Oshi no Ko – 03

A couple of things can be taken as read where Oshio no Ko is concerned.  First, it will be the biggest commercial hit of the season – or it would be in any season without a Kimetsu in it – with a chance to be as big as the likes of Spy X Family and Tokyo Revengers.  Second, the aggregator scores and some of the hype surrounding it are excessive to the point of absurdity.  The trick for me is to divorce my views on it from those very conspicuous elements.  And even that still leaves me dealing with own deep-set hostility towards the idol trade, and weariness with both idol and isekai anime.

Take that all into consideration, and this is not a show that’s easy for me to appraise with detach.  But given all that, I would have to say that so far it’s quite good.  The 3-episode premiere was a fascinating puzzlement (I wrote about 1500 words on it), and while the second episode was fairly nondescript it was decent – and this one was definitely better.  Whatever you may think about the tropes at play here, Akasaka Aka (who did a very nice BokuYaba illustration this week, BTW) has crafted a clever hook here, with some not inconsiderable potential.  And so far at least, the execution is very solid.

The key plot driver is Arima Kana (a very interesting against-type role for Han Megumi), the baking-soda licking girl who goes to the same high school the twins (who were helpfully wearing “twins” sweatshirts this week) just enrolled at.  She’s still in the business, though it hasn’t exactly been a meteoric career path.  She’s horrified that Aqua has quit acting, and quickly moves to get him to appear on the TV drama she’s filming, “I’ll Go With Sweet Today“.  Arima has an ulterior motive for this, but Aqua isn’t too impressed until he hears the name of the producer – Kaburagi Masaya (Terasoma Masaki).  That’s a name he saw in one of Ai’s old phones, and thus a suspect in his revenge quest.

The idea of the toddler Aqua going through passcodes for four years trying to unlock his dead mother’s phone is pretty creepy, and no matter how justified his rage is, this whole revenge thing is pretty unhealthy.  As for Arima (who I’m told is the most popular character in the manga), she’s playing the lead for the first time in a decade but this is no uplifting tale.  The production is a sham, effectively a promotional project for a bunch of male models who can’t act.  A 14-volume manga is being adapted into six episodes (Aqua’s role, ironically a stalker, is in the finale), major changes were made to give the  models a showcase, and the mangaka was so distraught when she visited the set that Arima felt terrible for her.

The ouroboros effect is strong here.  We have an anime adapted from a manga about a manga being adapted into a live-action drama, and one gets the sense that Akasaka is grousing from personal experience.  In fact the whole series has a bit of an air of settling scores to it, but perversely that’s kind of what I like about it.  It’s tetchy, kind of bitter and bitchy, but that amuses me.  And the entertainment industry in Japan is pretty fucked up, no question about it.  For every anime that’s a passion project like Vinland Saga or Golden Kamuy there are a dozen whose main purpose is to act as a commercial for the cast and music.

As for Arima, she doesn’t make the best first impression but she kind of grew on me by the episode’s end.  She at least has been smart enough to realize what a terror she was as a child actor, and she’s trying to do right by the production even if the producer could care less.  That producer is the key to the whole thing for Aqua of course, and once he’s collected his DNA sample (cigarette butts), he’s free to go off with his performance.  Given how pissy he’s feeling about the way Arima is being used by Kaburagi  (who I’m certain isn’t the father, that’d be way too easy), I’m looking forward to seeing what he has cooked up for his final scene.

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11 comments

  1. R

    I’m just glad that you’re sticking to this series Enzo.

    The part about 14 volume manga adapted into 6 episodes reminded me of all those ‘rushed adaptation’.
    Ouch.

  2. For now!

    Yes, I think it was absolutely supposed to remind you of that.

  3. J

    Since I brought it up last week regarding the possibility of the status quo being preserved, I have to wonder if Aqua is going to be shoehorned eventually into that villain role who actually has a good point (i.e. the idol industry helped lead to Ai’s murder) but goes too far, and “pure-hearted” Ruby (who aspires to honor Ai by being an idol like her) is the one who must stop him. And well, that means Aqua letting go of that hatred and desire for revenge and in turn, the cycle continues in an abusive industry but it’ll be “different”.

    For all of the critiques this series has about the entertainment industry (particularly here with how these adaptations act merely as glorified marketing schemes with big celebrities and idols for marquee value), it would be a shame if it chose to chicken out.

  4. There are so many possible routes it could take, and frankly most of them aren’t good. But I am at least genuinely curious to see which one it is.

  5. J

    Now to say something interesting about this arc that doesn’t lead me to overthink things: Apparently this whole story about the struggles of filming this live-action adaptation of a manga (i.e. cramming 14 volumes in just 6 episodes) was based on Akasaka’s own frustrating experience working on the live-action film adaptation of Kaguya-sama and its sequel, which despite being decent successes in the box office, received highly polarized reviews with particular criticism aimed at the actors. It’s not hard to guess that this arc is perhaps one big author tract regarding adaptations of his work and his dissatisfaction with the Kaguya-sama films specifically.

  6. I read this morning that he didn’t dislike the Kaguya live adaptation, but who knows. It’s certainly possible that he’s calling out general failings rather than only specific grudges.

  7. S

    An extremely minor detail, but I momentarily paused on the fact that the directors cigarette butt was non-obviously mixed with other butts, so Aqua collecting a few of them gave me the feeling that he might have missed the correct one. but he looked confident and didn’t even consider an error, so maybe not. Maybe this won’t be a plot point at all. Anyway, it felt weirdly obsessive to dwell on that for too long so I shook off the thought and got back in the story again. But now I’m thinking it was nicely realistic, and that a worse director would have given very strong visual cues in either of these directions. Neat.

    Thanks for the review! I didn’t fully enjoy ep 1, but this still looks interesting

  8. Yeah, I thought about that too. But I mean, Aqua was a doctor so he should know his way around this sort of thing. I don’t know if he plans to just send them to 23 and me or how he plans to test them, but in theory he could send them all in and if any one of them matches his, he knows the producer is the guy.

  9. P

    Actually that’s a miss/cut part of the anime, Aqua actually checked the brand and habit of Kaburagi only using menthol flavored cigarette, so he only had to take those fresh cigarette butt from the ashtray.

  10. Thanks for clarifying.

  11. Fun fact, the “Sweet Today” manga is a bit of a continuity nod on Akasaka’s part. Its first appearance was in Kaguya-sama, in a chapter in which the boys get obsessed with it and eventually develop “shojo brain” (leading to them appearing and acting like sparkling, confident bishonens ready to make the maiden’s hearts flutter with a kabedon at a moment’s notice). There’s been further hints later pretty much confirming that this 100% takes place in the same universe as Kaguya-sama, though it’s never plot relevant.

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