#akane got a boost of it after love now and learned to lie about herself so she gained the star eyes

[skania]

#TBH would love to see your opinion on akane getting the star eyes#other than just ‘she’s copying ai’ bc I think that’s a bit of a cop out#sure i think she highly empathizes with ai#but I think there’s more too it but idk how to put it in words

Thank you so much for bringing this up @verimin because this is another thing I see a lot and I just. don't. get it!

We see Akane acting as Ai twice in the manga. The first time she does it because she needs to put on a role, and the girls suggest she act as Aqua's ideal woman.

That's it, that's all there is to it. Akane was just playing a role.

The second time is, again, all about playing a role. She is auditioning to play Ai, so she obviously acts as Ai.

These are by no means the only instances where we have seen Akane with the star eyes though.

(Spoilers for the entire manga below the cut!)

Whenever she becomes one with the character she is playing, she gets the starry eyes.

This is also the case for these two instances:

In both cases here, Akane is channeling the emotions of a character that she has made her own. She is empathizing with Ai to the point that she feels her emotions, but it's only because she constructed Ai's profile and character so thoroughly in her mind.

So basically, it's once again about acting.

This one instance could be the only outlier, but it actually fits the same pattern.

Her experience during Love Now taught her that she needs to play a role in front of the camera to protect herself.

Before Love Now, Akane was always just herself in front of the camera and that almost killed her. Now, she knows better than to show her vulnerability.

So instead of showing how nervous she is, she acts collected.

And so, since she is still acting, she gets the star eyes.

It's not that Akane is imitating Ai, it's that what she went through during Love Now changed her. She didn't only learn to lie in front of the camera, she also gained the confidence to do the kind of acting that commands all the attention to herself.

So you could say that doing a psychological analysis of Ai made some of Ai's confidence and her ability to tell convincing lies rub-off on her, but that's about it.

Besides, while it may have contributed to bringing her out of her shell, the fact that Akane is able to pull it off so effortlessly shows she was born with it.

All in all, saying that Akane is copying Ai makes no sense because we can clearly see Akane do a 180° whenever she plays her lol