In case you're new around these parts, let me just pull a Kendrick Lamar and say that I'm Oshi no Ko's biggest hater. I staked my claim on this show being crap twenty minutes into the first episode and I've stuck by that assertion ever since. It's a shallow, insincere, cynical piece of crap masquerading as a Serious Examination of the entertainment industry, claiming to portray the true nature of working in this business while being just as plastic and pandering as the very attitudes it pretends to critique. No matter how many self-important speeches it puts into its characters' mouths, it can't hide the fact that at heart, it's a juvenile power fantasy about an self-insert edgelord who boringly broods and cringes his way through a half-baked murder mystery while amassing a harem of teenage girls, sister included. As I said in my season 1 review, if lies are the highest form of love, then Oshi no Ko must be the greatest lover of all.

So imagine how infuriating it was when I put on season 2 and realized it was actually really good.

Listen, I didn't want to believe it. How was this show getting me so invested? How was this show making me pump my fist and cheer with triumph? But the facts are the facts: for the first time this season, I saw Oshi no Ko rise to become the best possible version of itself. After all the garbage it put me through, I suddenly found myself watching a show that was propulsive, beautiful, earnest, and filled with genuine insight into what drives people to throw their lives into art against all better judgement. This is the kind of show Oshi no Ko was always promising to be but never lived up to before. This was a show at least a little worthy of the tsunami of hype it crested into the anime world on.

Unfortunately, it was also proof that this show is never going to be truly great.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. The first two thirds or so of season 2 are taken up by the Lala Lai arc, in which Aqua, Kana, Akane, and a smattering of new and old faces get together to put on a 2.5D stage play adaptation of a long-running shonen action manga. On concept alone, that's a pretty novel direction to take things; we don't really have 2.5D plays in the West, so seeing all the technical stagecraft necessary to translate manga into a theatrical performance was fascinating. Ditto the insight into the complicated process of adaptation, how communication can break down between parties and the conflict between keeping a work's original soul and adjusting to fit the demands of the new medium. I've long been an advocate of adaptations making big changes when it makes the work better, and watching those conflicts and conversations play out made me much more appreciative of how difficult that process can be. For the first time, it felt like all the industry info-dumping was actually enriching my understanding of how this business works, and how it informed the characters' place within it.

Speaking of those characters, what makes the Lala Lai arc really shine is in broadening the spotlight. This is no longer the Aqua and Ruby show; this is a full-on ensemble piece, where pretty much every member of the production has a moment to shine. It bobs and weaves between countless little stories playing out both during the rehearsal process and during the first performance of the play itself, flashing back and forth as it digs into the heart of each individual passion that drives these actors to shine so brightly. And watching those passions collide and cascade makes that performance absolutely riveting. Seriously, I can't count the number of times I just about leaped out of my seat and yelled "Fuck yes!" at someone reaching their full potential on stage and seizing the spotlight in a brilliant display of emotion (and animation; the swooping camera and surreal colorscapes that take over this part of the show are the best Oshi no Ko has ever looked). Natural genius, amateur, it doesn't matter; on the stage of Tokyo Blade, everyone is a star.

And no one's served better by this kaleidoscopic focus than Kana and Akane, who are probably the true protagonists of this arc. I'm still annoyed at how dumb and retconny Akane's backstory has been treated- I swear, season 1 gave us three different conflicting backstories for her- but her rivalry with Kana over the years is the best stuff in all of Oshi no Ko. They've admired each other from afar for so long, but resent each other for their incompatible acting styles. They're determined to outshine each other but never believe they can measure up. They can't stand each other, but they're entwined by fate so deeply they know they'll never be truly alive without each other. That push and pull of wanting to live up to someone while wanting to surpass them, hating and loving them at the same time, is the singularity that makes this entire arc resonate. It's gripping and heartbreaking and beautiful, and if Aka Akasaka has any self-respect, he'll end the manga with the two of them collectively realizing Aqua isn't worth their time and marrying each other instead.

But of course, that's not gonna happen. Because Aqua is the one albatross Oshi no Ko will never be able to untangle from around its neck.

