Come to think of it, there was this awful shoujo manga about ballet that I read a long time ago. The protagonist was a typical poor girl who couldn't even afford pointe shoes. However, a famous theater company's ballerina takes a liking to her and helps her learn ballet. That ballerina was the top dancer of the troupe, and because she gave her dazzling talent and a chance to dance, the protagonist completely idolized her.
But when it was decided that another woman, rather than the ballerina, would play the lead role in an upcoming performance, the protagonist began to agonize over it. The woman playing the lead wasn't a bad person at all, nor was she lacking in skill. She might not have been as glamorous as the ballerina, but her dedication to ballet was second to none. Strictly in terms of technique, she might have even surpassed the ballerina. But the protagonist simply couldn't accept someone who had stolen the role from the person she respected. Every single one of the new lead's charms irritated her, and she found herself getting angry whenever she spotted a flaw in the woman. As the performance drew closer, her feeling that "this is wrong, the ballerina should be the lead" only grew stronger, and finally, during the performance, she tampered with the shoes to injure the lead actress. Her plan was just a light one—she thought it would be funny if the woman tripped and embarrassed herself—but in reality, the lead actress injured her foot so badly that she could never dance ballet again.
On top of that, the ballerina quit the company, disgusted by everyone expecting her to step in as the replacement, refusing to stoop to taking the understudy role. The protagonist had believed that, poor as she was, her passion for dancing and her desire to dance were second to none, and she had believed the ballerina felt the same way. But the ballerina didn't. Her pride mattered more to her; it was something she could throw away so easily. The protagonist was filled with a sense of betrayal, realizing that the ballerina hadn't truly loved ballet at all. After that, the protagonist learns of the injured woman's genuine passion for dancing, and she laments her own foolishness, realizing that this woman was the one she truly should have respected. The story is about her growing up as she strives to get better at ballet in place of that woman, but her initial act of sabotage was far too selfish, making it impossible to empathize with her at all. The ballerina hadn't really betrayed her either; it was just that she wasn't the idealized person the protagonist had imagined on her own, and her true self wasn't even a bad person. It just felt like she was acting like some petty, despicable minor villain, yet she was supposed to be the protagonist? I guess they were aiming for something unexpected. The manga was quite old, and back then, sports-themed guts-and-glory manga were all the rage, featuring terrifying levels of effort and obsession where characters only had eyes for one specific goal—things like *Glass Mask*, you know? I suppose it felt like someone just grafted the dark, realistic flaws of a woman onto that kind of framework.
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