Looking at the Special Story with Bell dreaming about getting married, you might be better off on the harem bet.

One year is a really short time to know somebody, let alone start dating. Nobody will have time for a good relationship with anyone, in the remaining time in the series that we have left. I think we would only get around 8 months of time and then "Happily Ever After," so having the Ais only end feels unlikely.

Of course, I do not know all the Japanese trends for this stuff, and that is probably a big influence on decision making.

Unreliable, offhand memory, but I remember hearing about a LN series of decent popularity, and how, halfway through its publication, the series was canceled because of intense backlash towards the author when a popular side character, who was a spy, I believe, was stated to not be a virgin, as a result of their job.

Looking at Danmachi, that type of event might have been a notable thing to learn from when other authors wrote similar characters, and so Haruhime being a virgin likely had some influence from reactions to similar stories to Danmachi.

Similarly, if monogamy endings are better for sales, then that is likely to be advised to the author. Vice-versa for polygamy endings. So if anyone knows Japanese trends for those statistics, you could probably use that to guess.

Agreed that Ais should be the one. I hope author doesn't change it. If he does he would be messing with the whole Ais character

Yea JP really doesn't like non virgin heroines but since this isn't anything secret Omori shouldn't have written about a heroine being a prostitute if he was afraid of backlash. Taking both sides when he should've picked one is what he was trying to do and that was pretty bad for V7 and his story will take damage for trying to build the idea of a heroine not being pure only to say "LOL JK" at the end. It's not just bad it's insulting.

"If he does he would be messing with the whole Ais character"

What would that change about Ais's character? Also, I doubt that she would be changed as the main focus.

I find it interesting how passionate people get about ships, enough to call the author "trash" if a certain outcome doesn't happen

Compared to that I hardly see Japanese fans having ship wars, they'll talk about their waifus but their discussions are more on point and about the plot

That being said, I assume the whole "Ais or riot, no harem trash" thing comes from the author failing to develop Ais properly (before anyone says "but Sword Oratoria!", a spinoff should not be how you develop your main heroine). To be fair to harems they're only disliked because authors that write them don't know how to do it properly

@Rqwe1 about changing her from being "main girl" made halfway of the series, Bell still wants her, Ais' past and all. Ais not being main heroine would be messing with her

That wouldn't really be messing with Ais' character though, which is what Rqwe is saying

I'll be outright honest here I didn't even notice Ais until I started Sword Oratoria and I can imagine a fair amount of us are the same.

In truth, the time frame which this series takes place over is too short to form any lasting relationships. If this series took place over a longer period of time then I could see either Bell winding up with a harem or him being shipped with one of the female characters.

Seriously, how well does Bell really know any of the women in his life?

The author has built up Ais as a sort of end goal and for the author to then not do it would be just ridiculous.

It's like if in Naruto he never becomes Hokage or in One piece Luffy nevers finds the One piece.

It just would be plain silly honestly and bad writing in my opinion.