Date A Ranker follows an extremely skilled gamer, Seong-a, and her mysterious online persona, as she navigates high school. When she figures out that Hanjun, a popular streamer and gamer, attends her school, she will leave no stone unturned to her identity. Why? Because she brutally beat and humiliated him in a gaming tournament. Things get even more complicated when she encounters her character’s lookalike at school. Can Seong-a keep her identity secret? Or will the beans be spilled? Let’s immerse ourselves in this high-school romance webtoon and see how Date A Ranker Chapter 1-7 unfolds.
Date A Ranker Chapter 1: Meet Seong-a
Date A Ranker Chapter 1 begins with an intense arena fight. With a powerful streak of blue lightning, a mysterious fighter destroys his opponent. The crowd cheers the winner’s name- spicytofunoodles or spofu for short- and begins rapidly chattering about the significance of ‘mechanics’.
Spofu walks up to the fallen warrior, Strong Jun, and follows up on an agreement they’d made before- if Strong Jun lost, he’d have to delete his character. But when the Minnie-Mouse man hesitates, Spofu empathizes and decides to let him off the hook, under one condition- only if he pays him a million gold. When Strong Jun reacts with horror, Spofu becomes confused. He’d thought one million was ‘pretty cheap’. He wonders what kind of streamer wouldn’t keep their word. Meanwhile, the audience begins to ridicule Strong Jun’s pathetic dilly-dallying. According to the gossip, he’d already wasted a large amount of money on his character, only to be beaten by a veteran player. Defeated and humiliated, Strong Jun finally relents and decides to give him the money.
‘Who on earth is behind Spofu, anyway?’ one of the audience members wonders. Many of them begin chipping in with their own theories about his mysterious ‘CEO’ or ‘trust fund kid’ vibes.
Back to Reality
Meanwhile, on the other side of the screen, Seong-a sits in her chair. She watches Strong Jun reduce himself to tears in exasperation. That’s when Seong-a’s mother calls her. Not one second wasted after she picks up the phone, her mother immediately begins yelling at her. She reprimands her for not attending her school’s opening ceremony. She threatens to send Seong-a to a temple without internet if she continues to play video games throughout the school year and gets expelled like before. Seong-a promises to get her high-school diploma (with no further academic plan whatsoever) and cuts the call.
Video games were Seong-a’s raison d’être. All she wants to do in her life is make money through video games… to play more video games (not the most far-sighted life goal, but a passionate one nonetheless). She’d resolved to spend all her free time playing for money. Once she’d earned enough, she could finally get some breathing room from her strict mother. According to her, every important thing in life- honor, a social life, and experience- could be obtained from gaming.
First Day of School
The next morning, Seong-a is woken up by her mother’s early morning phone call. She was late to class. Hurriedly rushing to school, Seong-a thankfully avoids trouble due to first-day leniency. The rest of the day, Seong-a lives a nightmare- literally because she keeps falling asleep. Sitting on the staircase and contemplating going home, she hears the sound of a group of boys. To avoid them, she ends up climbing to the terrace. When they walk the same way, Seong-a hides in the storage closet and decides to wait them out. However, her clumsiness causes a crash inside the room, and a boy walks in. Before he can ask who she is, Seong-a clamps his mouth with her hand and tells him to be quiet.
The boys outside joke about one of them getting rejected by a girl for the silver-haired streamer in his class. They laugh about how he’d just gotten ‘owned’ by a veteran player during his stream. As they talk about how he’d put his character in ‘pink panties’, Seong-a flashes back to the night before. Date A Ranker Chapter 1 concludes as Seong-a realizes that the boy in front of her, Hanjun Kang, was the streamer she’d brutally defeated.
If You Like Date A Ranker, You Might Also Like to Read My Lucky Strike
Date A Ranker Chapter 2: Just Another Pink Panties Fan
Date A Ranker Chapter 2 begins as Seong-a panics, wondering if she was actually trapped in a closet with Hanjun “Strong Jun” Kang (or just “pink panties” for short). When the boys leave, both of them stumble out. Seong-a tries to run away unnoticed, but Hanjun stops her. Looming over her with his tall frame, he crosses his arms over his chest. He bends to her level and accuses her of knowing ‘spicytofunoodles’.
