Oshi no Ko – Episode 1

[Alderis]

Oshi no Ko – Episode 1

[html]

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be exploring the megasized first episode of a fresh production, as we check out the premiere of last spring’s Oshi no Ko. To be honest, I was perfectly happy to let Oshi no Ko come and go without any significant commentary on my end; the show’s premise felt too contrived and insular to really appeal to my interests, and beyond that, “an idol drama that’s also a critique of the idol industry” just feels unnecessary for me personally.

Not that the idol industry doesn’t deserve a takedown; on the contrary, “the idol industry is a predatory vessel that ruins the lives of its participants and trains its fans to treat artists as property” feels as provocative a statement to me as “water is wet,” an obvious, clear-eyed assessment of a self-evidently malevolent industry. My impression was that I’d be agreeing with the show’s negative statements while rolling my eyes at every “and yet, there’s something to that idol industry” concession, all while listening to music that I have failed to find interesting across a decade covering the genre’s most esteemed productions. Considering that “Perfect Blue is my favorite idol anime” is basically the anime version of “Die Hard is my favorite Christmas film,” it didn’t seem necessary to add my predictable commentary to the flood of Oshi no Ko reactions. Nonetheless, I’m sure I’ll find some points of interest within this unique production, and I always appreciate having a clearer impression of anime’s breakthrough successes. Let’s get to it!

Episode 1

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“This story is a work of fiction. Actually, most everything in this world is fiction.” Our narrator starts off with an immediate rundown of the artifice inherent in the idol industry – “they lie, exaggerate, and thoroughly conceal anything inconvenient.” I suppose it’s just a matter of preference, but this insincerity is a major part of why idol music or culture just doesn’t interest me. I like my art to be raw and immediate and almost painfully sincere, and if it’s going to be light and upbeat, I’d still prefer that lightness to be reflective of something authentic as well

Of course, beyond that, I just don’t find the art produced by the idol industry particularly interesting. The lyrics seem generic and superficial, the musical backdrop fits into routine pop structures, and the whole ensemble has an overall “designed by committee” feel to it that feels antithetical to my relationship with music. It’s not just idols; I basically don’t listen to any music by artists who don’t write their own songs, because they’re simply not the artist’s thoughts and emotions being realized – to set aside the fact that lyrics designed for radio play by another performer generally lack any sort of intimacy or poetry in the first place

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So yeah, you can probably see why I thought I’d be too much of a downer to offer people relevant commentary on this show. I can enjoy Idolmaster because the animators and directors are putting skilled work into realizing the characters’ experiences – it is them I am appreciating, not the fact that what they are applying their skill to happens to be an idol drama. But anytime a character starts waxing philosophical on the magic of idoldom, I emotionally tune out; that’s why I had to drop Love Live eventually, as it basically takes for granted a communal sense of awe at the majesty of idols

“The idol fan is one who wants to be skillfully lied to.” I can also totally appreciate some forms of media serving as feel-good comfort food; I just feel like the reality of how the sausage is made when it comes to idols is too bleak to ignore, and the output too simplistically saccharine to offer me any sense of validation anyway. I value lyrics, formal inventiveness, and authenticity in music very highly, and idol music simply does not, while the things it does value (dance performances, a committed stage persona) have no appeal to me

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Apparently this group’s center is Ai, the sixteen-year-old leader of B Komachi. That’s another thing – idol performers are often so young that it’s clear they’ve been designed by producers, and why would a sixteen-year-old’s music resonate with me in the first place? I’m not really sure how I’d identify with or be inspired by a child singing about shining hearts

“It’s been four years since they started, and now it seems like they’re really taking off!” I suppose I can understand this sort of sports team-style appeal, where you’re rooting for your favorites to shine. It seems like for the dedicated fans, it’s often less about the music itself than seeing a character you find endearing gain success

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Our protagonist is apparently playing this concert in a patient’s room. He’s a doctor at a small practice in the countryside

The nurse informs him that Ai is going on hiatus due to poor health

It was a patient he met during residency who changed his perspective on idols

“She’s about my age, but she’s so grown-up looking and great at singing and dancing!” See, this is a charming and relatable relationship with idols. I can perfectly understand how young people might find hope in seeing other people their age shine, and how watching them might serve as a reprieve from their own difficult circumstances. Earnest stuff like this is why I feel guilty getting into it regarding the idol industry in the first place

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“Haven’t you thought about what it’d be like if you were born as a celebrity’s child?” Really seeding our twist here

And thus our protagonist started following Ai’s career in his patient Sarina’s stead

