Watanabe Mayu (Mayuyu) / 3rd Generation

Mayu's always had a very idealistic view of men, possibly because she grew up with a distant father so she's never had any close male acquaintances. Growing up, she's very into 2D guys, takarazuka where she crushed on the female actresses playing male roles and we know her instagram leak revealed a pretty shockingly extreme otaku/fujoshi mindset that if genderflipped, would be pretty creepy.

But now that she's graduated and now retired, Mayu is under a lot of societal and financial pressure to marry, especially if she can't find work again, so she's going to have to adopt a realistic look. So I don't know. my guess is that she'll either lower her standards and for the financial security, settle down with a decent guy that is tolerant of her lifestyle and then lead largely separate lives after they have a couple of kids or maybe become a spinster if she has enough financial security.

 

The way I see Mayu's friendship, she's first and foremost a hobbyist. Her most genuine friendships, in my opinion, are her early Warota otaku friends and her later Takarazuka friends because they bonded over their common hobbies. With Yukirin, I feel like it's more like ended up together because they are the only original Team B members left and have spent so much time together through work but I dont know how much real commonalities they have.

 

I don't think there ever was a "sexual" relationship between them. Yukirin said some time ago she felt like a "mother" to Mayu. I guess Mayu found in Yukirin the sister she never knew she had (I don't know what other siblings Mayu has in real life).

 

I do think if you ask Mayu who her best friend is, Yukirin would probably be the answer and it's obvious that the two of them do care a lot for each other. Yukirin tries to invite Mayu out to stuff like dinner (even after Mayu graduated) and sometimes Mayu goes, like that one time they went to the Morning Musume concert with Sasshi. The issue is that Mayu just has a really warped idea of friendship and she in general doesn't like hanging out with people. There was this one time on Momm! in 2015 when Mayu and Kojiharu were all acting buddy buddy and talking about their friendship when Kojiharu dropped the line that it's the first time the two of them have really talked in 5 years, shocking Nakai.

The most suspect relationship of all I think is Mayu and Yuuko and I'm not sure if there's any evidence the two of them even spoke after Yuuko graduated. I think in one of the UTAGEs, Yuuko was named by Miichan as one of the girls along with Acchan that Mayu had a lot of difficulty talking to, although I can't remember the exact context.

 

I could imagine it'd be for a similar reason as with Acchan. Yuko was popular (both among fans and other members) and to me at least, she seemed very loud and outspoken, which might be scary for someone who's so reclusive.

I also remember an episode on AKBINGO where the newer members had to rank which senior members they'd feel most comfortable inviting out for a meal and Mayu ranked last. Everyone, including Mayu herself, said that she doesn't approach the juniors and for respect-and-hierarchy-related reasons, the juniors don't approach her either. All of this makes a lot of sense to me.

 

But weren't Yuko and Mayu the "Oshiri Sisters" at one point!?

 

Age might have played a role as well, since Mayu's a junior high school student when Yuko's almost college graduate age.

I might be cynical but I do wonder if the Oshiri Sisters was scripted or at least exaggerated for fanservice. The idea of a 16 year old "90% of my brain is anime" Mayu and a 22 year old Yuko ever hanging out seems so mindblowing from everything we know.

 

Yuuko is awkward with people when she met too, in an akbingo episode, junior members choosed yuuko and mayuyu as worst senpais. Sae said yuko get interest with young members at first and when they grow up little bit, she losing her interest to them. And sae said Yuko mostly awkward with people and not good at interact with people when she first meet. She looking so social and extrovert but i guess she is not that social as i see. She just acting close and friend since she is kind and friendly but she actually being friend and close with pretty few people. So I am not surprised if mayuyu and yuko didnt talked much lol.

 

Ok I found the interview:
https://www.oricon.co.jp/special/51466/

One of the most brutally honest interviews she's done about her acting career and it's for her 2018 drama Itsuka Kono Ame ga Yamu Hi Made. Potentially relevant to the topic of her future acting career, so worth a read.

