Truth be told, we don’t know that much about Eripiyo. We don’t know her full name, or her level of education, or exactly how her journey through life brought her to the park on that fateful day when she was approached about visiting a local idol concert. All we know is that she’s an adult, she has a ton of work ethic, and after experiencing the idol group ChamJam for the first time, she’s fallen head over heels for its most bashful member, the diminutive Maina! It’s been two years since then, and Eripiyo has dedicated every day of her life, and every penny she’s owned, into supporting her icon as much as humanly possible! Or at least, she wants to, but whenever they interact, she’s noticed that Maina’s been acting cold to her. Is she just being shy, or have Eripiyo’s obsessive tendencies been creeping the poor girl out? One can never truly see inside the heart of another, and in Eripiyo’s case, she’s not even sure what’s in her own heart. The very thing that brought her and Maina together is now the one thing keeping them at a distance, so she’s going to put all that confusing stuff aside and cheer Maina all the way to the Budoukan!

The anime I’m reviewing today is called “If My Favorite Pop Idol Made it to the Budoukan I’d Die,” which I am simply going to call Oshibudou for short. It was produced by Eight Bit, a company I’ve never heard of before today, because while I have seen a few of their titles before, I’ve never taken the time to look up who produced them. Out of the few I’ve seen, the only one I watched recently enough to comment on was Encouragement of Climb, a cute and kind of ambitious slice of life anime that I recall looking really pretty. Oshibudou is also really pretty, at least in terms of its soft, watercolor aesthetic and it’s flowery, shoujo manga designs, but it also does look very obviously low budget. You can fin the usual budget cutting tactics all over the place... Talking heads, key frames with moving lip flaps, repeated animation cycles, long panning shots, character portraits bouncing to create the illusion that they’re walking, you name it, it’s in here. And yet, in spite of all of that, it’s not a half bad looking show.

This show was not Eight Bits first rodeo, nor was it anything new for Yusuke Yamamoto... No, not Tamaki Suoh’s actor, the other Yusuke Yamamoto... The director of the series, who brought a ton of practical experience to the table. As obvious as the budget cutting techniques may be, they’re not jarring or distracting, and you probably won’t even notice them if you’re not looking for them. A good director knows how to make a cheap anime look good despite their limitations, and while I have seen it done better in other shows, Yamamoto still did an admirable job. The color palette is very bright and easy on the eyes, and the character designs are really distinct and memorable, for the most part. Weirdly, it’s the idols in this show who can sometimes look a little on the generic side, even among the main cast, as there are several members of the ChamJam group that look strikingly similar to each other aside from subtle hair color and outfit differences. It looks better than it probably should, so we’ll count that as a win.

The English dub was a Crunchyroll effort, and it might be where Oshibudou shines brightest. Megan Shipman pulls out all the stops in her portrayal of Eripiyo, her delivery an astounding blend of over-the-top and nuanced, dialing her vocal range up to eleven to play an insane character who shows little sense of shame or self awareness to a degree that would make Jessica Calvello proud. Brynn Appril is shy, reserved and sounds very believable as someone with social anxiety who struggles to talk sometimes, making her the ideal Maina, and Jim Foronda is lovable as Kumasa, a character who could have easily turned out to sound boring and bland. I don’t remember specifically, but I know a couple of the songs were sung in English, while others weren’t, and I don’t know why, but I appreciate the english songs we got. My only complaint is that, I’m sure this was a mistranslation on some level, but the title of the series is said four times in the dialogue, and it’s said differently. It’s said as “If my Favorite Pop Idol made it to the Budoukan, I could Die Happy,” not the shorter version. I wonder about that.

There’s a lot to like about this anime, and there’s also a few things I’m not too crazy about. To start off on a positive note, this show is really damn funny. The original material already had whip smart comedic timing, and the English dub absolutely nailed its adaptation in that regard. Not all of the material is self aware, but when it is, it’s never shy about poking fun at itself. Eripiyo herself is a very funny character, her earnest devotion to Maina causing her to overwork herself to a hilarious degree as well as going through some genuinely funny slapstick that often ends up with long term injuries as a consequence. On top of this, I adore her relationship with her other otaku friends, as their dynamic is probably my favorite thing about the show. Chasing after idols for years would be boring if you had nobody to share the struggle with, so thankfully her and Komasu are akin to a pair of bros. Their dynamic is both believable and kinda based, I wish I had friends that honest and supporting.

