Haruka 17 is an ok manga so far. Its not shy about showing the seedy and cutthroat sides of the idol industry. The dark side of entertainment industries is not anything new and you will find people swallowed up by this whether its in Hollywood or some other entertainment machine in some other part of the world. This is also not the first time that a manga or anime has touched on the subject. You can see it the 1997 anime Perfect Blue where a young actress has to deal with some unsavory situations as well. Its a tougher situation in some cultures where its heavily male dominated. This is why you get all these scenes in Haruka 17 where the interviewer wants them to put on a bikini to "see" their talents. There's been stories in the news recently where Japanese legislators heckled a female legislator and told her she should get married and have babies. This did spark a political backlash, but it tells you something about the context of the culture that this manga is based on. The glass ceiling is much much lower in Japan for women.
The story is also a bit about desperation. Haruka wants to be a strong independent well educated woman. However, she can't get a job and her family is pressuring her to go the traditional route which is of course go to a marriage meeting and find yourself a husband. So she's forced into getting a job in the idol industry and for the first several chapters she's against it because she doesn't want to be in these kind of situations. She finds a lot of other women of various ages who are equally desperate to survive and are ionate with stars in their eyes. Its that desire and ion, often youthful, that is taken advantage of by unsavory male characters. Even though Haruka is intelligent and educated she is still a wide-eyed innocent that barely manages to skirt some compromising situations thru luck, guts and of her agency. There's also politiking, good-old-boy networking, and backstabbing that goes on between agencies, companies and producers. Some of this stuff is decent.
I think the story so far falters a bit, because it seems too eager to show the seedy side of the idol industry. Up to the chapters I've read male idols seem to be non-existent which is weird and it would be interesting to see somethings thru a male idol perspective. All of this is probably because the manga is still aimed at an older male audience (seinen). So while we have a female protagonist I think the manga is still aiming for some titillation. I didn't have a problem with Haruka complaining about her breast size that's just par for the course in manga and anime. At least there's an excuse here in that women are often forced to compete based on their physical looks and Haruka has a competitive streak. There's one scene that was handled weakly and was a turn off. It was a situation that could have turned into a sexual assault and it was kind of handwaved by the creators and quickly forgotten. I think the victims should have been angrier based on their personalities. I also think the writer missed an opportunity of dealing with the lingering effects of such a scary moment, and I think they could have explained the reticence to deal with the situation with the need to hide some people's ages which would have come out in a police investigation.
So far Haruka17 has some promise. It gives us a strong but innocent character, there's adversity, politics, trying to learn a new job, and gender inequality. Its hampered though by its eagerness to swim in the sleazy parts of the story and so far there seems to be no training involved to prepare her to be an idol besides throwing her at a situation. Its in the 7-8 range for me so far. I'll give it an 8 for now, but I'd like to see the author have Haruka bring her intelligence and education into play. That is one of her assets. However, if it continues to wallow in the underbelly of the entertainment industry I will have no problem dropping this and the score like a rock.
