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For some time, fans of K-Pop and manga noticed the striking similarities in visuals between SHINee's Taemin, and a male character from popular Japanese romance series 'Blue Spring Ride' named�Kikuchi Touma.�

Do you think they look similar?

A K-netizen who is a fan of both SHINee and the 'Blue Spring Ride' series did some research to see if Japanese fans had ever addressed the issue with the manga's author,�Io Sakisaka.

It turns out, the question has been answered by Io Sakisaka herself! To a Twitter mention asking, "I heard rumors that the model for Touma was a Korean idol group member, SHINee's Taemin. Is this true?"�

The manga author answered, "I've heard this a lot, and I regret to tell you that this is not true. I do not select specific models for my work. However, for Touma's hair, I did think, 'I'll go for a feel like Taemin or�Yudai Chiba~' and went with the mushroom hairstyle! So it's not that I went with a certain model at all."�

Check out the hairstyle similarities below:





Interestingly, it also turned out that the 'Blue Spring Ride' manga author Io Sakisaka is a SHINee World! In this tweet below, she wrote while watching a blu-ray of SHINee's dome tour:�"Is that an angel? Or a prince? Is what I thought about Taemin."�

The author also visited SM Town's Artium during a Korea�visit�and is known for a well-known fanart piece of Taemin, below.�

Netizens reacted with comments such as, "TT Taemin does look a little 2-dimensional, perfect for a romance manga", "Wow the shape of that character's mouth is really similar to Taemin", "I had no idea [the author] was a SHINee fan!", "There are a lot of Korean manhwa artists who are also SHINee fans", "He really looks like Taemin", "Taemin, why are you in that manga?", and more.