[Oshi No Ko] Season 3

I have a rather unpopular opinion: Oshi no Ko got bad far earlier than a lot of people think. Personally, I never thought it to be an anime/manga that was ever exceptional. It was always a narrative that bordered on the boundary between something impressive and something good. Still, works that are simply "good" in my eyes, and even better, works that are nearly exceptional, are far beyond the rest, as almost everything else I watch or read, I find to be average or standard. So, it's incredibly disheartening to see a narrative that was as entertaining and thoughtful as Oshi no Ko was becomeas ridicuously lazy and poorly written as it is now. Oshi no Ko, as far back from the beginning of the Mainstay arc, or more aptly put, episode one of season three, became mediocre, and it's been a freefall ever since. The medium of animation continuously evolves, and its much more likely that an anime will deliver consistent and solid production. Oshi no Ko S3 is far above average in this aspect: it is animated beautifully, the score is solid, the camera work is good. From a production standpoint, it's more than satisfactory. Oshi no Ko doesn't necessarily excel in any of these categories, aside from being visually stunning. It's no Samurai Champloo, but that doesn't hold that much weight because good animation and production is only suppose to support the narrative. Just like good prose supports a novel's story by enhancing the flow of the plot or readability. And Oshi no Ko's animation and what not does that. It being more than acceptable and incredibly consistent when it comes to the technical side of things is good, because animation is first and foremost a medium, and solid directing and production should be praised(its a hard thing to do). However, an anime needs more than just pretty visuals and okay sounding music to be considered a good sequel. A good, strong sequel progresses it's narrative, it's world, it's characters and it's ideas. Is Oshi no Ko S3 a decent installment in comparision to its predecessor? Far from it. Oshi no Ko, as a whole, has three main things it uses to hook it's audience—and a fourth thing it treats as somewhat unimportant until this season. The eventual rise of B-komachi, the exploration of the darker side of the entertainment industry, and Aqua's, and now Ruby's, quest to avenge their mother. The fourth thing is unimportant for now. These three things are what drives the story, and therefore, it's laughable that this season of OnK fails to add any substantial depth or progression to any of these core parts, except for maybe the last one. It actually completely skips the first one: we immediately enter this season after a timeskip. B-Komachi is one of the most popular idol groups in Japan. The slow, eventual journey to stardom is completely irrelevant now because of course it is. It's the beginning of a trend. It's Oshi no Ko telling the audience how lazy it will be for the entirety of this season and whatever tf it puts out afterwards. Ruby is getting all different sorts of roles now. Akane is....ion know idrc. Kana is just sad now(more on this bs later). And Aqua is into acting. Aqua is a character that was always interested in acting and directing and whatever, but his obsessive want to get revenge for Ai always greatly outweighed that. Uptil now, Aqua is a character that has always lived for others. He wants to commit murder to avenge Ai. He saves Akane's life. He does these little things to continuously encourage Kana to help her become livelier and fight for what she wants, when he doesn't need to do that. You even see it in the prologue. It's Aqua who sees the gruesome, bloody sight of Ai dying in front of him. Not Ruby. I'm highlighting all of this, because while Aqua isn't completely selfless, he is very caring, and overall, is selfless. And more important to what I'm talking about, Aqua hasn't done anything completely for himself. He is a person who lives for revenge, and so, him continuing to act is him expressing his genuine love for it, and moving past his trauma and his harmful want for revenge. It is poor and lazy writing to skip over this change in Aqua's characterisation as he is a character that is so blinded by his desire to get revenge that he only saw acting as a means to an end, who directly says: "Acting is a means for revenge" Skipping over him deciding to continue acting, when it no longer serves his goal, is lazy. That's Aqua trying to better himself, trying to overcome his trauma, and it's just skipped through a timeskip. Glossing over important and necessary development is amateurish writing. It's outright bad, and instead of an entire arc being dedicated to Aqua and his development to what we see him as post timeskip, we get the Mainstay arc—a mediocre, boring rendition of the 2D Stage Play arc, in the sense that it also somewhat focuses on the production side of things without any of the wit or nuance that arc had, and it only really serves