The manga opens on a young idol named Kirigoe Mima, standing beneath the spotlight as she announces that she'll be graduating—leaving her idol group.
The moment the words leave her mouth, extreme fans in the crowd erupt, cursing her as a "traitor" for abandoning the group. One male fan—drawn in an unsettling, almost grotesque style—gets into a brawl with others, and the venue plunges into chaos.
Even so, plenty of fans still shout heartfelt blessings for Mima.
"Hang in there!"
"You'll only get better from here!"
As she leaves, she seems to catch a voice rising from the crowd—
"I've been watching Mima's Room the whole time!"
At first, Mima doesn't take it seriously.
Back home, she collapses onto her bed like always. But for some reason, the fax machine in her room turns on by itself. A sheet slides out.
A terrifying fax, printed in shaky black letters—
TRAITOR…!
TRAITOR…!!
TRAITOR…!!!
Mima whips her head around.
The panel pulls back.
Outside the window, the city is silent—black and lifeless. And in that darkness, it feels like there's an eye…
Watching her.
"Y-You… who are you?"
—
[Kurokawa POV]
Huh… this is surprisingly good?
Kurokawa Aoi exhales in relief after only a few pages.
The oppressive, suspenseful atmosphere is done well—so well it pulls you in almost immediately.
The gothic style is still a little raw… but the framing has punch, and the characters' emotions land. For a newcomer, that's already impressive.
Take that creepy male fan in the corner who's been watching everything—his art style is so wrong it's disturbing. Even Kurokawa, just looking at him, feels vaguely nauseous.
Not bad. Better than what she'd expected from an "intern assistant."
At the very least, up to this point, she can keep reading without forcing herself.
---
"Y-You… who are you?"
It turns out that line is Mima's first piece of dialogue after she joins a drama production.
Right after, the crew receives an anonymous letter. When the agency boss, Tadosoko, opens it—
It explodes, blowing up his palm.
On the letter, a single sentence:
"This is just a warning. Next time, it'll be real."
When Mima returns home, she notices a URL on the envelope. She goes to it—
And discovers what looks like her diary.
It records every detail of her day… which foot she stepped out of the subway with, what brand of milk she bought during a break—everything, meticulously documented.
Except she never wrote any of it.
—
[Kurokawa POV]
Oh. Nice.
Kurokawa's shoulders loosen, her interest rising.
The pacing is layered—each reveal escalating the dread and suspense.
---
A string of incidents leaves Mima exhausted, and her acting career isn't going well either.
Because idols have low status in Japan's entertainment world, Mima can't land meaningful roles. Staff treat her with open contempt.
Then comes the turning point—
Agency head Tadosoko goes to the screenwriter, practically begging him to give Mima more scenes. The screenwriter smiles and agrees—
And then assigns Mima a graphic "rape scene."
That scene completely changes the trajectory of the manga.
—
[Kurokawa POV]
Kurokawa reads through the explicit assault sequence, tense the entire time.
After that, Mima begins living a double life.
By day, she wears revealing outfits, appears at events, shoots intimate photo sets, forcing herself to look composed.
By night, back in her room, she opens that website and reads the diary of another "her," numbing herself—
But on the screen, the face of another "Idol Mima" keeps appearing, mocking her.
"Look at what you are now."
"A tainted idol… no one will like you anymore~"
Mima breaks down sobbing and hurls her pillow at the mirror.
In the bath, she sinks under the water, trying to wash away the filth—
But no matter how hard she scrubs, it won't come off.
...
That sequence hits Kurokawa hard.
A girl who once dreamed of becoming the greatest idol… now being dragged further and further into a path built on exploitation.
And the way the manga externalizes that constant struggle—how the mind collapses into reality—Akiyama draws it with unsettling precision.
When the "Idol Mima" figure appears on the page, even Kurokawa, as a reader, starts losing track of what's hallucination and what's real.
Then she flips the next page—
The scene cuts.
The screenwriter who wrote the assault scene is found dead in an elevator.
Of course.
The murders have started.
---
After Mima's photo book releases, her popularity climbs even higher.
