Tune into this week’s OnK for the latest shipping news. It’s been a long time coming actually – this side of the story hadn’t been getting much oxygen this season between the making the sausage stuff and the occasional forays into the revenge plot. Of course the romance angle is intimately tied into those threads as well, and in some interesting ways that may shed light on how it’s going to eventually turn out. But I don’t think Oshi no Ko is poised to turn into a romance-focused series any time soon (for long at least).

I’ve already noted that to the extent that I’m vested in this triangle (I would put it at about 6/10) I’m solidly Team Kana. I don’t dislike Akane as a character, but Kana is my clear preference. That’s kind of unusual for me as I tend to favor the sensitive and and troubled type over the manic pixie in these situations (Hiromi and Noe would like a word). But here Kana clearly wins. Maybe it’s Megumi Han’s performance (I’m a fan, no denying it). But I also admire that Kana is broadly speaking more of a straight shooter than Akane. She can’t bring herself to confess, but she’s certainly more open and honest about her feelings in most respects.

That sort of leads into the question of which girl Aqua is into, which this episodes teases around but doesn’t really confront. Theoretically he no longer has to recuse himself with his grand plan in life in tatters (though that’s obviously not going to stick). Kana invites herself on a date with Aqua to pick out a new rolling bag for the Miyazaki trip. She makes a bit of a soup of it from the beginning, taking forever to choose between cute and sexy and arriving in Shinjuku a half-hour late. She overthinks everything that happens right down to the color of bag Aqua buys and his paying the check for lattes and dinner. But of the two encounters this week, this certainly feels more “date-like”.

What to make of the fact that Aqua has made a reservation for dinner (at a Churrascão) without knowing whether Kana was even up for it? It expresses a lot of confidence that he knew she would be. She does confront him over his feelings for Akane, which in context comes pretty close to being a confession. So what to make of Aqua saying he’s been ‘meaning to clear things up with her”? In many respects Aqua is more honest with Kana, but with one huge exception – the side of his life he refuses to share with her.

In that sense, Akane is without question a confidante in a way Kana is not. Their interaction is the usual weird mix of intimacy and formality, evasion and brutal honesty. One could be accused of being a shipping partisan for suggesting it, but it’s no stretch to argue that Aqua keeps that side of his life from Kana for the very reason that she’s the one he has romantic feelings for – feelings he doesn’t want to taint with what he rightly sees as the ugliness that consumes him. In fact the most interesting moment of the Akane-Aqua interaction is when he says he’s never gotten any romantic vibes from her – and she doesn’t really deny it.

Of course things are about to be scrambled in a big way, likely setting the shipping stuff on the back burner. Akane has immediately spotted a hole in Aqua’s story (via Taiki, though she doesn’t know that yet). She’s absolutely convinced (which the final scene more or less confirms) he’s wrong about his father being dead, and for a reason she sees as so obvious she assumes he can only be missing it because subliminally he’s been desperate to leave that all behind . Of course she’s not going to tell him – for now at least – because his misconception is what puts Aqua in the game romantically, and that’s a fight Akane is nowhere near ready to concede.

As for that final scene, it takes place at the cemetery where Ai is buried, which Ruby is visiting. The man (played by Miyano Mamoru) who follows her to the grave certainly seems to be her father, and of course Aqua’s. That could be yet another misdirection but it has the air of truth to it. We’ll see. In any event, for me at least OnK really benefitted from being free of the wight of all that industry stuff that Akasaka loves to wallow in. It could just be a campy, pulp drama without having to carry that excess baggage, and this series does pretty well in that mode.