to see Ruby being "twisted" like Aqua. It's also a bumass version of the Reality TV show arc. This recycling of ideas does not stop here, but it's just very disappointing. The Mainstay arc quite literally treats Aqua like a NPC. He doesn't serve any purpose to the plot, and any insight or development on Aqua bettering himself is ignored. It's bad that Aqua going over deciding to finally live a more normal life is never really explored because firstly, it's just dull, and secondly, it's because of the second half of this anime. The Scandal arc is an arc layered in issues. It's an arc that does progress its plot and characters, but not in anyway that is substantial or actually engaging(except for that plot twist), and it also recycles ideas. Some praise should be given because at least this part of the narrative does attempt to be an actual decent sequel. It just fails miserably. As previously discussed, Aqua is now trying to live a normal life, but then he finds out his dada is still alive, and then he regresses back to his former self. This is purposeful regression, and that's fine. Regression done right(Thorfinn, Punpun, Bojack) can birth some of the most complex characters ever. This was not done right due to the anime skipping over Aqua choosing and trying to live for himself. The inner conflict he experiences is not compelling. It doesn't hold any weight, because the story never treats Aqua living for himself as having any substantial weight. So why would it be compelling to see him struggle between his desire to live a normal life and overcoming his past, or him falling back into his unhealthy obsession with revenge, when clearly what he always regarded as more important was his revenge? And I say that because of him placing a tracking device on Akane(random bullshit + illogical writing), and the fact we don't get to see him grow towards moving forward. He says he's more fulfilled living for himself, but how can that be conveyed properly when it isn't focused on? It can't. His internal conflict is presented as a tough decision, but the conclusion was already forgone, and rather than feeling pity that Aqua was regressing back to who he was, I was disinterested. This arc mainly focuses on this, and the scandal Kana experiences. It was frustrating enough to watch an anime desperately try and fail to character assassinate one character, but it wasn't enough. Nah we don't have to try to ruin just one character, let's try to ruin two of em. Kana(queen) is my favourite character from Oshi no Ko, and so its somewhat sad to see her become stagnated as a character. Firstly, it's really contrived that Kana gets put into the situation she is in. She's the centre, therefore should be seen as the face, of B-Komachi(and how Ruby gets allat love and adoration we will never know cuz Akasaka didn't want to draw allat out, and the anime mirrored the source material perfectly). She's also an actor with an experienced background. So, if B-Komachi is popular, if Ruby is getting more popular, if Akane is popular, how tf is Kana not 10x more popular than any of em? It's also illogical to make a character as intelligent and careful as Kana, who warned Ruby of situations akin to what she goes through in the Scandal arc, be the one suffering the events she experiences. So once again, we see Kana being kinda depressed, going over the same insecurities and sadness she's already experienced because she was nonsensically forced in this plot point. Why does Kana feel she's being overshadowed again? Why is she questioning why she became an idol when we already had TWO arcs on ts? This anime can't decide how to feel about Kana. It doesn't know if it wants to glaze her or just make her suffer throughout. The Scandal arc, unlinke Mainstay, does actually attempt to add significant depth to exploration of the entertainment industry. It gives insight to the disgusting invasive nature of paparazzi, but this only ever remains insight and nothing more. The show would rather focus on Aqua becoming emo again or Kana being sad, and that minimises what is being discussed. I think this is what opened my eyes to how peversely lazy of a narrative Oshi no Ko had become. Equally somber topics have been explored before, and yet Oshi no Ko dealt with those topics with maturity and care. This time, it simply minimises it to focus on less compelling components. Not giving importance to Aqua's growth and his progression towards overcoming his trauma removes importance and substance from his regression; the stagnation and regression of Kana is executed in a completely subpar manner. Focusing on these two poorly written storylines throughout the entirety of one arc, and treating the more important, the more engaging idea as something damn near insignificant is absurd. Stupidly, Kana actually overcomes her insecurities by herself this time(good, that's progress), but is saved by Aqua(not good). It was good writing the first time, but not this time. However, it's barely