That twisted obsessive fan—wanting to "protect" his goddess's purity—buys up every copy he can find on the street.
Back home, he turns on his computer and receives an email from "Mima."
"The one taking those photos isn't me. It's someone pretending."
"…Can you help me?"
In the room, "Idol Mima" appears again, leaning close to his ear:
—I want to be with you forever… but that impostor keeps pretending to be me.
—What should I do?
The manga devotes half a page to his close-up: the man at the computer, his lips twisting into a warped smile.
"I'll take care of it."
...
Meanwhile, Mima's dissociation grows worse and worse.
This section becomes the most chaotic part of the entire manga.
One moment Kurokawa sees Mima at home—then she turns the page and the scene has jumped to the filming set.
Real and unreal blur together.
It's a rare reading experience. Even Kurokawa finds it fresh.
Then comes a sequence of cuts that feels like pure showmanship:
1. The photographer who shot Mima's photo sets is suddenly stabbed dozens of times at home.
2. The camera closes in on the killer's face—it's Mima.
3. Mima jolts awake, thinking it was a dream… but when she opens her closet, there's a jacket stained with blood.
4. In the background, the TV news reports: a famous photographer was found murdered at home.
Kurokawa takes a deep breath.
The information density is overwhelming—she needs a break.
This manga… is something.
Newcomers really do dare to draw anything.
Entertainment-industry exploitation, murder, fractured identity… a full set of dark elements, with a faint echo of Junji Ito's flavor.
The scene transitions are extremely fast. If you don't read carefully, it becomes confusing.
Yet that confusion doesn't ruin the experience—on the contrary, the bold presentation, and the constant presence of blood-red violence on the page, makes it intensely gripping.
The author is clearly fully immersed in his own "art."
But the problem is also obvious:
It's hard to land the ending.
As an editor, Kurokawa has seen plenty of works like this.
Newcomers often come in with daring themes and shocking hooks. They write whatever feels "exciting"—
Without actually thinking through how to conclude it, or having the skill to close it properly.
That's why the moment she sees "newcomer + niche genre," Kurokawa can practically smell the disaster coming.
This Mima's Room is a greatest-hits compilation of "explosive" elements. It's incredibly satisfying to read—
But now she knows it'll probably go one of two ways.
Option one: the killer is the obsessive male fan.
He stalks Mima, creates the diary website, and murders the screenwriter and photographer because he can't accept his goddess "falling."
But then how do you explain the raincoat in Mima's closet, or the email the fan received…? You'd have to say Mima's second personality manipulated him into killing her.
Option two: the killer is Mima herself.
The second personality is born from guilt, has its own memory, makes the website, kills those who "led her down this path," while the real Mima knows nothing.
But that becomes cliché.
"Amnesia" is too convenient. Like the author threw out a pile of mysteries to grab attention, then couldn't close it and used a vague gimmick to shut everyone up.
Kurokawa weighs the manuscript stack.
There are less than fifteen pages left.
No matter how she thinks about it, Mima's Room seems unlikely to have a truly satisfying ending.
What a waste…
She sighs, then flips into the final chapter.
...
The film wraps.
Mima walks alone backstage—when a figure suddenly tackles her.
It's the obsessive fan.
He pins her down, screaming "You impostor!" swearing he'll kill her for his goddess.
At the last second, Mima grabs a hammer and swings—
The fan collapses in a pool of blood.
But then a crowd appears.
They applaud.
Mima blinks—
And realizes she's on the set again.
"..."
A dream?
Not only does Mima not know—Kurokawa can't tell anymore either.
Then Rumi appears, comforting the shaken Mima.
When they pass the spot where the struggle happened, Mima finds the body is gone.
No blood. No trace.
But the panel cuts—
Agency boss Tadosoko, and the obsessive fan, are both lying dead in pools of blood.
...
Both dead?
When Mima opens her eyes again, Rumi has brought her "home."
But when Mima opens the window, she realizes—
This isn't her home.
It's a replica room, arranged exactly the same.
She turns—
Rumi is standing there in Mima's red dress.
