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[Oshi no Ko] is a series caught within a bizarre Catch-22 as an actual piece of entertainment. It wants to follow the comedic and dramatic conventions for storytelling that Akasaka has in mind, and also wants to unravel the disquieting undercurrent of the entertainment industry within its gaze. But to do so would involve having its cast be outsmarted or exploited by the teeth of the very beast that they seek to enterprise in, and by the nature of the show’s framing, it cannot have that. As a result, the show does not actually delve into the darkest contortions and disquieting undercurrents of the entertainment industry that Akasaka supposedly wants to discuss. It hints at the phantoms on the wall rather than confronts them. The whole reads more as someone who only just discovered what the entertainment industry is like, is repulsed by what they saw, and has a lot they want to say, but must make a contractual deal with the devil in order to get the story told, a provision of which is to not wholly besmirch his name in the process.

Entertainment is, just as a general note, a strange entity. Stranger still though is the relationship we have with it. Even in the supposed “reality” of reality television, we all know and acknowledge on some level that everything in entertainment is manufactured or a conglomeration of lies to get a desired affect or impression. It’s engineered by hundreds of people we never know beyond the abstract to make something we think is worth the time and financial or emotional investment. We also know that the industry is not run by angels. Yet no [matter]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cannonball_Run#Accident) how many times we get shocked by the reality that we see when the curtain gets pulled back, there’s always the next cultural object or talking point to swallow our attention even as the people within its own industry cry out to let their pleas for mercy be heard. The para-social relationship we have with the media we consume is sometimes not as simple as “I like this thing” with posters or casual merchandise; it can move beyond human ugliness or frailty and into the abyss of pure horror.

I emphasize this para-social quality between entertainment and consumer because it is the very lifeblood that [Oshi no Ko] uses to get its start, and stubbornly refuses to emphasize or embrace further as it goes along. As two idol-obsessed people watching Hoshino Ai, doctor Amamiya Gorou and hospital patient Tendouji Sarina have formed an obsessive bond with her and her almost-divine performance presence, capitulated further when she discreetly arrives at Gorou’s hospital pregnant with twins. The day of delivery is struck down by Gorou being murdered, and both he and Tendouji are reincarnated as Ai’s children with all their mental faculties in place, now named Aquamarine and Ruby respectively. Two people in the thick of idol fandom, one of whom is killed by someone in the thick of idol fandom, now finding themselves the objects of their idolized idol’s attention. The perverse relationship between entertainment and consumer comes back around again as Ai is killed in her own home by a crazed fan, angry at her for having children, and Aqua suspects they were sent by their real father. It is, after all, against the law for idols to do anything sexual, unless the agency or someone within is facilitating it. With the light of their life extinguished, they’re left to pick up the pieces of what remains.

(Ai is presented as the unknowable idol, a person who fashioned their way into stardom upon innate talent and lying smiles. Her fixation on lies, using them for fame within the idol industry, and subsequent death sets groundwork for the Aqua and Ruby storylines later)

Ruby channels them into becoming like her mother and an idol herself, a depressing irony in that she naively has no clue what she’s getting into. Aqua channels them into joining the industry behind the scenes and finding their father-murderer that way, a journey of personal doom. The para-social sense of naïve optimism and slip into despair via the industry and their products never leaves the characterization (they’re always being fueled by Ai, even in death), but it does get reprioritized—if not shoved to the side outright—as the show’s scenarios begin manifesting. It chooses to focus its attention instead on how the industry functions and the people within it, functioning as a quasi-exposé.

The result is [Oshi no Ko] effectively abandoning its original framing device for something vastly less interesting. The series wants to have its cake and eat it too, to be profoundly crushing on the emotional level while delivering its timeless message that the entertainment industry is a monolithic hydra of lies and politics that the cast nevertheless tries to succeed in. The irony is that, in Akasaka and series composer Tanaka Jin’s bid to do this, they cannot resist flexing their knowledge by having characters just spell out “the truth” of how the industry works, robbing the show of its opportunities to impose such things on the characters, barring some flashbacks. It is so on-the-nose that there is little to be discovered organically through the narrative.