While Eripiyo and another one of her friends display some questionable habits, the character of Kumasa could be considered the wholesome and healthy one, which is not apparent from his design, he looks like your stereotypical slimy otaku sleeze, so it’s surprising just how wholesome he actually is. He deals out smart life advice, treats his favorite idol like a human being, and he never makes a single advance or creepy comment to his cool female friend. He goes a long way in giving otaku a good name, and it also helps that Eripiyo is one of ChamJam’s only female fans, and she’s just as vocally obsessed and unhinged as anyone else whose been sucked into that rabbithole, which is also pretty progressive I guess. Their friendship is, as far as I’m concerned, the heart and soul of the series, just these three like-minded raccoons that found each other in the dumpster and decided to form their own twisted little family, it’s actually pretty heartwarming to see.

As much as I liked the fanboy/fangirl half of the show, the actual idol half feels severely lacking to me. There are seven members of the idol group Chamjam, and while none of them struck me as bad or unlikeable characters, they did kind of feel shallow, to the point that as I’m sitting here, I’m struggling to recall anything about any of them outside of relationship details between them and their occasional uses in the plot.. Lets see, Maina was really shy... One of them, I think her name might have been Aya, was kind of an instigator who was insecure about being called a loli... I think that’s it? Nobody really stands out aside from Maina, and that’s just because of how often the plot focuses on her. As frar as I can remember, there are two potentially lesbian couples that form within the group... I say potential because on both counts it’s teased but never confirmed... And I legitimately can only remember one of them. Or was there only one couple, and I mistook them for two? Who fucking knows.

One huge problem that I noticed with this cast of characters is that not a single one of them, at any point, has an actual backstory. Well, okay, we know Kumasa has been following Reo since her previous group broke up, but that’s all we get. We don’t know why any of these girls wanted to become idols, what kind of lives they lead previously, or what kind of families they come from. This is really bad for Eripiyo and Maina in particular, because we have no previous context for why they would fall for each other so quickly and deeply, we meet them at the exact moment they meet each other, and that’s it. People seriously accused Whisper me a Love Song of relying too heavily on the love at first sight trope, when this show also exists? At least in that show, the proposed yuri couple don’t let misunderstandings get in the way for long. Eripiyo and Maina’s relationship is like a cereal box called “Oops, all Misunderstandings!”

It’s embarrassing how far this show will bend over backwards to keep Eripiyo and Maina at arms length, to the point that they’re both highly selective with what hints they will and won’t take. When Maina displays incredulity at Eripiyo for not buying as many CDs as usual, Eripiyo starts rambling about trying to sell her organs. This confuses Maina for some fucking reason, when the implication that Eripiyo’s having money issues should have been blisteringly obvious from that one clue. When Eripiyo gifts Maina a box of chocolates, she later asks her if she ate them. Maina says “of course not!”, which conveys to Eripiyo a sense of rejection, rather than the actual reason, IE Maina treasures them too much. And yet, and yet, when Eripiyo carries around a blue item(that’s actually mostly green, which she also pointed out) Maina immediately jumps on the wrong conclusion, thinking it means Eripiyo is into another group member, because Maina’s only allowed to be perceptive when she’s wrong.

This alone makes them an incredibly frustrating couple, not only because I know almost nothing about either of them besides their relationship with each other, but because they spend the entire series chasing each other’s tails like the most useless disaster lesbians on earth. This is kind of a spoiler, but they make no progress or development whatsoever the entire series outside of being able to talk to each other a little easier. To make matters worse, the actual nature of their feelings for each other keep flip flopping from episode to episode. Sometimes Maina openly implies having romantic feelings for Eripiyo, other times she’s wondering if they’ll ever be friends. Eripiyo is constantly expressing her love, but outside of a scene where she refer to Maina as “The girl I like” while begging for money, none of her romantic overtures feel genuine. I guess there is some depth to the idea that Maina’s idol status brought them together, and now it’s also creating an insurmountable distance between them, but it’s boring never seeing them make a genuine attempt to cross said difference.

One potential reason for this is that Oshibudou is one of those many yuri anime where the very idea of homosexuality is never explicitly called out or addressed, like it takes place on an alternate earth where there was no real separation of sexualities, and heteronormativity just never existed, there are a lot of LGBT anime tht are like this, and it can make for a very positive and affirming fantasy that the world needs more of, but when the characters involved are underwritten, it can also serve to exacerbate the shortcomings of a story. There’s a scene where Eripiyo invites a coworker over to watch Maina on TV, and while Eripiyo was fangirling in front of her, I was practically pleading for the coworker to say something like “Huh, I didn’t know you were gay, that’s cool,” because a comment like that could have performed the double duty of both forcing Eripiyo to examine the nature of her feelings, and maybe... Just maybe... Doling out some actual backstory. Which she needs, because Eripiyo may be funny and a more or less good main character, but she is nowhere near a strong main character.

