If My Favorite Pop Idol Made It to the Budokan, I Would Die

“If My Favorite Pop Idol Made It to the Budokan, I Would Die” That is the English title of the anime. Somehow it sounds like a goal in your life, but certainly a weird one. I am a big idol fan myself, but I would never go that far and say this. There are "wotas" (=fans of Japanese idol singers) who would do everything for their favorite idol. They support them with everything they have and this is definitely something that should be respected. It is certainly unusual and hard to understand, especially in western culture. Nevertheless, it shows how much love the wotas give to theirfavorite idol. Oshibudo (short form) is about the relationship between the wotas and their favorite idols in everyday life. It gives us a little insight into this unusual and interesting culture. STORY: The first imporatant thing we learn is that our idol group "ChamJam" is a "chika (underground)" idol group. Such a group is nowhere near as well-known as the "mainstream" idol groups like AKB48 (anime: AKB0048) or Momoiro Clover Z (songs in Sailor Moon, DragonBall etc). So what does this exactly mean for the daily life of our "ChamJam" idols? Without the unconditional support of their fans, "underground" idols would have an extremely difficult time. Beside performancing, our idols also have to do side jobs because the wages are not enough. The story is focusing on the main characters Eripiyo-san and Maina (both are girls). Eripiyo-san is a wota willing to do anything for her favorite idol Maina. She loves Maina more than anything on the world and also shows this noticeably. She supports her in every aspect she can. Since Maina is a shy girl and often doesn't dare to say the right words, it is difficult for her to show Eripiyo-san how much she appreciates her support and how much she loves her for doing this. In addition to the relationship between our main characters, we also see other wotas showing their support for their favorite idol. CHARACTER: The development of the idols with the support is certainly the most exciting part. All members of "ChamJam" have a different personality and not the same amount of fans. But you have to differentiate between quality and quantity here too. A special fan in your heart can change your entire life and this case is certainly here. The respect between the "ChamJam" members is there and no one wants to lose considering the ranking etc to the others. Nevertheless, the harmony is not so strong, even if they support each other. There is still a puzzle piece missing to become a great unit. ART: The art style differs significantly from the other idol animes such as Love Live! or Zombieland Saga. The girls are shown cute in a different way. Their performances are also beautiful to watch and the animations have a perfect flow. SOUND: The songs of "ChamJam" is nice to listen. Although this idol group does not exist in real life with live performances, it is fun to watch the animation and listen to the music. The OP "Clover Wish" is sung by all seven members and you can feel the happiness in such idol songs. The ED song, on the other hand, is a solo by Eripiyo-san (Ai Fairouz). She is one of the winners of the category "Best New Actress" 2020 and many know her as "Hibiki" from "Dumbbell Nan Kilo Moteru?" as well. Her voice perfectly fits with the ED song. ENJOYMENT: As someone who has already watched many idol animes, I had a lot of fun watching Oshibudo. I personally like the idol art style e.g in Love Live! or Re:Stage more, but this variant also has its charm. Learning more about "chika (underground)" idols was also very interesting, these things are hardly mentioned otherwise. For erveryone who wants to discover more about the idol culture, I definitely recommend watching this anime. But this anime is also great to watch for people with little idol experience. You can see how much ONE loyal supporter can change everything. With the relationship between the idols and their wotas, this anime has a different focus compared to others. This new aspect gives us a deeper insight into the Japanese wota culture.

