I have a serious bone to pick with Oshi no Ko.

To be clear, I don't mind that Oshi no Ko is s bad show. Bad shows are a dime a dozen, its not special in that regard. I don't even mind that it's a bad show that got absurdly popular. Again, not an uncommon occurrence, I've learned to live with the popular consensus among anime fans being very hit and miss. No, what chaps my hide about this misguided misfire is that it's the worst kind of bad show: one with delusions of grandeur. It's a self-indulgent piece of pandering wish fulfillment that's convinced itself it's a Deep, Complex masterpiece telling Hard Truths about society while perpetuating all the sins it claims to be criticizing. And while it may have somehow pulled the wool over the eyes of everyone else, I've watched enough anime to see through its plastic facade to the squirming rot underneath. This show is lying to you, and unlike the thesis statement it makes in its first episode, this lie is the lowest form of love I can think of.

And I was excited for Oshi no Ko at first! I've always struggled with idol anime because they can never seem to drop their packaged, plastic facade of perfect little angels chasing their dreams to address anything resembling real emotion. So the promise of a more honest take on the genre exploring the reality of the entertainment industry as a whole, warts and all? Written by the author of Kaguya-Sama, which I've finally come around to appreciating as a masterpiece of the rom-com world? And a bonkers 90 minute opening episode suggesting an adaptation that would go all the way to make this series shine? Yeah, I had high hopes for this one.

And then the first minute of the show had two separate jokes about the protagonist being a pedophile.

Gotta tell you, when I heard Manga fans hyping this one up to high heaven, I was expecting something a little less blatantly unsalvageable than that.

After that, I spent most of that bloated first episode in slack jawed disbelief. Was I really sitting through another Mushoku Tensei reincarnated pedo baby plotting? Why was I being subjected to jokes about who gets to suck their teen mom superstar idol's breast milk? It was almost a relief when the same obsessive stalker who initially took the protagonist's life came back to finish off his new mom, setting him and his similarly reincarnated sister on a seemingly much more interesting path. But by then the damage was done, and the cracks that had formed in Oshi no Ko's foundation would only grow larger and more obvious as it settled into its proper story.

Funnily enough, though, the most obvious warning sign in that first episode wasn't the pedo baby nonsense. No, it was its handling of Hoshino Ai, the aforementioned teen mom superstar idol who got two superfans reincarnated as her twin babies before being murdered by a stalker. For a show claiming to portray the dark reality of the entertainment industry, there isn't a single thing dark or real about Ai. She is a relentlessly perfect plastic mannequin of a person, never once showing herself to be anything less than upbeat, bubbly, and inoffensive. Not once in the three years we spend with her before her death do we see her sulk, throw a tantrum, or express any emotions besides peppy and cheerful. If there’s anything resembling a real girl underneath her facade, we don't get to see it, not even when she's alone with her babies with no one to judge her. This show wants to pull back the curtain on the uncomfortable truths of this industry, but it doesn't even have the guts to pull back the curtain on its most important character and risk turning off an otaku fan base who can't conceive of women as complex individuals with complicated inner lives. And sadly, that cowardice is very indicative of how poorly the show will handle its themes moving forward.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Following Ai's death at the climax of the first episode, Oshi no Ko's real story picks up ten or so years later, with her now-teenage children Aqua and Ruby going to a special high school for aspiring entertainment industry professionals. Here they're able to meet fellow creatives and pursue careers in film, television, music, YouTube, and more behind and in front of the camera, all to follow their respective goals of tracking down their mother's killer (Aqua) and following in their mother's footsteps of becoming a beloved idol (Ruby). Thus the stage is set for a walking tour behind the scenes of all corners of the business, exploring the truth behind the shining mask of perfection the entertainment industry so often wears while slowly building up the mystery of who the twins' father was, and why he seemingly arranged for Ai to be killed. A solid setup for the story to explore its ideas in an engaging way, but as always, a setup is only as good as its execution. And no matter how many monologues its characters spew about the true nature of the industry, Oshi no Ko consistently fails to be anything more than plastic and shallow itself.

The biggest issue, sadly, remains Aqua himself. Even after you get over the whole reincarnated pedo baby angle, he is just the most miserably emo edgelord to be around. He's a mopey, brooding bore who looks down on pretty much everyone around him, but the show constantly insists on portraying him as cynically honest, the one clear-eyed adult in a cast full of kids. Which, considering how female-heavy the rest of the cast it, gives the whole show a creepy, paternalistic vibe. So many of Oshi no Ko's "realistic" portrayals of the industry's scumminess essentially boil down to a naive, inexperienced girl getting in over her head and finding herself in some sort of physical or emotional peril, only for this Light Yagami wannabe to swoop in and save her with the power of his Experienced Adult Man Perspective. There are times when it clearly wants to touch on how particularly rough girls and women have it in this scummy, sexist industry, but it undercuts itself every time it turns their struggles into yet another excuse for the one prominent dude in the cast to show off how much smarter he is.