Some highlights:
- Mayu apologizing for being the lead character in the drama and says she's not a good enough actress to play the lead because she doesn't have courage or nerves. (I think there's no doubt she remembers her disastrous earlier dramas like Book Girl)
- Mayu being asked how she relates to her character and she says the one scene she really identifies with is when her character yells out that she's always been alone for 15 years and does everything herself without relying on others.
- Says that for a long time, she found acting difficult and painful. Sayonara, Enari-kun in 2017 was the first time she felt like acting was fun.
- Says she doesn't really have any strengths as an actress.
- Says acting and interacting with other people are both major hurdles for her, but she still wants to challenge herself as an actress.

Mayu seems really harsh on herself and she seems almost overwhelmed by pressure. Curiously, a drama is what made her love acting, although she hasn't done stage at that point yet. I do wonder if she prefers stage because there are less eyeballs so potentially less pressure, whereas Natsuzora averages a 20% rating as a popular asadora?

 

Some random thoughts, a lot of them are just my analysis/predictions, so there may be a lot of bias:

- I think Mayu and Yukirin genuinely liked each other, but I always fear that their friendship may cool down after Mayu’s graduation, mostly due to Mayu’s personality.
- On Yukirin’s side, I think she really cares a lot about Mayu. She is also one of the few, maybe even the only one, who could understand Mayu and provide emotional support. As Mayu’s fan, I feel reassured whenever Mayu is accompanied by Yukirin.
- But I guess it is sometimes frustrating for Yukirin that Mayu is so introverted. Their personalities are very different after all. Mayu probably won’t reveal too much about her struggles directly. It would be hard for an outside party to help and take care of Mayu. Especially when their career paths become different, they don’t hang out everyday, their bonding will not be as close as before. Yukirin may find it increasingly difficult to understand Mayu’s problems at all, let alone provide any support. I hope Yukirin will never forget their friendship and continue to reach out if it really happens.
- When even Yukirin says that she doesn’t know where Mayu is, I do feel worried. I hope that maybe she says so in order to protect Mayu’s peace and privacy, but I can’t deny that there’s a rather high probability that she really doesn’t know Mayu’s whereabouts.
- On Mayu’s side, I think Mayu’s love towards Yukirin is equally immense, but she has problems expressing it. Mayu can definitely feel that Yukirin is one of the very few who could understand her. Yukirin should always have a special place in Mayu’s heart.
- But Mayu has too much pride to reveal the whole picture of her struggles. It is very difficult to explain too. I bet Mayu doesn’t want to bother her best friend too much either. After all, Yukirin may be able to provide some emotional support, but it won’t change the reality that she has to deal with. Perhaps Mayu would just give some shallow replies to Yukirin nowadays, which is not very constructive to their relationship. But I think Mayu is still very serious about the friendship. I hope Mayuyu just accept how much she love and how much she need Yukirin. When you are sad, just find a chance to cry on Yukirin's shoulder.