excuseable, just barely, because firstly, Doga Koba pushed the Kana x Aqua agenda with the addition of those extra scenes. Secondly, the actual reason, it set up an incredible plot twist, and probably one of the highlights of this horrible season. As paradoxical as it may sound, I actually think Akasaka is a fairly good writer. He's capable of creating engaging and charming stories that have a lot of substance to them. He just finds it very, very hard to maintain such a high level of writing. Akasaka is not good at writing the second half of narratives, and what's frustrating about that is even in mediocrity, he's still capable of conjuring moments of brilliance that remind you that the story you are reading/watching was good before, and that he is a good writer. The journey to get to OnK's big plot twist is a painful one. Irrelevent arcs like Mainstay overstayed their welcome. Illogical plot points like Kana not being able to find acting work or Aqua putting a tracking device on Akane(so stupid) are present throughout the entirety of this anime. Nevertheless, maybe the destination matters more than the journey, cuz the set up was hot garbage, but the payoff was great. One thing the prior seasons of Oshi no Ko failed to do—despite how good I think they are—was develop or really progress the relationship of Ruby and Aqua. This is the aforementioned fourth thing. Ruby and Aqua are Sarina and Gorou, they know each other, and they are one of the cores of this anime(it's only now the anime remembered this). Ai's death only ever strains their relationship for a huge portion of the entirety of OnK. This plot twist, and it's payoff, is great because it's incredibly consequential. It affects the narrative, the characters, and the world of OnK. Most importantly, it finally allows for the development of Aqua's and Ruby's relationship—I think I have to clarify, I'm talking about their fight, and not what happens later on. It's just really well done, and it's impressive writing. A lot of stories fail to have scenes as thought out as that, as impactful as that. It reminded me that this was the same anime of S1 and S2. I was mixed on what score to give OnK S3. The Mainstay arc was mediocre and boring; the Scandal arc was poorly written. It's an outright bad season, albeit I wasn't necessarily bored while watching it. It was complicated, kind of. I was always gonna give it a bad score, but never a ridiculously bad score. Then I watched episode 11. I can't believe I wasted an hour on that shi. "Incest is wincest", "Ruby is best girl", "If it's not blood related, its not hot". You know those people. I'm not gonna go into specifics. Aforementioned, I personally thought Oshi no Ko was bad way before the whole incest thing. The "incest" is just the cherry on the cake. The thing is, it never actually leads anywhere. It serves no real importance to the story except to create mass controversy, and it just actively undermines the actual good parts of the final episode and anything decent going forward. I like to think Akasaka just hated Oshi no Ko around this time, and he deliberately sabotaged it cuz he couldn't care less. He was bored. Just like he wrote a children's movie plotline and inserted dumb, contrived love triangles into the Kaguya Sama manga cuz he was bored. Although, Kaguya Sama wasn't ahh before that. Oshi no Ko was. It's very rare for me to give a story a 1/10; I don't really believe in 1/10s at all. I just have a very subjective category for them, but just for how much this season ruined most of the good work of OnK's previous seasons, I really wanted to. Kana is stagnated, Aqua is stupidly regressed before we get to see him develop, Ruby is unlikeable, Akane does nothing. Speaking of Akane, she only serves as a device of sorts to create internal conflict in Aqua, and even that is undermined by the studio's decision to cut or replace her in scenes focusing on her because it really weakens her relationship with Aqua. It's also undermined by Aqua placing a tracking device on her because that suggests he still always cared about his revenge first even though he was done with it, and when he was in a relationship with her. What weight does their conversation about her helping him get revenge now hold? It's saddening, because this anime started off at such an incredible high, and it has completely fallen off. And the thing is, while I have been discrediting Oshi no Ko S3 a lot, it greatly elevates it's source material for the most part(unless you're an Akane fan). Then again, that just lets you know how bad the manga was at this point if this anime adaptation feels like an improvement. I greatly dislike stories that fail themselves, and I can't think of a more modern and evident example of that than Oshi no Ko. Hence, the incredibly negative score. Oshi no Ko was really something that could have been special, and the fact it turned out like the way it has is a heavy disappointment. And the next season is gonna be even worse.