And this is why for as excellent as the Lala Lai arc is, it can't save Oshi no Ko. It's why nothing can save Oshi no Ko. On a fundamental level, it will never be able to shake the fact that it's saddled itself with one of the worst protagonists in all of modern anime. Or at least, one of the worst not to come out of your average seasonal isekai slop, but I don't watch enough of those to know how hellishly low the bar truly is, and I intend to keep it that way, thank you very much.

The point is, Aqua sucks. He's always sucked, he always will suck, and his mere presence in this story makes even its best ideas turn sour and ugly by the end. Even if you took out the fact he's technically a grown man involved in romantic subplots with three underage girls, he's the worst kind of edgy self-insert Light Yagami wannabe, and he forces the whole story to bend around him and suck his dick at the expense of what it's supposedly trying to say. Gut-wrenching portrayal of online hate mobs driving a young talent to suicide? Nope, it's all so he can save the day and add Akane to his harem with no further repercussions. Showing the difficulties of new idol groups struggling for attention in the modern age? Nope, just another chance for him to show off at Kana's concert and save her emotional state. Hell, even Kana and Akane's rivalry is tainted by the knowledge that they're ultimately fighting over this reincarnated pedophile's dick as much as for each other's respect. No matter what ideas this show tries to explore or how earnestly it tries to grapple with the realities of the entertainment industry, it always ends up coming back to "Yeah, but isn't Aqua such an edgy chad badass saving the day and getting all the bitches? Damn, what a cool brooding dude!"

In other words, the real reason the Lala Lai arc works as well as it does isn't the focus on the stagecraft process, or the expanded cast, or Kana and Akane. It's because turning into an ensemble piece means Aqua gets at little screen time as humanly possible, so he's mostly not around to fuck everyone's great moments up for a change. And even then, every time he does show up in that arc feels like all the air being let out of a balloon. And he's probably at his best during the play! At least dealing with the lasting trauma of Ai's death gives him some actual internal conflict to play with! But even that's not enough to keep the protagonist of this fucking show from feeling like a sickening blemish on his own supposed series. And once that arc's over and the focus returns to Aqua and Ruby in the season's final third? Hooooooo boy does it immediately go to shit again. All the masturbatory chauvinism I ripped into season 1 for is back like it never left, no lessons learned from how much better Lala Lai was charting an entirely different path. Hell, it's arguably even worse, because it ends up reminding us that Ruby's just as irredeemably broken a character as Aqua at this point. I know, the teenage girl trying to marry her adult doctor who is secretly her reincarnated brother also makes this show worse? I'm shocked, I say! Shocked!

Speaking of, can we acknowledge at this point that the whole reincarnation aspect of Oshi no Ko just should not have existed? There's nothing in this story that couldn't work just as well if Aqua was just a normal edgy teen who watched his mom die as a kid and developed PTSD/a desire for vengeance from that. It's only just become even somewhat plot relevant, it's barely present in any character interactions or relationships (even between Aqua and Ruby, they almost never talk about it!), none of its themes have any reliance on their past lives to get the point across... Really, its only contribution is making every potential romantic subplot with Aqua a five-alarm emergency siren while the show limply tries to pretend he totally counts as a normal teenage boy for dating purposes, honest! It's a ten ton weight dragging the entire story down for no goddamn reason and you'd barely have to edit the earliest chapters at all to get rid of it entirely. That wouldn't fix all its problems, but it would at least make it salvageable. Which currently, despite how shockingly good this season started, it is not.

So where do we go from here? Who fucking knows. I'd like to think Oshi no Ko could somehow learn from its successes with Lala Lai and continue shooting for greater heights, but everything I've heard from my friends who've read the manga suggests that was the high point and it's all downhill from here. All I know is that for better or worse, I'm on this train to the end. If only to continue rubbing in everyone's faces that I was right from the start about what a turd this would turn out to be. But I'll save that gloating for when it's truly deserved, and god knows, it will be deserved later on based on some of the spoilers I've picked up. For now, though, I'll just hope the murder mystery roaring back into focus in the season's final couple episodes means this show will start being trashy in a fun way going into season 3 instead of just making me want to gag. We can only hope.