talk about NTR.

Long story short:

Koutarou had three important girls in his life. He didn't view them as love interests (but kind of did anyway).

One day, they all fell for Ryuzaki. Like, literally.

One of the major plot points of this story is that girls fall for this guy for no reason. I assume this is some meta critcism on harem stories from the POV of someone who lost his love interest.

The best comparison I could make here would be a story of childhood friends in an isekai world but suddenly the reincarnated hero appears and takes your childhood friend away because he saved her life once or something.

There were instances where the author called Ryuzaki's influence as "disease" and the girls that fall for him are "sick."

The main heroine Shimotsuki Shiho is immune against this disease as she has some hearing ability that lets her hear the "sound of the heart" (or soul I guess). Ryuzaki's sound is bad, Koutarou's sound is good. Hence "Shomotsuki-san likes the Mob."

Spoiler

Arc 1

Koutarou and Shiho get closer with Koutarou kind of NTR-ing Shiho from Ryuzaki.

Arc 2

A character called Alice Parker appears and messes with the story. She sees herself as an author and ab*ses her power (wealth) to manipulate situations to make the real life story more entertaining. She did this with her parents and low key ruined their whole relationship and she attempted to do this with Koutarou, Ryuzaki and one of Koutarou's love interests that went for Ryuzaki.

She eventually failed because according to the author she was a "heroine" but Shiho was the "main heroine", so Shiho could get rid of Alice by telling her f*ck off.

Arc 3

Ryuzaki got NTR-ed again by Koutarou (by misunderstanding) and thinks of himself as a mob. His harem powers switch to Koutarou and some new transfer student falls for Koutarou for no reason.

This then also involves Koutarou's family situation with his crap mom that uses him as a tool and has zero expectations on him. Bad parenting I guess.

Shiho resolves the situation by telling Ryuzaki that he has harem powers.

Arc 4 (The Arc I'm at now)

Ryuzaki has troubles regaining his harem status, since he's now aware of it, Koutarou tries to talk to him and reveals to him how Ryuzaki stole his love interests.

But the main focus of this Arc seems to be just flashbacks, of Koutarou losing his love interests.

Note that I write "love interests" but Koutarou tries to be the second coming of Christ or something, claiming he wishes for their happiness and wants Ryuzaki to make them happy, denying that he held any kind of affection for them by claiming he had been just a conceited mob.

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In general, Nakayama Koutarou is such a frustrating protagonist. I had often moments where I just wanted to make a fan fic and swap Koutarou's personality with one of these protags from those betrayal novels often translated by Soafp. I really wanted Koutarou to get a grip and say "f*ck off" to the situation and people that play with him. He just gets pushed around and accepts it by just claiming he's a mob character. He's a shame to self-proclaimed mob characters such as Allan (Villager A Wants to Save the Villainess no Matter What!), Leon (The World of Otome Games is Tough For Mobs) and biggest chad in self-proclaimed mob novel history: Izayoi (I Was Born In The Worst World, Where Beautiful Magiclad Girls Suffer A Brutal Fate. ~If You Don’t Save Them With The Light Novel Knowledge From Your Previous Life, World Downfall?~).