And yes, in case you even needed to ask, of course the majority of these girls fall in love with him. You've got Kana Arima, a foul mouthed former child actor who's implied to have nursed a crush on him ever since he humiliated her on set years ago by being do much naturally better at acting than her to the point she broke down crying. There's Akane Kurokawa, a sincere good girl who falls for him after he saves her from suicide (more on that later) and otherwise exists to be tortured by some of the most laughable backstory retcons ever put to screen (She's an unprepared novice to the industry! Just kidding, she's a member of a prestigious theater company! Just kidding, she's a child actor who's been part of this industry her whole life!). There's even, believe it or not, his sister Ruby, who in her past life was a terminally ill child in love with Aqua's past life, her physician at the time. He even jokingly promised to marry her when she turned 16, which could have passed as a tragic, knowingly futile promise to comfort a girl who had no chance of living that long, but considering how things ended up... yeah, let's just say I am dreading what happens when Aqua and Ruby discover each other's previous identities. Honestly I almost hope they just say "fuck it" and take the plunge into Incest Lake, just to break the brains of everyone who's convinced themselves this show isn't a trash fire.

It also doesn't help that the dialogue is pretty uniformly terrible. Characters speak in tangled, overwritten declarations and explanations that never read as something a real person would say but also aren't stylish enough to pass for the kind of purposefully exaggerated back-and-forth exchanges that define, for example, the Monogatari series. It seems to think if you just drop a lot of monologues about how dangerous and unfair the entertainment industry is, that will compensate for the relative lack of real danger and unfairness in its actual portrayal. I'm not asking for a Perfect Blue-style pitch black perspective, but there are barely even shades of gray here, to the point it almost feels like the show's lying to you. There's a moment where Ruby and her aspiring idol group exclaim that a collective dressing room they share with a bunch of other bottom-tier idols is "packed like sardines," except the room we're shown has plenty of breathing room and empty space. This show flat out lies to your face, in contradiction of the visuals its showing you, to make the girl's situation seen worse than it actually is.

But let's circle back to Akane and get attempted suicide, because her focus episode is, in my opinion, the one moment where Oshi no Ko actually manages to live up to the expectations it set. Short version, Akane's on a reality dating show with Aqua and a bunch of other high schoolers, and her attempt to make herself more of a presence at her manager's request results in her becoming the target on an online hate mob who takes one bad thing she does and uses it as an excuse to harass her relentlessly. As someone who's seen too many stories like this play out in real life- overwhelming, self-righteous hatred from complete strangers who've convinced themselves your one minor infraction justifies ruining your life- seeing Akane succumb to the tidal wave of insults and threats until she tries to jump off a bridge was one of the most powerful experiences I've had in all of anime this year. It's masterfully directed, impeccably edited, and brutally, unforgivingly honest about how life-ruining this kind of negative online attention can be. It's hands-down the best episode of Oshi no Ko, and if the rest of the show had been as brave as this episode when tackling its subject matter, I'd have no problem singing its praises alongside everyone else.

It's also, sadly, a perfect representation of why this show is so fundamentally broken.

Because when you take a step back and look at the whole picture, as incredible as this episode is in isolation, its only real effect on the plot is to give Aqua yet another helpless admirer to fall I love with him seemingly as a matter of course. Akane's suicide attempt, as gut wrenching and heartbreaking as it is in the moment, only exists to give the reincarnated pedo protagonist another teenage girl to fawn over him. And considering how much inspiration this plot line draws from a real-life suicide tragedy in Japan, to call it nauseating and disrespectful would be the understatement of the century. The real victim's mother certainly seemed to think so, as she held an interview expressing anger that her daughter's tragic fate was being used as free source material without even consulting her first. And if you were hoping Oshi no Ko fans would react to this response with empathy and nuance, showing how much they took away from this arc's message about the evils of online harassment by refusing to participate in it themselves... well, let's just say I truly envy your optimism.

But really, isn't that the most fitting representation of this show's failure? It claims to showcase and criticize the exploitative nature of the entertainment industry, only to exploit real life tragedy for entertainment itself, and its fans react to this ugly truth by becoming exactly the kind of evil the show they claimed to love was warning them against. It's a perfect storm of hypocrisy that reveals just how shallow and craven the whole affair is. Oshi no Ko is not deep, it's not complex, and it's certainly not challenging. But it IS good enough at superficially appearing to be those things to attract a fan base that wants the ego boost of being seen as liking Mature(tm) stories about Serious Issues(tm) without actually being challenged to leave their comfort zone of pandering wish fulfillment. And the second something actually challenging does show up to demand they face an uncomfortable truth, they reveal just how unwilling both they and the show they love are to grapple with the ugly reality they claim to represent.

Is that harsh? Definitely. Unfair to the vast majority of Oshi no Ko fans who love the show without being gross and weird about it? Probably. But I can't be honest about this show without being honest about how miserably it betrays the very foundations of its stated goal. Ironically enough, Oshi no Ko is its own worst enemy, the greatest embodiment of everything it's trying to speak out against. It's a stupid show pretending to be smart, a cowardly show pretending to be brave, hiding cheap convictions with cheap edge and cringeworthy harem bullshit in hopes it can avert your eyes from the truth. But peel back that plastic layer of corporate sheen and it's every bit as shallow and hypocritical as the industry it claims to criticize. It's as hollow as Hoshino Ai herself, hiding its inner emptiness as best it can and hoping its beautiful lies will make you love it regardless. And if lies are indeed the greatest form of love, then Oshi no Ko must be the greatest lover of all. Me, though? I'll take something honest and uncompromising over an insincere fake like this any day.