Alarm bells blare in Seong-a’s head. For a moment, she wonders if he’d figured out she was. However, he simply asks her whether she was a fan of Spofu. Since she’d been so visibly shaken by his presence, that had to be the most logical conclusion. While her mind still spins, Hanjun vows to find out who the boys were and ‘punch their lights out’. He makes Seong-a promise not to tell anyone about him hiding in the closet. Thoroughly scared, Seong-a starts wondering if he’d kill her after finding out who she really was. To save her skin, she breaks into a wide smile and says, “I’m a huge fan of Strong Jun!”
Just like every amateur gamer who flew by the seat of their pants, Seong-a decides to flip the script and pretend to be Hanjun’s fan, concluding Date A Ranker Chapter 2.
A Girl Hiding Her Online Persona to Maintain Her Friendship in My Bias Gets On the Last Train
Date A Ranker Chapter 3: Seong-a’s Augmented Reality
Date A Ranker Chapter 3 begins as Seong-a draws on her knowledge of Strong Jun and uses the information to enthusiastically ramble about him. She steels herself and even manages to call his pink panties outfit ‘cute’. She spirals into intellectually analysing all of Hanjun’s shortcomings during his fight with Spofu the previous night.
Hanjun angrily yells at her and then tears up, remembering the fight. He makes her promise not to tell anyone in the school about being a fan, confusing her, and vows to keep an eye on her. With dread, Seong-a realizes that Hanjun sits directly behind her in class. Perfect, now she’s definitely dead.
Later, Seong-a walks up to the staff room and wonders if she can request a change of class. However, her mother’s strict voice floats around in her head, yelling at her for being a terrible student and disheartening her. When she turns around, she immediately crashes into someone else, and the boy’s glasses fall off with the force of the collision. Date A Ranker Chapter 3 concludes as Seong-a looks up and finds herself face-to-face with… Spofu?!
Two teenagers (in reality vampire and a werewolf) go from enemies to lovers in Love Bites (BL)
Date A Ranker Chapter 4: The Twin Image Effect
Date A Rank Chapter 4 begins as Seong-a hyperventilates in the face (literally) of her gaming character’s materialisation. The boy expresses confusion at the word she’d shrieked- Spofu- and helps her up. He introduces himself as her classmate and makes Seong-a’s day with the statement. She’d stayed up all night carefully tailoring her handsome video game persona. Having his lookalike in school- in her class– she felt graced by the heavens. He puts his glasses on (annoying Seong-a) and takes his leave.
Later in class, the Spofu-doppelganger feels like he’s being watched. Bingo! Seong-a intensely stares at him from afar and wonders how to start a conversation with him. Should she ask him about video games? Books? Maybe she should start with his name…
While she’s lost in thought, Hanjun arrives and takes his seat behind her. Seong-a thinks with annoyance, ‘If it weren’t for this guy, my school life would be perfect!’ She decides to ignore him to the best of her abilities. However, she might’ve accidentally turned her ignore-mode on way too high, because she’s jumpstarted when the teacher addresses her. With passive-aggressiveness, she reminds Seong-a that she was supposed to report to the staff room before. She sentences her to after-class clean-up duty and tells her to get a broom. Seong-a decides to finish up as fast as she can (so she can get back to her game) when the Spofu-doppelganger holds the broom out for her. He offers to help her, concluding Date A Ranker Chapter 4.
Date A Ranker Chapter 5: Crushing Hard
Date A Ranker Chapter 5 begins as the doppleganger, Tae-ui, opens the classroom windows for fresh air. He explains the class cleaning schedule to Seong-a and splits the room into two halves. Right before they begin sweeping, two boys call out for him. They ask him whether he’d be playing soccer with them, but Tae-ui declines the offer. Seong-a quietly notes his name and suddenly asks him if he’s good at sports. She stammers to justify the random question, all the while freaking out that she’d talked to him. He replies that he just plays during lunch and goes back to instructing her on the various tasks of their cleaning duty.