“Aren’t you just using Sarina-chan as an excuse to pursue your own desires?” I’m still siding with the nurse here. And yeah, the sexually tinged ownership aspect of idol culture is definitely another thing I can’t really get past. I suppose stories like this will become more universal and essential as we move forward in this era of streamers fusing popular media with parasocial intimacy, but frankly, the whole endeavor seems to me unhealthy for both artists and audiences. We are an increasingly lonely people, but believing your favorite youtubers are your friends is not going to fix that – it’s only going to create friction because you’re not actually connected, and thus as you or your obsession grow and change, you’ll likely foment a mutual sense of resentment. Works of art are fixed points that cannot be hurt by rejection; living people are ever-mutable, and vulnerable to the jeers of the crowd

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There’s also the unfortunate side effect that this era of media by children, for children means people are exposed to less and less work of genuine professional merit. There are people just ten years younger than me who I can’t really talk to about art because they haven’t read anything, haven’t watched anything, have only spent time hanging out with their peers via youtube. It feels like the promise of no barriers to production is ultimately an ouroboros that will devour all quality art, replacing it with increasingly amateurish reflections of the amateurs young artists take as inspiration. The light novel industry already seems like a fine example of what the blind leading the blind for a generation will construct. Their prose is atrocious!

The doctor cannot deny that he would date Ai if she asked him. I feel like we’re supposed to see him as “relatably flawed,” but he’s not proving particularly endearing so far

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Ai then shows up at his clinic, about twenty weeks pregnant with twins

“If it gets out you got pregnant at 16, your career and my agency are finished.” It’d be nice if this were a unique toxicity of the idol industry, but in truth this is par for the course across all sorts of entertainment industries – women are expected to be pure and available for their audience’s fantasies, simultaneously innocent to sex and objects of sexual worship

“Wait, if I die now, there’s a chance I’ll be reborn as an idol’s kid, right?” A distressing number of people in this world fantasizing about being birthed by their favorite idols. Kinda figured only Mr. Boop dreamed of such things

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“Still, can you really stan an idol who has a husband and kids?” So does the fantasy really only work if you’ve got some hope of the idol hooking up with you personally? It feels like such an inherently unhealthy, possessive perspective – that in spite of ostensibly cheering for this performer, your support is entirely contingent on them maintaining this fantasy of loving you specifically. If you’re genuinely touched by an artist, you should want that artist to succeed on their own terms, not just remain a plaything for your fantasies. And this awful possessiveness extends beyond just idol drama – it’s one of the reasons so few anime are willing to actually commit to their characters being in relationships, particularly queer relationships, because it’s apparently essential to retain some ambiguity regarding whether these fictional characters would want to shack up with the lustful viewer or not. It’s frankly a pathetic, inherently art-averse perspective

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The doctor at least seems to have a more reasonable perspective – he’d still support Ai even if she found love elsewhere, but he understands that having these kids would undoubtedly negatively impact her career

Ai never had a family of her own, and is thus looking forward to creating one with her children

“Idols are objects of worship, you know? They sparkle through the magic of lies. Lies are the most exquisite love!” Yeah, here’s where I figured the equation would lose me. A show about the magic of idols that accepts their appeal is built on lies must necessarily see something alluring or worth pursuing in that subterfuge, and I just don’t. I’ll be interested to see what argument the show makes in its favor, though!

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Ai wants both the fabricated happiness of a stage smile and the authentic happiness of motherhood

I appreciate the inherent rebelliousness of Ai being unabashedly an idol and unabashedly pregnant; given how idols are generally portrayed, even this seems like a welcome pushback against their alleged permanent available youthfulness

The doctor chases a stalker outside of the hospital, and is ultimately pushed off a cliff. A field that promotes a sense of personal connection and ownership of artists will naturally lead to a whole lot of violently possessive fans. I feel like you’ve already embraced an unhealthy relationship with art by the time you consider yourself “loyal” to one or another artist or franchise – art can inspire us, but it should never stand in for our own independent identities. I don’t see anything worth celebrating in any form of stan culture

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And thus he is reborn as Aquamarine Hoshino, bearing one of Ai’s star pupils

I actually appreciate that we just sort of handwave the mechanisms of reincarnation. So many isekai immediately get bogged down in the specific worldbuilding details of their scenario – you get the impression their authors would rather be designing games than telling stories. In contrast, great stories are generally more about people and ideas than worlds, and it’s clear Oshi no Ko is more interested in using this scenario as a vehicle for exploring other topics

His sister’s name is Ruby

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“I’ve always been bad at remembering names and faces.” I get you, Ai