Oshi no Ko season 3 continues to take our central cast of aspiring entertainers deeper into both the more unsettling realms of the industry and the final stages of Aqua’s revenge plan against Ai’s killer. Be it social media flame wars, idol scandals, or the fundamentals of pitching a film to producers and investors, this show’s penchant for covering an excessive amount of ground in excruciating detail leaves me captivated for nearly every second, with excellent pacing and smartly-composed dialogue to keep the hook in me every step of the way. It also continues to be one of the best “soapboxing” anime I’ve seen, aterm I normally use pejoratively to describe manga authors using their characters to go on rants about things they don’t like and how much smarter they are for being correct, but feels much more naturally implemented here, with the constant gripes about an industry’s practices stifling creativity or progress stemming from a genuine yearning for something better while still begrudgingly participating in the system at it stands instead of whining about how much better they are for seeing its faults. This sense of being trapped in an imperfect system nicely parallels several of our core characters’ arcs in this particular stretch of the story, be it Aqua and Ruby’s stubborn commitment to their varied approaches in how to take revenge for their mother, eventually driving their relationship to the most strained it has ever been due to their further perpetuation of lies and cunning schemes, or Kana’s growing malaise and stagnation as she desperately seeks out stronger acting roles and nearly getting crushed by the unforgiving nature of public opinion as a result. There is a profound complexity at play that keeps me coming back for more, even when the few bits of supernatural elements seem mostly unnecessary or a certain reveal in the finale bears potential to send the entire story spiraling into an unimaginable trainwreck. And, as usual, Doga Kobo continues to present an unbelievably gorgeous production to convey all of this. It cannot be overstated how immensely beautiful these character designs are, with so much detail in their linework, facial expressions, and character acting that I’m simply blown away. The few compositing issues I noticed from last season seem to have vanished entirely, the intensity of the framing, especially with close-ups, leaves insane levels of impact, and the deep saturation of the color design is both alluring and threatening. Though I have a few concerns about where this is all heading and I occasionally wish it went a bit beyond its PG-13 nature, if this story manages to stick the landing, we could be looking at one of the best thrillers of the decade.

A third season that fixes certain aspects of the story, but you can't hide the truth. We'll say the same thing we said about the previous seasons. Doga Kobo has made Oshi no Ko truly seem like a serious anime. The level of visual quality and animation is simply on another level. Even in the comedic parts, you can see the care and effort they put into this IP. Even in this season, they tried to make small changes so that certain moments wouldn't feel so forced or cringeworthy. Doga Kobo deserves all the credit for making Oshi no Ko the monster it is. Now, the storyitself—that's beyond repair. The story's problems are so significant that no matter how much you try to sugarcoat it or how many beers you drink, you'll always be able to see the ugliness of the script. It's in this season where all the characters, except for Aqua, become chameleons who can change as the script demands. The Edgy Ruby appears out of nowhere and doesn't really contribute much to the plot. In fact, Ruby's character is left in a rather gray area after this season. Ruby was characterized as an airhead, an idol lover who advanced in the industry through sheer willpower. By edgyifying her, they simply created Aqua 2.0, which was necessary since Aqua had already been converted at the beginning of the season. Oshi no Ko is a story that relies heavily on Aqua to be told. It was clear that when he was removed for a few episodes, Ruby didn't have what it took to carry the story. The key point of this season was the Arima Kana scandal. Unfortunately for her, this arc is used to set up the final arc, sacrificing her along the way. Arima Kana is one of the most mistreated characters in the story. While the rest of the characters advance in their careers, Kana is the only one who remains stagnant. Which doesn't make much sense because after the play, one would expect her to receive more recognition from the industry. That didn't happen, and she had to take a risk to get a role under a director who abused his power. Again, Doga Kobo saves the day, and that whole part doesn't feel as heavy-handed as it does in its manga counterpart. This makes the whole thing more digestible and allows us to address the real issue, where Kana is the victim, not the perpetrator. Even so, as I said, in the end, she's a expendable pawn so the story can move forward. The crow girl alone is a whole other issue. I've never seen a character more useless to a plot, and yet they still try to force her so much. The crow girl serves no purpose in the story. She tries to be an element that adds a certain mysticism to the plot, but Oshi no Ko was never a supernatural story. The anime is a drama with social commentary on the entertainment industry. Having a character related to reincarnation was superfluous. No one in this anime ever questioned whether there would be more reincarnations; we all assumed it was a random occurrence. Even so, they try to make it clear, wasting screen time that could have been better used for other characters. The ending, oh my god, it didn't need to be an hour long. It's painfully obvious that it's two 25-minute episodes strung together. You have two events that individually could have been great finales: the reconciliation of the brothers and the story of Miyako and Ichigo. These are moving stories that could have been worthy of closing the season or opening the next. Even so, the regular ending of the episode feels somewhat unfinished. They close with an attempted joke involving the crow girl that makes your hour-long investment feel unsatisfying. It's only redeemed by the post-credits scene, but once again, it's Ai Hoshino who saves the day. Now all that's left is to wait for the fourth season to close the Oshi no Ko cycle, one that gets heavier as we approach the end.