- I remember that Mayu said she did quite well in school, which is not surprising given her personality. It seems that her IQ is at least above average, could be exceptional. Given Mayu’s intelligence and from her way of talking and behaving, she sounds like the kind of person who frequently asks deeper questions like “What is the purpose of my life?” or “Who am I and what am I good at?” deep in her soul, which are hard to solve in the first place. Being a perfectionist will just pile up her pressure. Despite being able to sing/act in a reasonably high standard, she always thinks that she is not good enough. So she likely has high neuroticism beneath her so-called “robotic” image. Sadly, I think all these lead to Mayu's mental struggles.
- In terms of MBTI, I guess Mayu’s personality is likely an INFJ or INTJ, although MBTI itself is far from being a perfect model. Either personality is very rare. I am somewhere between INFJ/INTJ myself and always score something like 95% introverted, so I might be biased, but Mayu’s apparent odd behaviors actually make a lot of sense to me.
- So I think that the main reason behind Mayu’s retirement is mental, she is overwhelmed. Actually there seems to be hints back in Mayu’s final years in AKB, which is pointed out by some other fans here. Given the situation, a comeback is unlikely. As a fan, of course I would love to see Mayu again, but I also don’t want her to suffer anymore.
- Mayu may be weak in social skills, but she is quite intelligent and she realizes her strengths and weaknesses well even at a young age. Unless she is very distressed mentally, I think Mayu is smart enough to evaluate the negative consequences of complete social isolation. So she will probably maintain some limited interactions with the outside world. The news around the new year that Mayu chated with other members and provided encouragement is a good sign.
- Despite the difficulties, INFJ/INTJs are usually clever and imaginative. They are very unique in solving problems in creative and effective ways. They tend to find success and their meaning of life in uncommon fields in a very specialized way. I still dream of Mayu finding her pride again in some area and I believe she has every potential to do so. Perhaps being a high-profile celebrity does not suit her personality very well, but perhaps when she is happy again, she will open a twitter/instagram account again and share the good news with the fans. I still dream of her doing so.

- I guess the relationship between Mayu and Sasshi is more complicated.
- I think Sasshi has great respect towards Mayu and genuinely treats Mayu as her friend. Although Sasshi has a better career, she understands that Mayu is as good as her. They are just in different dimensions, but they are both very good in their own way.
- To be honest, Mayu is too serious about winning/losing, so I think Mayu is secretly unhappy about being "inferior" to Sasshi, although she tries to hide it as much as possible. She is okay with hanging out with Sasshi and she respects Sasshi as a person, but that's all. So their friendship is a little bit one-sided. Credit to Mayu though, I don’t think Mayu has any malicious intent towards Sasshi, their competition was always a healthy one.
- Actually I think many other members also like/respect Mayu a lot (Yuko, Takamina, Jurina, Kojiharu etc), but it seems that Yukirin is the only one who could build a deep relationship with Mayu.
- Again, I think it is mostly due to Mayu's personality. As an INFJ or INTJ, I guess she tends to enjoy more in-depth and insightful discussions, rather than just shallow talks. In this way, I bet Mayu is more suited to build up friendship/relationship with people with more solid academic background, which is relatively rare in the entertainment industry. In this way, I think even Yukirin is not a perfect fit for Mayu indeed, but they are able to develop a strong friendship because Yukirin is able/willing to understand Mayu to a certain degree and is willing to respect Mayu's way of thinking. And Mayu probably finds that Yukirin is always the most reliable one for emotional support.
- That being said, I think Mayu is a very honest person with good intent. She may struggled a lot over the years, but she never tried to take advantage at anyone's expense. She never tried to deceive her fans. She just always tried to solve her problems alone, in the most sincere ways. She might seem robotic at the surface, but she has a beautiful mind. One of the most complicated yet beautiful personality I had ever seen. Anyone who could open Mayu's heart will discover this, just like Yukirin did.

- Good side, based on Mayu’s personality, I guess Mayu is fairly frugal. She doesn’t seem like a reckless spendy clown with her personality. If my memory is correct, I think Mayu once said that if she suddenly gets a lot of money she’ll just keep it because she can’t think of many things that she wants. Many celebrities are shit at money but I don’t think Mayu is one of them. Financially, she might be able to live off her wealth for quite a long period, after all she earned quite a lot during her AKB years. If she knows how to invest properly, financial independence might be possible, but I have doubts about this. Mayu seems too cautious and anxious to invest in something like stocks, but she could overcome the hurdle if she decides to read some books about it seriously.
- Given Mayu’s personality and my wild guess about her financial situation, I think she doesn’t have much problem being single. She is really used to being alone. Indeed, I think she enjoys it overall, although she may feel a bit lonely from time to time. So the chance of Mayu being in a relationship is relatively low, unless there are outside forces, e.g. her parents, who give pressure to her. The COVID pandemic is a great excuse for her to lock herself up anyway.

