Once more I give credit where it’s due – that was a very good episode of anime. I think this version of Oshi no Ko – more or less consistently serviceable-plus rather than the extremes of great and awful that was the first season – is more sustainable. And certainly less exhausting. It’s the longest extended run of Akasaka material that I’ve gotten through without being seriously irritated or turned off at least once. Again, manga readers by and large seem to think “Tokyo Blade” is the best arc in the series, and I see no reason at this point to disagree (though I’m the last one anybody would ask).

In effect we have an anime adapted from a manga depicting a stage play adapted from a manga here. There are a lot of layers there, and a lot to go wrong. Not to mention, by its nature 2.5D doesn’t lend itself well to the flatness of TV. Given the challenges involved, I think Doga Kobo and Hiramaki Daisuke did a fine job bringing it off. Sure there was a fair bit of CGI in the mix but let’s keep our expectations realistic. You had to convince us that the audience was wowed by what they were seeing without having access to the means of wowing them, and that was never going to be easy.

Giving “Blade” a more or less uninterrupted ten-minute runway at the start of the episode was a good idea. Absent the magic of 2.5D budgets and trickery, absorbing us in the moment was the only means of making the requisite impact. It was mostly mission accomplished on that score. The play was depicted quite nicely, building up to Melt’s big moment on-stage. That brings with it its own set of challenges, of course. To quote my post of last week:

 If there’s anything that makes Melt sympathetic it’s that he’s self-aware enough to realize his own inadequacies and even wish to surmount them. But that presents a challenge for Akasaka, in fact. As with the too-neat resolution to every industry critique he floats, if Melt actually succeeds in “Tokyo Blade” that’s an implicit demeaning of acting both as a skill and a profession.

I guess what happens on that front is kind of an eye of the beholder thing. This is Akasaka’s greatest tripwire IMHO (that and his love of tropes) – he loves neatness. He likes to give characters and situations happy endings (or midpoints) even if it involves unrealistically easy ways out. Melt being a bad actor has been pretty well-established. As has the fact that he’s not a bad guy. Giving Melt a big backstory segment here wasn’t strictly necessary, at least for me. I don’t care that much about him in the end, but I certainly have empathy for him. But Akasaka does tend to oversell these things.

As usual, the magic potion is a bit of advice from Aqua, whose divine wisdom can solve pretty much every problem except his own. Melt’s soaring triumph (even arrogant douchebag Kamoshida acknowledges him) is “too-neat” to use my own phrase. But I don’t begrudge him – he’s nice enough to deserve a redemptive moment. Sometimes it would be better for Akasaka to deny his characters that deserved satisfaction because it’s better storytelling but fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly. For the record I don’t trust Kaburagi’s stated reasoning for pushing Melt on Raida – there’s more to that side of things, even if it’s not plot-critical.

Of course, the most obvious implication of Melt’s triumph is that is reinforces the hollowness of Aqua’s own acting. “Physician, heal thyself” indeed – ultimately Melt matters less to the story as a character than as a means of pushing Aqua’s arc forward. He has his own big moments coming up, with his PTSD waiting in the wings like the star just waiting for its cue to seize the spotlight for itself.