Watching him work, Seong-a pictures him in Spofu’s costume. She slowly becomes more and more attracted to the ‘nice guy’ and realizes that it wasn’t too hard to converse with him. Suddenly, she wonders if he likes her back. Seong-a blushes fiercely at the thought and begins to puzzle over the fact that he’d offered to help her. That had to mean something, right?
Tae-ui asks her about her hobbies. Seong-a simply lists various board games, prompting him to ask her to play later. Exhilarated, she believes that he’d asked her on a date (just another delusional, folks). After they finish sweeping, Tae-ui and Seong-a talk, and she learns that their teacher had asked him to help with the cleaning duty. All her romantic bubbles violently burst as she realized that she’d been losing herself in a silly crush. Humiliated, Seong-a reprimands herself for getting so carried away.
However, the second she reads a text from Tae-ui, she forgets everything. She realizes that he’d arrive early to school, and decides to meet him in the morning. Date A Ranker Chapter 5 concludes as Hanjun sits in front of his computer screen, thinking about Spofu.
Date A Ranker Chapter 6: Hanjun’s Apology
Date A Ranker Chapter 6 begins as Strong Jun approaches Spofu, asking for another duel in the game. Wanting to keep her distance from both Hanjun and Strong Jun, Seong-a turns down the offer. Meanwhile, in his room, Hanjun disappointedly sighs. He’d wanted to test out the moves Seong-a had been blabbering about after the closet incident. Hanjun suddenly regrets being so rude to her and decides to make up for it.
In class, he finds Seong-a asleep with her phone on. Just as he reaches to turn it off, she wakes up with a start. She startles at the sight of him and hopes that he hasn’t figured out who she is. Thankfully, Hanjun simply apologizes for touching her phone without permission. He also apologizes for treating her terribly the day before and explains the random hate he receives from people because of his streaming. Seong-a begins to soften towards him as she realizes he might not be the ‘delinquent’ she’d made him out to be. Date A Ranker Chapter 6 concludes as Hanjun offers to help Seong-a with her tasks in the game they played (ha, like she needs it).
AnimeMangaToon is eagerly waiting for the return of Operation: True Love (the story of a Love Triangle)
Date A Ranker Chapter 7: Seong-a’s New Friend…?
Date A Ranker Chapter 7 begins as Seong-a panics after hearing Hanjun’s humble request to help her. Before she can turn him down, Tae-ui appears behind them. He positively exclaims that it’s great that Seong-a was making friends, unlike the homeroom teacher’s predictions, and reminds her that she loves playing games.
During lunch, she frustratedly thinks about her situation. She decides to play along with Hanjun’s request (although she’s much more skilled) and embark on a mild sidequest with him. While thinking, Seong-a reflects on how tired she is (she couldn’t sleep at night and had woken up early to see Tae-ui) and stretches into a wide yawn. At that moment, Tae-ui appears and sits beside her.
Seong-a Hides Her Feelings (Not Well)
As they talk, Seong-a explains how she’d been so excited for an interesting school day, she couldn’t sleep. Tae-ui excitedly agrees that something had happened- she’d befriended Hanjun! Immediately, Seong-a shuts him up and tells him to never assume that again. She repeatedly denies being friends with him and denies wanting to too. Tae-ui misunderstands her and worriedly asks if she is being bullied. Before things can escalate, Seong-a confesses that she likes someone.
Later, Seong-a and Tae-ui walk around the campus. Tae-ui explains that he’d always been burdened by schoolwork and had no time for crushes. He calls himself ‘boring’ and ‘not handsome’, and says that no one would like him. At that, Seong-a fumes with anger. She lists out all his incredible qualities and forces him to accept that he was liked by someone (real subtle).
When Tae-ui’s friends approach them, they part ways. Seong-a watches him leave in exasperation of her own awkwardness while Tae-ui ponders her words. Meanwhile, Hanjun’s finger rests above his keyboard as he deliberates texting Seong-a, concluding Date A Ranker Chapter 7.
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