 

I agree with most of it, especially the point of pride. Takamina has stated that Mayu's the type of person who wouldn't show weakness to anyone. That said, I think you guys are still over-romanticizing Mayu and Yukirin's relationship. From what Mayu's stated on UTAGE, neither Yukirin nor any other AKB member know she lives, which shows to me that she's always kept Yukirin at arm's length even during her AKB days. The way I see it, Mayu likes "the idea" of a close friendship of Yukirin, but she doesn't want to put in the work, hence her quote on Downtown Now about spending the absolute minimum amount of effort to maintain a friendship. Mayu and Yukirin have both stated that they have little in common and we know Mayu hates dinners or most "normal friends activity". The one exception is that Mayu enjoys karaoke and although she usually prefers going alone, she has dragged Yukirin into going with her pre-graduation, where of course Mayu ends up singing 95% of the songs and Yukirin plays with her phone listening to Mayu giving a Takarazuka concert.

Mayu further stated that only 1 friend had ever set foot or been given the location of her house and she calls the friend a NEET. Now, Mayu's potentially most trusted friend being a NEET is like the most characteristically Mayu thing ever, but it does make you wonder how they even met and how a NEET of all people became part of Mayu's inner circle. I don't think she's ever had friends at school, so I wonder if they met online, as Mayu loves spending a lot of time on the internet on sites like Pixiv. All complete speculation on my part and nobody knows if Mayu's still friends with this NEET, but I could see Mayu having a secret group of online friends she trusts more than her AKB friends.

Definitely agree with this. MBTI is a very flawed metric by all means, but Mayu certainly has a very rare personality (closest to INTJ in my opinion) and that's what makes her so fascinating. I think Mayu's personality is further twisted by the highly competitive nature of AKB and the potential for leaks. I imagine her Instagram leaking must have really spooked her out, even though it should be family-only and I assume somebody in the family got hacked. Also, the fact that Yukirin's picture with Tegoshi got leaked out shows not even your closest friends can be trusted.

I think this is the social hierarchy thing @bonjourmarlene first brought up above. Mayu has a very strict view of hierarchy and she loves categorizing people and I feel she's only comfortable interacting with people she considers on her level. This kind of attitude based on senpai-kouhai relationship is not unusual in Japan, but Mayu takes it to the extreme. When she was new in AKB, her peers included most people in Team B, so she had a close relationship with Warota and a bunch of other otaku Team B girls early on. The rest of the Kami7 like Yuko and Takamina were all her senpai and she had a lot of issues talking to them. In the post-Maeda world, the number of people Mayu can consider peers are reduced to just Yukirin and Sasshi. The one exception is her relationship with Ikoma, who is her junior, but Ikoma was Nogi's center at that time so they had more of an socially equivalent relationship than her other juniors. When she entered the drama/musical industry, I don't know if she even has any peers. Her unique situation coming to the industry as an unestablished actress but popular idol makes her so different from everyone else there, which is why I imagine she ends up so isolated.

This isn't how it works though. It's like saying a smart depressed person would logically deduce how damaging depression is and would stop being depressed, but yet you can't actually control your own depression. Mayu's stated many times that she's well aware of her communication issues and on her last ANN before graduation with Yukirin and Sasshi, they spent an entire segment around her problem. She knows how damaging it is and consistently stated she wants to change, but it's not easy since it's ingrained directly in her personality.

To be fair, there's likely jealousy between all girls at some level, including Yukirin's potential jealousy towards Mayu. Love-tan, Mayu's earliest BFF, had once admitted she wanted Mayu dead over Warota's center position. But I imagine Mayu's made peace with being forever second to Sasshi for a while now and would genuinely consider Sasshi her second closest AKB friend after Yukirin.

Yeah, the nice thing about being a stay-at-home otaku is the low cost of living. As long as she's not hardcore into gacha games or figurines, she doesn't need much expense at all. We know she used to have so much anime figurines in her room that she had to sleep on the couch, but that seems to be a thing of the past. The only other things that might be expensive are her tickets for stage, since she goes to theatres all the time. But who knows if that's a real hobby she has or whether that's just her doing research for her career.

