Finding a way to categorize my expectations for Oshi no Ko is not easy.  Without any question, this was one of the most anticipated shows of the season – maybe the single most-hyped entry on a very packed schedule.  I’ve seen the reviews from the manga, observed the sensation it’s created and the awards it’s been nominated for.  But I’l also someone who isn’t a fan of Akasaka Aka’s (who only writes here – the artist is another big name mangaka, Yokoyari Mengo) earlier series, Kaguya-sama was Kokurasetai.  It’s likewise massively popular and received an anime directed by Hatkeyama Mamoru, who’s basically at or near the top of the pyramid of anime directors.  But it didn’t work for me.

Fast-forward to today, when the premiere finally went wide.  In the first place it’s movie-length, which always poses challenges for me but especially in a season like this one.  I never know whether to watch and write in sections, or just do both in one fell swoop.  I chose the former here, though partly out of necessity – I simply don’t have the three hours I’d need to watch and write up this in on sitting.  You’ve also got the fact that the internet has exploded over the plot twists in the premiere (which really necessitated that full-length format, honestly).  And generally – as I begin writing, Oshi no Ko is the #1 ranked anime of all time at MAL.  And I very much doubt I’ve ever blogged one of those before.

So this series is a big deal, any way you look at it.  It’s also an amalgam of possibly the two most overexposed and tired genres in anime, idols and isekai.  But I have to go in here at least hoping this is special, the mold-breaker I so badly want it to be.  And I did go in not spoiled about most of the twists, apart from the one that basically constitutes the public synopsis of the series.  It starts with a doctor, Amemiya Gorou (Itou Kento), working in a countryside hospital and proselytizing his love of the 16 year-old idol, Ai, to a captive patient.  A nurse scolds him for doing so, and then accuses him of being a lolicon (and to be honest, she’s not wrong).

Amemiya’ s defense, spinning a story about the late 12 year-old patient Sarina who loved Ai and how he follows the idol for her sake as a sort of proxy, is almost convincing.  But here’s where we get into the first problem I have with this premise.  Who goes around talking about being reborn as the child of a celebrity (as seems to be endemic here) – why is that a thing?  To say it feels contrived is an understatement, but as it’s the underpinning of the plot you’ve got to get past that if you’re sticking around.

The wheels grind into motion when Ai herself (Takahashi Rie) shows up at the hospital 20 weeks pregnant with her agency owner in tow.  It makes sense to choose an inaka hospital if you’re trying to cover this up, so I’ll buy that one.  And to Amemiya’s credit, he does conduct himself professionally when tending to Ai as a doctor. – mostly.  Obviously an idol having twins at 16 is a fatal career blow, as the manager says.  But the doc correctly tells Ai (who’s preternaturally composed and eloquent for her age – not to mention those eyes – an affectation, or is there an explanation?) that the choice is hers.  And as she was an orphan, she longs to have the babies – but she wants her career to continue, too.  To have her cake and eat it too, as it were.

Doc is on-board with this, of course.  And Ai saying that the idol trade runs on the “magic of lies” does betray that Akasaka understands how rotten this topic is.  But is Oshi no Ko finally the series that has the balls to play that out to its logical conclusion?  This all comes to a head when the doc is accosted on his way home (right at the due date) by a young man I assumed was the father (but in hindsight not).  He eventually pushes Amemiya off a cliff, and the timing being what it is, it’s obvious what’s going to happen next.  That’s the “twist” I knew about, but I suspect pretty much everyone did – unless they’d never heard of the series at all before watching the premiere.

Now, full disclosure time…  I wrote all of that after watching the first 15 minutes of the premiere.  Until the first “twist”, in other words.  722 words on 15 minutes, and then I watched the rest of it some hours later.  And, well…  I don’t know what the hell to make of it.  It left me kind of speechless in the end to be honest (my ex-blogger friend Samu had the exact same reaction).  Not because it was that fantastic (it was certainly exceptional in many ways, but #1 all time??), but just because of what a weird and wild roller-coaster ride it was.  I’m still not sure how I feel about it to be honest.

I can say this much with certainty – the right decision was made in releasing the prologue as effectively a movie.  I just don’t see how it could possibly have worked any other way.  And I’m frankly shocked that I managed to avoid a whopper that big (not to mention Ruby being Sarina) for all this time – I started to suspect what was going to happen to Ai, but I had no foreknowledge of it.  I think, from a dramatic perspective, Akasaka made the right decision there.  I mean he obviously did, since the whole premise is built around it.  But it was that sick act that tied the whole prologue together, gave it meaning and emotional heft.  Without that ending, what came before wouldn’t have been especially substantial.  With it, you have something that’s clearly not a mass-produced model.

But with that said, just what is Oshi no Ko?  Like I said, I really have no clue.  I took a ton of notes but I mostly feel like free associating my reactions, because that’s the only way I’m likely to make sense of them.   There are parts of this I found undeniably really creepy (the bad kind).  Ultimately, for all the rest that goes into it, you have a wish-fulfilment story of a creepy adult becoming the baby of a young girl and loving it.  All that breastfeeding stuff was really crass and gross, quite frankly.  Even if in the end this became something of a “be careful what you wish for” scenario, there’s still a titillation factor you’ll never convince me the author wasn’t shooting for.

But…  Well, in the final analysis, this was pretty brutal and unsparing.  And any idol series with aspirations to be more than disposable diapers (used) has to be those things.  Because this is a horrible, toxic industry that should be wiped from the face of the Earth.  Idols do have their lives stolen from them, they’re not allowed to have relationships, and management exploits them financially so that all but the very most successful don’t make all that much.  They do have to worry about violent lunatics stalking them, or worse.  And what they sell is indeed a giant package of lies, no more and no less.  There’s no inherent value in it – it’s all false.  The gratification it gives is only a drug to fill the void people can’t fill with something real.

Whether Oshi no Ko intends to stick to its guns all the way I have no idea.  There’s plenty of time for it to sell out just like all the others do, but it’s already gone farther in exposing the gangrenous, pus-filled reality than just about any of its predecessors.  Even the stuff about the petty jealousies of the TV and film game was on-point.  We’re talking about marketing here, not art.  Even still, we have a scenario where Ai’s children are apparently going to be celebrities themselves (Ruby an actual idol, Aqua perhaps “just” an actor).  Where does the story go with that?

That’s the great unknown in all this.  Whatever one thinks of the prologue, the actual series hasn’t even started yet and it’s going to be very different.  How much of the focus here will on Amemiya nee Aqua trying to hunt down his father and enact his revenge?  I would be remiss in not saying I’m very curious to find out, because by the end I was certainly wrapped up in what was happening here.  I’ll be very disappointed if Oshi no Ko loses any of the unvarnished cynicism towards its subject, but if it doesn’t it has the chance to go down as something pretty special.  Anime has desperately needed a series to shine a light and really make the cockroaches scatter – maybe this is it?

The other fascinating question is just how huge Oshi no Ko is going to become commercially.  The manga was already pretty damn big, but the initial reaction to the anime is one of those unicorn moments that indicates we might be about to see something really special happening.  We may be witnessing the birth of a genuine phenomenon here, so I’m kind of trying to get into “remember where you were at this moment” mode.  Those sorts of kaiju series tend to pass me by for the most part, but one that can flummox me as much as Oshi no Ko has my complete attention.  Let’s just see what happens next and go from there.