...
[Kurokawa POV]
Wait—
Kurokawa nearly rises out of her chair, staring at the woman who has suddenly become the center of the page.
Who are you…?!
The manga's true climax hits.
It turns out Rumi once dreamed of becoming an idol herself. She failed—so she poured that dream into Mima.
She even created the website under Mima's identity, writing the diary and fantasizing that she was "Mima."
But Mima's career shift—and especially that assault scene—shattered Rumi's fantasy.
Rumi becomes convinced that she is the true Idol Mima—the only Mima.
So she kills the screenwriter, kills Tadosoko, kills the photographer—
And finally even manipulates the obsessive fan into trying to kill Mima…
"This world only needs one Mima."
Then the manga turns into a full-blown chase—almost a battle royale.
Rumi has fallen completely into the abyss. Wearing the red dress, she becomes an "idol" who seems to cross time itself, hunting the present "self."
Mima runs for her life through the streets.
Behind her, the "Idol Mima" in the dress gives chase.
She moves like a fairy—light, graceful—
But in mirrors, what's reflected is Rumi's heavy, distorted body sprinting in desperation.
Then "Idol Mima" catches her, grips her throat, pins her to the wall, smiling beautifully:
"This world doesn't need two Mimas~"
"I'm Mima!"
Mima screams and yanks off her pursuer's wig.
In that instant, Rumi sees her real self in the mirror—
And nearly retches from disgust.
She scrambles to grab the wig, but shards of broken glass pierce into her abdomen.
Gritting through the pain, she staggers into the middle of the road, puts the wig back on—
And in that moment, "Idol Mima" returns.
She looks at Mima—almost as if looking at herself—and beams.
A truck comes barreling toward her.
In the headlights bright as day, she turns her head—
As though she's standing under stage lights again, fans cheering below.
Rumi smiles, opens her arms—
....
The story seems to end there.
But Kurokawa just sits frozen.
You can draw it like this…?
The obsession with becoming "Mima," so deep it's willing to trade death for one perfect, beautiful moment…
And that final chase—art turned all the way up: the "past self" hunting the "present self," while the mastermind is the kind-looking manager who was gentle from beginning to end.
It's terrifying.
Twist after twist, the kind that makes your spine go cold.
But what about Mima afterward?
Kurokawa can't help murmuring to herself.
Her acting career? Her shattered mind?
The killer is exposed and punished, but none of that is really "resolved," is it?
In the end, it's just a murder mystery stacked with reversals.
It's a shame—brilliant, yes, but the emotional elevation at the end feels a little short.
Thinking that, Kurokawa is about to put the pages away—
When she realizes the last two pages are stuck together.
There's more?
But one page—what can it even do?
Even so, she can't stop herself from flipping it open.
---
Right before the truck hits Rumi, Mima rushes forward and shoves her out of the way.
They both tumble to the roadside.
Time passes—how long, it's unclear.
Rumi is sent to a psychiatric hospital, forever living in an idol world. Whenever she looks in the mirror, she sees herself as "Idol Mima."
Mima, now a huge star, often visits wearing sunglasses—yet every time, she only takes one look before leaving in a hurry.
Because only that way can she confirm one thing.
"I'm the real one."
Sitting in the car, Mima looks into the mirror and smiles—bright and flawless…
—
[Kurokawa POV]
I'm the real one… What does that mean?
Even Kurokawa—who has read countless manga—feels goosebumps rise.
Why is that final smile so eerie?!
Does that mean… in the accident, the one who truly "broke" was Mima? And the one who survived as "Mima" was Rumi?
That doesn't make sense. There's no body-swapping here.
Or maybe after the accident, Mima completely killed off her idol self, and fully "fell" into becoming the kind of actress who sacrifices everything for her career?
…No matter how you interpret it, this manga is intense.
Kurokawa flips back through earlier pages, rereading them again and again. The more she reads, the better it gets.
And in the corner of her vision, she notices Akiyama Satoru across from her—calm from start to finish.
Could it be…
Is Akiyama-san actually a genius?