That said, I'm skeptical as to whether she has enough to survive for the rest of her life, especially since Japanese women live a long time. Idols, even those on Mayu's level, don't make much money and they have a lot of extra costs like singing/dancing/acting lessons and buying their own clothes for concerts. I don't know whether she still lives with her parents or not, but unless she has significant support from them, it could be tough for her to survive on her own without marrying or becoming a public figure again. She doesn't even have to be an actress. She could probably make enough just being a youtuber or game streamer, but her anxiety and privacy issues could prevent that.

Mayu's stated in interviews after graduation of her desire to be in a relationship and fantasized about giving chocolates to her lover on Valentines day, so I do think she'll at least make an attempt at dating. Like I said earlier, the issue is that she has a really romanticized view of romance but real men aren't the 2D princes of her dreams. Given her comments on how she views friendship (putting in the minimum amount of work) makes me think her romances could go badly unless she can find a decent and tolerant man, since a healthy relationship requires real work by both sides. She just seems like a very difficult person to be married to.

 

After reading the above few posts, I'm actually quite shocked that I've never heard about it on this forum sooner. As someone who liked Mayu but didn't follow her too closely, I took her retirement announcement and how she was retiring because of her health at face value. I remember Yukirin/Sasshi mentioning that during her grad con and wanted her to rest once she graduated. But I guess that was more of a mental and emotional rest from having to be 'on' all the time and always interact with fellow members, staff, and fans?

With members like Mayu who have been in the group for many years (and the majority of them in their formative teenage years), I've always felt that it must get exhausting. I always viewed her introverted-ness as a natural result of not just her personality, but also from the need to rest from her idol time. And I think with Yukirin, their bond was genuine but tied too closely to work, so Mayu didn't want to/feel the need to contact her and hang out with her on her days off. Kind of like how most of us don't hang out with our best friends at work in our personal time.

I started to like Mayu more once she outgrew her cyborg persona and became more of a 'normal' person and more relaxed so this stuff interests me and adds more layers to who Mayu really is (or at least as much as we can assume).

 

As I mentioned before, I believe this is a phase Mayu is going thru and she will grow out of it in time. Perhaps not until she hits her 30's or mid 30's.

 

I find it interesting to read all of these speculations. It's partially how I've always seen Mayu, but not to this extreme.

I think building relationships is hard within 48G. You may be friends but you might not consider them friends because they're your colleagues first and foremost. I have no idea what year this was, but I remember watching AKBINGO, and they had random civilians on the show. They'd ask random every day questions and compare how civilians would answer them in comparison to idols. The question that's relevant for this is "how many friends do you have?" I can't remember if Mayu was on the episode, let alone what her answer was. However, I do remember that Takamina said "none." They asked her about Acchan, Kojiharu, Miichan and other 1st Gen members, but she said she considers them colleagues and not friends. Now, from an outside perspective I'd say Takamina had many friends. Defo the three mentioned above, and I'd also argue she was close with Yuko, Sae and later also Sasshi. Maybe Takamina's mind changed because on the Dissolution Dokkiri Mechaike Special in 2014, she said she's close to Miichan, Kojiharu and Sasshi. However, AKBINGO started airing 4 years into AKB48's career, so they've had lots of time to build relationships already, and I can't remember what episode it was but I believe it wasn't during the 0ji/1ji 59fun times.

When I think "who was friends with Mayu?", the only one that comes to my mind is Yukirin. Now with Takamina I can list at least 6 people, but Takamina said she didn't consider them friends. Takamina and Mayu are different people, but to me it just makes me wonder how much we (as fans) read into their relationships and whether Mayu and Yukirin really are friends or just got along really well as colleagues.

