Chocolat Review: She Joined the Wrong Fan Club on Purpose — and Got Caught

When I was in school, I had this one friend who loved a band so much she memorized their concert schedule, their blood types, everything. She once spent a whole month's allowance just to get a spot near the front. I never understood that kind of devotion until later, when I found my own things to love that hard. So when I read Chocolat, and met a girl who joins a fan club she does not even care about just to sneak closer to the band she truly loves, I laughed — because I knew someone exactly like that. The lengths a real fan will go to are ridiculous and beautiful at the same time, and this manhwa understood that.

Quick Take

• An eight-volume Korean manhwa (manhwa is Korean comics) by Ji-Sang Shin and Geo, set inside the idol industry, where the romance grows out of a fan's scheme that goes very wrong
• The hook is the lie: Kum-Ji pretends to love the band Yo-I to get near her real favorites, DDL — then E-Soh, one of Yo-I's boys, catches her and the whole thing spirals from there
• Rated T (Teen) — light overall, but it does touch bullying and the harsher side of fame, so it is a bit more grown-up than its cute cover suggests

Story Overview

Kum-Ji is a middle-school girl who is obsessed with the chart-topping boy band DDL, and especially their frontman Jin. The problem is she joined the fandom too late — DDL's fan club is full, closed, impossible to get into. So she does something a little crazy: she becomes a top member of the fan club for DDL's rival, a brand-new group called Yo-I (also styled Chocolat), figuring proximity to one idol world will get her close to the other.

The turning point comes fast. E-Soh, one of the boys in Yo-I, figures out that Kum-Ji does not actually care about his group at all — she is using them. Instead of exposing her, he blackmails her into basically becoming his servant. What makes the deception survivable for the story is that Kum-Ji's aunt works as a coordinator for the band, so her constant presence around these idols actually makes sense. The fan-club scheme plus the family connection is what keeps the premise from feeling forced.

From there the series stops being just a comedy of a fan's lie and starts becoming something messier and more honest. Kum-Ji keeps insisting her heart belongs to Jin, but the boys she pretended not to care about — E-Soh, and especially the sarcastic, troubled E-Wan — start mattering to her for real. The series ran eight volumes (Yen Press collected the final stretch into an omnibus after a long hiatus), and by the end Kum-Ji has grown out of the immature, scheming girl she started as into someone who actually reflects on what she did to people.

Characters

Kum-Ji — She starts as the kind of fan who will lie, scheme, and infiltrate to get one inch closer to her idol. That sounds shallow, but the series treats her fandom as genuine, not a joke. Her real arc is growing up: she begins immature and self-centered, and over eight volumes becomes someone thoughtful who looks back at her own behavior with regret. Watching her conscience catch up to her schemes is the spine of the whole thing.

E-Soh — A member of Yo-I, loud and boisterous, and the one who catches Kum-Ji in her lie and blackmails her into servitude. He could have been a one-note bully, but he gets one of the bigger transformations in the cast, and his relationship with Kum-Ji deliberately refuses the obvious romance payoff you expect.

E-Wan — Another Yo-I member, the surly, sarcastic, troubled one. He is the character who says the lines that make you stop and think. He gradually opens up emotionally in response to Kum-Ji actually caring about him as a person rather than an idol — which is exactly the thing she was supposed to be faking.

Barbie — A fan-turned-aspiring-actress who starts out merely mean and escalates into something genuinely unsettling. She is where the manhwa lets its darker edge show, and her calculated handling of scandal near the end is one of the colder moves in the book.

What I Love About It

What I love most is that Chocolat takes fandom seriously. It would have been so easy to make Kum-Ji a punchline — the silly obsessed fangirl who learns to "grow out of it." Plenty of stories do exactly that. But Ji-Sang Shin writes her devotion as completely real and worthy of respect, even while the scheme she builds around it is absurd. The comedy comes from her plan, not from mocking the fact that she loves something this much. As a person who has loved manga this hard my whole life, that distinction means a lot to me. There is a difference between laughing with a fan and laughing at one, and this manhwa always knows which side it is on.

The other thing I love is how the lie traps her emotionally. Kum-Ji infiltrates Yo-I's world while telling herself, and everyone, that her heart is one hundred percent Jin's. And the longer she has to fake caring about E-Soh and E-Wan, the more she actually starts to. The dramatic irony is delicious — she is performing affection she does not want to feel, and it becomes real underneath her. E-Wan's sharp, thoughtful remarks slowly get under her skin precisely because she is forced to be around him. Watching a person fall for the exact thing they swore they were only pretending about is one of my favorite kinds of romance, and Chocolat builds it patiently across volumes instead of rushing it.

Memorable Scene ⚠️ Spoiler Warning

The moment that sticks with me is when E-Soh figures out Kum-Ji's whole scheme — that she does not care about Yo-I at all and only joined to get near DDL. Up to that point she has been so pleased with her own cleverness. And instead of just throwing her out or telling everyone, he turns the tables completely and blackmails her into being his servant. It flips the entire power dynamic of the story in a single beat: the schemer becomes the one being controlled, and the boy she was using now owns her. That is the engine that drives everything after, and it is what turns a cute fan-club gag into a real story with stakes. The blackmail is played for comedy at first, but it is also the trap that keeps her inside the world long enough for her real feelings to grow.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Treats fandom and a fan's devotion with genuine respect instead of mockery
• The blackmail twist flips the power dynamic and gives the romance real stakes
• Geo's art is attractive and full of well-designed bishonen, with clean, spacious paneling
• Supporting characters like E-Soh and Barbie get meaningful, sometimes surprising development

Cons

• The middle volumes pace slower before things pick up again
• Some of the darker turns (bullying, scandal, threats) sit awkwardly against the light comedy tone
• The long real-world hiatus shows — the back stretch feels a little compressed
• It mixes fluffy idol comedy with genuinely mean-spirited drama, and that tonal swing won't work for everyone

Is Chocolat Worth Reading?

For manhwa romance fans, yes. The fan-club-infiltration premise and the blackmail twist give it more bite than a standard school romance, and Kum-Ji's growth from scheming fangirl to someone with a conscience is genuinely satisfying. Go in expecting light comedy with occasional darker edges, not a pure fluffy read, and you will have a good time.

Where to Buy

Read the first volume. If it doesn't hook you, put it down. It'll hook you.

Start with Volume 1 →

---

This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.