Ai begins her comeback, with her producer Saitou’s wife taking care of the kids in the meantime

I like the inherent absurdism of this baby matter-of-factly keeping tabs on Ai’s professional revival

“I’ve listened to their performances, and they’re neither good nor bad, just average. Well, this is the sort of stuff that sells.” Feel like I’m relating to this stage crew more than anyone else in the production

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“That goes for the big shots too. They act like they’re making something great, but they only look at the numbers.” Of course, this goes for a lot of creative professions. The main reason I never pushed any further into working with the big anime production and streaming companies is that I just couldn’t stomach this idea – that my work would now be composed of scripting flattering, enthusiastic lies about productions I actually found routine or actively lousy. Most anime isn’t particularly interesting art, so if you want to secure a full-time position within the industry, you either have to get accustomed to lying or simply not possess discerning standards in the first place

This is also a big part of why youtube has replaced the bulk of anime criticism; general audiences aren’t interested in critique, they just want their feelings repeated back at them by an allegedly authoritative source, and so fans who would be happy with just about anything have largely replaced critics who push back against fandom’s unconsidered assumptions. Basically the only critique modern audiences will allow is “this is insufficiently loyal to the source material I already love,” and so that’s the only thing their preferred commentators will forward as criticism

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Sorta funny that the only criticism audiences want isn’t actually meaningful criticism at all; after all, given how different mediums have different strengths, overweening loyalty to source material isn’t actually an artistic virtue

See, this is why I didn’t plan on writing about this show! It’s hard to reflect on a show about the cynicism of anime-adjacent showbiz without pushing into further cynicality myself, and I was thus quite happy to stick with the “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all” policy until now

Damn, some nicely painted highlights for Ai’s return performance. This is one of the tricky things about idol shows, or music shows more generally – if you want the big performances to land, you can’t just have audiences look stupefied by routine craft, you have to actually go the distance and animate a genuinely impressive performance

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Doubly so for idol dramas, I should say, since the actual music component is never particularly impressive. Look, if we’re here we’re here, and I’m saying my piece!

“I just had a diaper change, but I feel like I’m going to wet myself!” Aquamarine’s sister is apparently a similarly precocious idol enthusiast

Aquamarine learned his sister was a similar reincarnation when he caught her yelling at people for being wrong on the internet

“That baby just talked!” A very good punchline

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“You liar! Why would you go and make babies!? You tricked me!” Our killer’s still in attendance to represent “the dark side of idol fandom,” or as I like to call it, “idol fandom”

“I feel like, as an adult, being breastfed by an idol would indeed be crossing the line.” Our protagonist displaying laudable restraint relative to some recent anime heroes

The company president’s wife is understandably upset about being reduced to a babysitter

She decides to reveal the scandal. “Uh, no good. What should we do? Should we kill her?” Ruby is proving to be a delightfully demented addition to the cast

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And thus our babies reveal their preternatural intelligence, claiming to be the voices of gods protecting divinely blessed children. The obvious solution, really

“My future? I’ve never given it any thought.” Seems like we’re seeding the reveal that Ruby is the doctor’s other former patient, which is a little easier to guess given the show hasn’t introduced any other potential candidates

Yep, they don’t draw it out any further – the two of them are oblivious, but the audience is swiftly informed that she’s actually Sarina

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“Being an idol is fun, so I wouldn’t mind going on like this if it was just me.” Ai swiftly slamming into the brick wall that so many artists face – having to compromise on their “starving artist” ethos for the sake of the people they love. There isn’t any money in art, but you can sort of scrape by if you’re just working to support yourself; however, if you’ve got a family, you eventually have to choose between chasing your dream and keeping your loved ones fed

“To give them lots of options, I’ve got to sell better and earn as much as possible, don’t I?” This is refreshingly candid without feeling self-consciously salacious; I find reflections like this more meaningful than the show’s thoughts on the “beauty of lies,” which feels like a more sophomoric sort of revelation

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Granted, most anime don’t have anything meaningful at all to impart, so I suppose I should be grateful – but frankly, my days of cheering for scraps in anime rather than just watching art I don’t have to grade on a curve are solidly behind me

“B Komachi is one of the better-selling groups, and yet…” One of the most common misconceptions of fans is that artists are all swimming in cash, because anyone with a public profile is assumed to be wealthy by default. In truth, most people in artistic fields are only there because their desperation to create art is far stronger than their desire to live securely; it would be both easier and far more financially lucrative to stick with a normal job, but some of us can only find satisfaction in life through the execution of our creative passions

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