On a bit of a tangent, while I was at school, I was friends with a guy who was quite reclusive and similarly self-conscious to Mayu in the sense that he always thought he wasn't good enough at anything he was doing. Me and other mutual friends really made an effort to understand him and ask him to hang out (even if it was just me and him, or other friends meeting him 1 to 1). After we graduated and weren't "forced" to see each other every day anymore, it lasted for all of two years before we eventually admitted defeat. If Yuki considers Mayu her friend, but there's nothing coming from Mayu ever, their friendship might eventually inevitable just... go away. That doesn't mean that they won't like each other and I would hope they'd think of each other fondly, but I wouldn't blame Yuki if she eventually gave up trying as well. There's only so much you can do if it's entirely one-sided.

I feel sorry for my former friend and both Mayu because I can imagine it must be difficult, but you also can't expect all of the effort to come from the other half of the relationship.

 

Just to be clear, my post that @Momo48 directly quoted about her self-admitted communication issues is all based on either her own admissions or Yukirin/Sasshi/Miichan calling her out and definitely not my personal opinions. You can get most of these info from watching Downtown Now's episode with Mayu, the final ANN, a couple of the UTAGE episodes where Nakai grills her and read some interviews. That said, some of these facts might be distorted by subtitles or translation issues or just my faulty memory and some of the others might be lies (eg you can make an argument that Yukirin's lying that she doesn't know about Mayu's current whereabouts).

However, the two posts above @Momo48's post by me and @fire_cheetah are definitely speculation and personal opinion and I hope we aren't misleading people into thinking they are facts.

And I don't think most of the recent speculation (after Mayu's communication issues are brought up) is necessarily about "How is Mayuyu doing", but rather "What is Mayu's true relationship with her AKB friends and how does her communication problems affect her views on friendship/marriage".

 

Totally agree. The post I wrote is just speculation and personal opinion We discuss it because we all love Mayu and miss her so much

 

Mayuyu liked Nogi and knew some of the members since she worked with them for her drama Sabadol, so I think her friendship with Ikoma was more like a support from Mayuyu, since Ikoma became kennin in AKB and might feel lonely, Mayuyu helped her to feel comfortable.

But actually it did happen that Mayuyu became close to one of her juniors, you forgot her, Mayuyu was quite close to 10th gen member Kobayashi Marina. I remember that back then, it surprised me that both of them became friends since Mayuyu rarely got close with others especially juniors, and if I remember well, these two became close because they shared similar interests (takarazuka etc.). I remember that they were together quite often. Marina graduated before Mayuyu though and I have no idea what happened to their friendship since then...

I really think stage plays and theater are a passion for Mayuyu, and not just research for her career (but it could be for this as well). When she was younger, she mostly loved animes or games but as she became older, she started to also become passionate about stage plays, takarazuka etc. I remember some time before her graduation, she had a show where she was in Korea and she watched stage plays there, I expected her to do something else, but even in a foreign country, she went to watch stage plays... She didn't understand the talking parts but still watched and enjoyed. it shows how much she loves it. (it's like how we watch AKB content even without subs, because we're fans and we love these idols)

About the money that they make as AKB members, I'm not sure about it but from what some graduated members said, I think they make a good amount of money, and it makes sense since most members stay for quite a long time (if they didn't make money, I would expect them to leave earlier) and especially if they're signed to an agency and have outside works. So depending on how much Mayuyu saved from all the money that she made in AKB and after graduation, if she didn't spend a lot, she should be fine financially for the next years...

 

Great analysis! I agree with most of what you said too. I didn’t know Mayu had a close NEET friend, but yes I agree that it is a very Mayu thing. It won’t be surprising that she has a group of online friends too, though her online friends most likely won’t know that one of their buddy is a celebrity. I could imagine that Mayu finds it funny to actively talk on an online group or forum as an anonymous guy. Heck, maybe I am Mayu talking here XD.