When it comes down to it, this anime is nothing really special, just another standard seasonal show that was forgotten a few weeks or months after its release, your typical 5 out of 10. However there's something that kept bothering me about it, which is what prompted me to go back and write a review in the first place. Oshi ga Budoukan Ittekuretara Shinu is absolutely horrifying, not in your typical horror curse type of thing, but in a much more psychological and real way, because it glorifies some of the worst aspects of otaku and general consumerist culture. You have these main characters that are crazyabout this one idol group, and they each have a favorite girl they want to support, to the point where they destroy their lives doing so, and I don't mean that lightly, they're well into their twenties but have zero regard for stability or their futures. There's this conversation where they mention they work part time jobs (which they're shown to be miserable in) and not full time ones because it's more flexible schedule wise so they can go into every single one of the idol group's shows, and spend every penny that they earn in CDs or other merch related to their favorite girl. The show portrays this twisted sense of duty towards their favorite girls, where they must consume, they must be loyal "supporting" fans to the detriment of everything else in their lives. The highlight of their day is dumping their hard earned cash on their favorite idol from the group, even getting a glimpse of them is somehow considered an astonishing accomplishment. Now don't get me wrong here, I'm all for people doing whatever they wanna do as long as it's not illegal, I'm all for people having hobbies they love, but the utter levels of insanity shown in anime go beyond that, to an unhealthy degree, the main character openly ignores their financial obligations in favor of working overtime so they buy multiple boxes of their precious idol's CDs to "support" them, but it's cool because their best girl smiled at them! Look how happy they are seeing that! Or getting their timed 10 second handshake session! It's all characterized in a happy light while their lives are a few scraps away from falling apart altogether at any given moment. I can't help but think about all the parasocial relationships some people have with streamers, or even worse, the rise of sites like OnlyFans for instance, and how the behavior displayed in this anime is exactly the same for those with these clear issues that need to be worked on, instead of getting a "quick fix" at their symptoms, it would also not even be a stretch to include the gambling addicts, which are also now frequently portrayed in anime nowadays as a "cool gamer" character that plays a ton of gacha on their phone. Finally, it's certainly not lost on me how the movie Perfect Blue managed to portray this in a much more realistic manner and show the problem for what it really is, while simultaneously tackling a bunch of other related themes in its 80 minute runtime, more than 20 years ago. If nothing else, I hope whoever is reading this takes away a recommendation for that movie if they haven't watched it already. Ultimately I know Oshi ga Budoukan Ittekuretara Shinu wasn't going for a "realistic" depiction of these habits, I'd like to believe media follows human behavior, not the other way around, nevertheless the way it glorifies them only serves to make my stomach churn, as it perpetuates these stereotypes and validates unhealthy life choices which the longer it goes on, will only make the "hit" worse whenever they do wake up and see the fallout from the years wasted of their lives and thousands spent on what amounted to nothing but a quick path to the dopamine receptors in their brains.

The Idol culture is cancer for men. Liking an Idol and trying to support her is fine, but going to the point where you would literally give your LIFE for her is totally stupid. If you are a man, touch some grass. This is a slice of life anime about the fans of the Idols, which I think was very innovative since I've never seen an anime based on something like that, and that was really interesting and enjoyable to watch. I liked other Idol animes like Love Live and seen the "hero's journey" is something that will always entertain people but in this anime theplot was completely different, and I think that difference was why people enjoyed watching it. It had its cringe moments nevertheless it was fun. Music: 5 (it's Idol music, what do you expect?) Story: 6 Voice Acting: 8.5 (Eng dub) Art: 7 Characters/Character development: 5 Entertainment: 7

Oshi ga Budoukan scratches that need for a cute low stakes comedy romance that needs to be satisfied every so often. While making us squirm with love and adoration. The biggest warning I can give before jumping into the deep end of this series is that you will cringe and squirm from the way our main character acts sometimes, but that isn’t a bad thing! The reason you’ll be squirming is because her love and adoration for Maina is so vast and deep that is definitely slips into obsession, knowing the feelings are rather mutual though makes it feel a lot better. Another aspect of this showthat lends itself to being an interesting show to watch is the amount of actual culture baked into this series to analyze and learn about. As someone with no experience in the Idol scene there are a lot of interesting things to learn about like the light stick things King Blades (Remember though this is anime so it is very much blown out of proportion, but there are still things you can learn.) The music and songs in this show are also quite enjoyable which is an important aspect of an idol show like this, and most of the dances are good as well (sometimes a little bit of 3d modeling is used for a couple dance shots and it can be a little jarring, but for the dances that really matter they make sure it looks good). The weakest part of this show would sadly be the story. It’s just not that horribly deep with a lot of the story beats being a little obvious, but while it is a bit weaker I still found a lot of enjoyment in it with little moments where I could tell what was about to obviously happen next but I still squirmed in my chair and threw my hands in the air at just the absolute sweetness of what happened. While in other idol shows we can pick our favorites and follow all of them in a way this show mostly follows the MC Maina dynamic with a couple side stories featuring some of the other Idols. I personally didn’t care much for these side tangents and would have enjoyed more screen time for a couple of the other Idols or more Maina.