“How the sausage is made” is definitely one of the default modes for Oshi no Ko. Akasaka Aka is obviously fascinated with the back of house side of the entertainment industry to the point of obsession. Which is perfectly fine – he’s entitled, and besides that he often writes about it very effectively. But what’s kind of interesting is that he’s frequently pretty unsparing in those moments – as he was with this week’s chapters. But that doesn’t seem to deaden his fanboy adoration of the business at all. I guess knowing how revolting something like the idol industry is and loving it anyway is the definition of a true fan.

As noted last week, Ruby seems to be sliding into the main character role for the foreseeable future. She’s taken the reins of the hunt for her mother’s killer, even if Aqua isn’t aware to what extent. Not only is she leveraging her connection with Ichigo Saitou to help her advance her career, she’s already inched closer to the truth than Aqua ever has. Saitou refuses to connect her to the names from his old address book, knowing it will go badly for him if a nobody like Ruby (which is what she is, for now) starts badgering them for information. But he caves under her pressure to give her career tips. Which he still has a talent for, as that guest shot on Aqua’s “variety” show proves.

Now, Saitou gives Ruby two main pieces of advice. First, play up a character and make it marketable – which Aqua has done with his snarky bishounen act (which is kinda what he really is). In her case, he says, play it “dumb, disrespectful, and defiant”. Yeah, this is gross old-school sexism at its most base – telling a smart girl to act dumb to get ahead. But this is what Ruby wants, so she – and Akasaka – seem to be OK with it. The other tidbit is to be nice to assistant directors, because a bunch of them will be directors someday and you want as much cred with them as possible (and they’re treated like crap by most people).

That thread becomes the main spine of this arc, as a downtrodden AD named Yamashita is the one Ruby targets for her operation. He’s working under a hired-gun director named Urushibara who’s already been forced out of one job because of abuse, but seems to have learned squat from the experience. Never mind the impact for a lonely 20-something have a hot teenager kiss up to him, Yamashita is a sitting duck because Urushibara is making his life hell and he needs all the help he can get. Ruby has no more qualms about manipulating him than about playing an airhead, so this is all gold to her.

We get a brief cutaway to Akane, who’s well aware of the reason Aqua chose to date her and not Kana. But she’s fine with it, and that’s just another reason why I still find her kind of creepy and unsettling. Mind you, Aqua deserves no medals for the way he’s handled this whole thing. The whole episode has a kind of unsavory aroma to it, lots of people acting in less than admirable fashion and living their personal lies. That includes Yamashita too, who has no issues blackmailing his kid sister (a VTuber) into cosplaying “Tokyo Blade” on the show when Urushibara dumps an impossible task on him with no clue as to why he’s asking the impossible.

A series doesn’t have to give you a reason to root for anybody, or indeed anybody to root for. But I certainly don’t find anyone featuring in this storyline to be an attractive candidate. It’s all just kind of ugly, which Akasaka gets on some level but I think in a different way than I mean the term. Oshi no Ko is almost always interesting, even if it’s in a can’t-look-away sort of fashion a lot of the time.