For Mayu/Yuki relation, I agree that their personalities are very different, being able to get close is mostly due to luck. It is understandable that there are doubts if the friendship is overstated for commercial reasons. I find hints from their petty actions. While the big picture of their talks and actions can be rehearsed, the petty actions are like microbursts of emotional energy which are harder to manipulate. A good example is this one:

if the video does not show watch the video here

To be fair, it was an emotional occasion anyway. But if you pay attention to Yukirin’s eye contact and body language…… I think she looked at Mayu for something like 15 times, no one else in the video did it so frequently. Yuki is literally finding every possible chance to observe Mayu! And like in 02:37, Yuki’s eyes focused on Mayu for a few second and then showed a fulfilling smile, you feel the love here. Yuki’s dancing is quite incoherent towards the end of the song, probably affected by Mayu crying. My conclusion is Yuki really liked and cared about Mayu a lot.

On Mayu’s side it is more difficult to interpret, she tries hard to suppress her emotions anyway (like 03:45 in the same video). And Mayu is a good actor, so maybe she is more adequate in manipulating even the petty actions. So we have to rely on speculation again. I think Mayu has the desire for love, care and attention, but it has to be a sincere, meaningful and constructive one rather than a fake, shallow and annoying one. Yuki’s care on Mayu falls in the former category, so I do think Mayu values their friendship with high regard.

For personality, I agree that Mayu seems more likely to be an INTJ, especially during the “cyborg idol” years. I think she shows more “feeling” tendency towards her graduation though, so INFJ cannot be ruled out completely. I might be putting my own experience into the analysis though. I was definitely more like an INTJ when I was younger too, but as I become more mature and inevitably encountered the cycle of success-bottleneck/failure-success again, I appreciate values like “empathy” or “love” much more, the “feeling” side comes out.

For the rest, I think you did very good logical deductions again and the scenarios you described are completely possible. To supplement, I think people having personality like Mayu (or me) do things in roughly three different modes:
1. I value something highly, it is very important and meaningful to me, then perfectionism will take place. I will try everything to perform as good as possible. I will think about it even when I am sleeping. Getting 100/100 is my goal. Even 99/100 is considered a failure.
2. I find it necessary to do something, but I don’t think it is too meaningful, or I think it takes too much effort for too little reward. In such case, I am incredibly effective in finding ways to get a mere pass. Getting 50/100 is my goal. But once I get the pass, I won’t pay much attention to it anymore, I reserve my energy for what I think is important. (Sounds familiar to Mayu’s version of “doing the minimum required to maintain a friendship”?)
3. I find something totally nonsense and stupid. I just don’t give a shit about it. I don’t mind if I get 0/100. I will definitely reserve my energy for something else.

Take a romance relationship for example, if Mayu finally gets it, I agree that something like Case (2) or (3) is most likely, perhaps she find someone tall and handsome who excites her at the beginning, but when she finds that their characters just don’t fit very well, failure is predictable. However, if she could find a soulmate, Case (1) is possible, and in such case, she could have a very deep and fruitful relationship. Finding a soulmate itself tends to fit in the category of “too much effort for too little reward” for an INTJ/INFJ though, so after all, I understand why she resort to 2D princes.

 

Ohh, good point. I included her in the "Takarazuka friends" category earlier but I forgot she was a junior. The two of them were in the same hotel for an entire long tour and both were Takarazuka nuts, so I think they were able to break the ice. A lot of Mayu's friends came from common hobbies. Original Team B/Warota with anime/manga, Marina with Takarazuka, Ikoma you can argue with manga/anime as well since they went to manga cafes together and Ikoma is a big manga otaku, which is possibly why she started struggling with making friends later in life. She's never figured out how to break the ice otherwise.

The documentary made it pretty clear that Mayu went to Korea to watch stage dramas specifically because of her career, since she was debuting Amelie immediately after. She met and was trying to learn stage techniques from foreign directors and actors (that I recall she claimed was superior to Japanese counterparts), which is why they showed it in the documentary. And to be clear, I'm not doubting her love for Takarazuka, which has been conclusively proven, but rather western-style musicals and plays. Even though they are both stage, they have fairly different appeal and it's like anime vs Western cartoons.