And Aqua’s positioning within [Oshi no Ko]’s structure drives this point home, especially. He became after Ai’s death a cold, calculating genius when it comes to the industry as a whole, in-part helped by having worked in it. Whether in front of the camera or from the production side, there is seemingly nothing he cannot adapt to. Such a characterization undercuts the looming danger of the industry itself because if anything bad happens, Aqua will always be able to salvage the situation or come up with some solution that makes sure everything and / or everyone is okay. It is difficult to be apprehensive of the shadows on the wall when a character keeps flicking on the lights, never truly getting caught off-guard.

(Aqua’s intelligence and way of being is both his character’s biggest draw and his biggest frustration; his smarts make it impossible for him to be taken by surprise by his own professional enterprise, and the cross between unemotive teenage heartthrob that female characters want and revenge-thirsty psychopath overtakes the sympathy inherent to his circumstances)

It is a given that not everyone who works in the entertainment industry is a terrible person, that many involved indeed are trying to create the best product possible, and they know that being nice to their actors is one of the ways to do so. But [Oshi no Ko] has its depiction of the industry be more abstractly monolithic in its malice as opposed to actually having people in it who are malicious. Because Aqua and Ruby are born into the business through being Ai’s children, they are constantly sheltered from its grimmer possibilities by being in a “good company” and “knowing the right people” who will oblige Aqua’s thirst for vengeance in exchange for a favor, either wittingly or unwittingly. The monologuing by the characters keeps talking about how the industry is rough, unfair, and “that’s how it is,” but any sense of unfairness is barely allowed, if at all, to directly interrupt finding Ai’s killer or pose a sincere obstacle to Ruby’s progress. Thus, there is a shorter draw distance with which [Oshi no Ko] can cast its muckraking net, leaving many of the emotional moments to fall strangely limply rather than fuel a brutal collision.

(Just about every character in the industry that the cast comes across is either nice or receptive to them and accommodates them, undermining the supposed struggles within the industry that the material is saying in textual monologue, but not following through with narratively)

But even so, there are rare times where the para-social relationship I hinted at before does return, and it occurs in the moments where the series shines at its brightest (or is it darkest? You decide). Aqua is hardly out of focus, but when he’s gone, the darker specters are finally allowed the chance to come out of the corner and consume the room. Left to their own devices, characters are forced to fight their way through new torments and problems—which does unfortunately paint just how reliant on Aqua they all are. Especially aided by the show’s aesthetic care and attention, apparent effort is poured into key animations and storyboarding that, when aligned with the material, elevate the punches into a sharp viscerality. Director Hiramaki Daisuke and the sizable number of animation directors understood that, particularly for a story pertaining to the entertainment industry, presentation matters. It’s a sign of just what the series is perfectly capable of doing, but ultimately decides to opt for something markedly less knotted.

(When the para-social relationship between industry, product, and fan is allowed to step out of the shadows and create problems that Aqua cannot counter or directly prevent, it’s when the show is at its most dramaturgically-effective. Akane’s story during the third arc is the best example of this in action, to a certain point)

[Oshi no Ko] insists on the dangers of the entertainment industry and pulling back the curtain, but holds itself back too often by not letting it gets its claws into everyone enough. The actual horrors of the industry it proports to share are kept at a safe and comfortable distance, aiding the narrative that being an idol, and their industry, is glorious, glamorous, and worth it. It is all at once a reincarnation story, a revenge quest story, a story about idols, a story about the relationship between the industry and its fans, and an exposé on how the industry functions. I genuinely admire its ambitiousness, but it’s a case of trying to do too much, and not having the finesse to handle it all effectively.

Maybe Aqua can salvage it.