While we’re on the subject, I also think it’s really interesting how one of the idols starts to lose fans and support when rumors start to go around that she has a boyfriend, and it’s acknowledged by other members that this can be disastrous to her career, and yet none of them seem concerned about what might happen if they had a girlfriend. This is something I’ve seen elements of in the Vtuber world, as the reveal that a talent has a boyfriend can be just as devastating as a straight up doxxing, especially on the Japanese market, but female Vtubers in particular will openly flirt with each other with little to no pushback, and while actual couples might be rare, they’re often as popular as the individual girls themselves. Why is this, I wonder? Why is having a boyfriend considered a betrayal, while having a potential girlfriend is barely considered a threat? This is something I wish the series would have explored more, but let’s be real, I highly doubt it came anywhere near this subject matter on purpose.

As much as I have complained about Eripiyo and Maina being a frustrating couple that makes no progress, I’m not sure the opposite would be a good idea either, because there is something about their pairing that is going to make a lot of people uncomfortable, myself included. If you’ve never heard of a parasocial relationship, it’s what happens when you become a dedicated fan of a public figure. Everyone experiences this at some point in their lives, but most of us were at least able to keep our fanhood from crossing the line. But that line can be hard to see, and there’s one hell of a slippery slope waiting on the other side, and that’s where stalkers come from. This line means a lot to me in particular, because I’ve been on the wrong side of it... I was once so obsessed with a particular youtuber that I did some detective work to figure out their real name, along with some other information, which I almost made public before I realized what I was doing, stopped myself in the nick of time and threw up in the shower out of disgust for my own actions.

And at least I stopped myself, because there are countless stories out there of people who didn’t. If you’re a wrestling fan, you’ve heard about what happened to Sonya Deville a few years back. If you haven’t heard what happened to the Vtuber Camilla, check out my Vtuber legend review. For a more mainstream example, Christina Grimmie was a very young musician on youtube and former contestant on The voice who, in 2016, performed at a concert in Florida. Afterwards, she sat down in her autograph line, where a stalker got to the front of the line, pulled out a gun, and shot her dead before also taking himself out. This is real shit, and once you know about it, it makes it really hard to watch an anime that portrays romantic feelings between a pop idol and her #1 fan in a positive light. Sure, it’s fine to tell a story that examines the intense feelings of a fan, but when those feelings are reciprocated, that’s when you have a problem.

This is maybe a bit of a spoiler, but Maina has (sometimes)romantic feelings for Eripiyo, and they are entirely based on the fact that Eripiyo is her most loyal and devoted superfan, and do I even need to explain why that’s a problem? If this scenario doesn’t encourage delusion and entitlement, I don’t know what will. Don’t get me wrong, I know most people wouldn’t get the wrong idea about this, but most is not all. You only need one delusional fan in the wrong frame of mind to take the text of your series as “Hey, you never know, maybe she does feel the same way” to cause some real, life-threatening problems. And before you say it could never happen to you, guess what, I’ve been there, and if it happened to me, it can happen to you.

Or hell, even if I’m just overreacting and no harm could ever come of this harmless little yuri set-piece, that doesn’t make it easy to sit through a piece of media that looks at a topic from such a shallow perspective that it absolutely refuses to address the darker implications of it’s premise that you know about all too well. In real life, idols are characters, being played by normal human beings who live out their normal, boring lives behind the scenes. They appreciate your support, probably, but they don’t know you, and they never will. In Oshibudou, Idols are exactly what you see on the surface, and they form intensely personal and reciprocal relationships with anyone who shows an interest in them. They have a boundary in place that keeps them from dating their fans, but the relationships they DO form are worryingly codependent in nature, mewling over how much money you're spending with all the grace and dignity of strippers trying to work you over for a better tip. You can enjoy this fantasy if you want, I’m not going to judge you for that, but you can also find it deeply uncomfortable and creepy. Even a mutual, non-stalkery relationship between a fan and a celebrity would have a huge power inbalance at best, and be openly exploitative at worst.

If My Favorite Pop Idol Made it to the Budokan I Would Die is available from Crunchyroll. The original manga is available from Tokyopop. A live action drama adaptation is not available stateside.

I have issues with Oshibudo, but it’s hard to hate any anime that makes you laugh, and I think this show is pretty damn funny. Eripiyo might not be a very strongly written protagonist, with no real depth or history to speak of, but for a comedy anime, she’s good enough. Her over-the-top sincerity lends a sense of charm to what should be some genuinely creepy behavior, and her antics result in some pretty consistently good slapstick. I love her friend group, their camaraderie and overall vibe is amazing. Unfortunately, the premise touches on sensitive subject matter that it either doesn’t understand or is willfully ignorant of, and there are several prominent story arcs that are never resolved, resulting in a neverending cyclical purgatory that shows little development at best, and utter stagnation at worst. I still don’t believe in ‘shows where nothing happens, but this is definitely a show where nothing exciting happens, although I did enjoy it more often than not.

I give If My Favorite Pop Idol Made it to the Budokan I Would Die a 6/10