I came across Iori Kusano’s Hybrid Heart at Flamecon 2025 in New York City. The man at the table pitched it to me, but I was already sold after looking at the cover. This is a story about an idol, Rei, who is the remaining half of a duo, Venus Versus. When her partner Ririko left, she stayed…and is regretting the decision more every day.
The setting is a recognizable near-future in which implants and intelligent software create more effects than just a Vtuber skin. Think of Hololive if the people themselves and their environments are modded on the fly for virtual performances.
Rei is stuck in what anyone will immediately understand to be an abusive relationship with her manager, who controls literally everything about her, from the calories she consumes to the way she sings the words. And every day, she thinks more and more about the partner she’s lost.
When her manager brings in a new talent, immediately grooming the younger woman with the same tactics he used on her, Rei has a decision to make – does she save someone else, or herself?
I’ve referenced this before, but there are some stories that are reminiscent of the “women in peril” genre favored by Lifetime TV, which of the 2 hour movie included 1 hour and 45 minutes of threats to women and 15 minutes of retribution. If this story has a major failing, it is this. We learn in detail how Rei is manipulated, controlled, gaslighted, threatened and her decision, when it comes, is late in the book, the denouement is rushed. If I were to have edited this, I would have suggested bringing the climax a bit sooner and spent more time with the consequences.
Despite this, Hybrid Heart is not a bad read, and if you are interested in/convinced of the dark side of the idol industry and it’s similarity to human trafficking, this is a smart and devastating look at it from the inside. Not as extreme as Last and First Idol, (oddly, also by a Kusano, although there is no apparent relationship between them), but dark in its own human way.
And there is Yuri, in the sense that Rei has a growing understanding of her feelings of intimacy with and affection for her former partner Ririko, which drive her to make her choices.
Ratings:
Overall – 7
As a small press published book, this is a pretty slick volume, with cover art by the author. It’s not perfect, but it kept me reading until the end.
The cover kind of misled me, because judging by it I didn’t expect the content to be so dark. I liked it a lot though, on a scale from 1 to 10, a strong 8 or even 9 in my books.