Despite a controversial manga ending riddled with an undercurrent of incestuous themes, Oshi no Ko as an anime is well worth watching.
Oshi no Ko Controversy
Oshi no Ko is an anime adaptation of a manga series written by Aka Akasaka and illustrated by Mengo Yokoyari. The mangaka Akasaka is known for his work on Kaguya-Sama: Love is War and Oshi no Ko apparently takes place in the same universe.
Apparently, the titular character of Kaguya-Sama, Kaguya Shinomiya appears as an older (married) photographer who takes Ruby Hoshino’s photos one day while speaking fondly about her high school experiences with her own sweetheart.
Despite creating such a beloved character like Kaguya, mangaka Akasaka faced a boycott over his new manga series Maerchen Crown, after controversial endings to both the manga Renai Daikou and Oshi no Ko, which was rumored to end badly based on Akasaka’s desire to begin a new series.
With all of that being said, Oshi no Ko season 1 and season 2 have a solid narrative and fulfilling character arcs, despite an expected drop in quality of the story after Oshi no Ko season 3 – which adapts the manga’s Mainstay and Scandal Arcs – slated for a 2026 release.
While the manga story has a canonically bad ending, the anime adaptation is good and hopefully, due to fan outcry could be changed if we get a season 4 of the series.
Oshi no Ko Season 1 Review
Oshi no Ko follows the story of Gorou Amamiya, a gynecologist and Sarina Tendouji, a terminally ill patient at his hospital. Sarina’s parents have abandoned her due to her illness, so out of pity Gorou begins to grow closer to the girl and together they watch her favorite idol group, B-Komachi on video tapes to pass the time.
Gorou is surprised when the teenage lead singer of this band, Ai Hoshino, comes to his clinic in the sticks to hide her pregnancy from the world. Despite a deranged fan coming out of nowhere and trying to inquire about her admission to the clinic, Ai’s pregnancy goes fairly well and when it is time for her delivery, both Gorou and Sarina pass away.
Through reincarnation, both Sarina and Gorou are reborn as Ai’s cute and unsettlingly intelligent twins, Ruby and Aquamarine Hoshino.
Despite retaining their past life memories as toddlers, there is an ever-present gap in lived experiences between the two. Since Gorou was a middle-aged man and Sarina a child, Aqua tends to me much more mature than his sister, Ruby.
When Ai is unexpectedly murdered, Aqua – as a toddler with the knowledge from his past life – sets into motion a plot to uncover his new mother Ai’s murder and infiltrate the industry in search of revenge against his father – who organized the hit.
The story then does a time skip to both Ruby and Aqua attending a high school for the arts, after being raised with love by their adopted mother and the wife of their mother Ai’s idol production company, Miyako Saitou. With the industry backing of Strawberry Productions and under the protection of her brother Aqua, Ruby pursues her aspirations of walking in her mother Ai’s footsteps as an idol, while Aqua gets close to industry connections on the backend of things to investigate Ai’s death.
The base storyline aside, where Oshi no Ko shines is through its exploration and commentary on the idol and entertainment industry.
I’ve briefly mentioned my experience in the American entertainment industry, mainly through documentary film and production. I’ve also spoken about my various wonderful, yet persistent off-color experiences with the Japanese entertainment industry in earlier posts on this website.
For a complete outsider with no knowledge of how things actually work in “showbiz” outside of the positives shown on screen, Oshi no Ko might be a great anime for you to watch.
Oshi no Ko’s Commentary on the Idol Entertainment Industry
One of my film professors in college used to say that film was “a business of relationships” and Oshi no Ko illustrated that quite well.
As was often displayed on screen, “office politics” of sorts played a large hand behind the scenes concerning who was cast for roles, and who was consistently promoted by their agencies for work opportunities despite never doing well behind the scenes with the crew.
We saw this with Ai’s short stint on a tv drama.
Despite being quite literally perfect onscreen and friendly with the cast and crew, her sheer aura and presence alone detached from the actual lead actress’ lack-luster presence, so in turn most of Ai’s guest appearance was left on the chopping block and hit the cutting room floor in disgrace.
When Aqua joins a “reality show”, he and all of the other actors and actresses are simply playing a role – a character they developed to protect themselves from online hate. Aqua and his fellow castmates were not jealous when the production wanted to do a love triangle angle, and supported their castmates who had the spotlight from behind the scenes.
It was only when one of the cast members who had a falling out with her agency due to her lack of screentime when they “invested” so much money to get her the role on tv started harassing her did this arrangement behind the scenes become a problem.
This resulted in the reality tv production crew of adults exploiting the troubled teenager for views, and the young actress tried to commit suicide as a result from the online backlash due to production’s “villain edit” of her screentime.
(This incident was believed by many to be included in the story following Terrace House’s Hana Kimura’s death by suicide due to cyberbullying by the Japanese fandom of the Netflix show.)
Thankfully, the reality show cast in the anime came together and “leaked” the truth within their contractual bounds, and their genuine support for one another shined and kept the tv show visually successful for audiences despite the utter chaos behind the scenes.
Even Kana Arima was not free from this fate, after not being promoted properly by her agency despite being a renowned and quite beloved child actor. In order to break the typecasting mold, renew her image with audiences, and eke out a continued living through the craft she adored – Kana took a role on a live-action adaptation of a beloved manga series to continue work as an aged-out child actor.
Nevertheless, unbeknownst to her, Kana was actually cast because production wanted to use her built-in audience and name recognition to lend credibility to their covert projection of the lead “acting” models who had no real talent, but would be used in other projects aside from the tv show.
Aqua thankfully helped Kana out by using some method acting techniques to generate a natural (and believable) “acting” response out of the pretty boy model lead cast against Kana, but Kana never really found out that the director she thought was “helping” her career was actually taking advantage of the well-known industry knowledge that her agency wasn’t promoting her.
The director decided to low-ball Kana’s payment while getting “known talent” attached to the production for her performance because Kana had name recognition and a built-in fanbase that grew up with her from her childhood acting days.
These are just a few examples that have remained at the top of my mind about how the industry works as displayed in this anime, despite the fact that I watched both seasons last summer.
All of the characters are believable and very memorable if you’ve spent any amount of time even in close proximity to the entertainment industry – from Aqua and his enigmatic personality, to Mem-Cho lying about her age, to even the shady activities of Hikaru Kamiki being shielded and covered up by those “in the know” within the industry.
There is actually a reason why everybody is secretly related in the entertainment industry, and why the name “Hollyweird” sticks across multiple mediums and genres no matter what country’s industry is actually involved.
Anyway, have you watched Oshi no Ko?
Did any of the characters remind you of someone you had ever met in real life?
Leave your thoughts in the comment section below, we’d love to hear from you! Also be sure to follow us for more Anime Reviews!
☆ In Asian Spaces
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