Oshi ga Budoukan Ittekuretara Shinu

After receiving a flyer from Maina Ichii—a member of the idol group ChamJam—and seeing her perform at a local concert, Eripiyo falls in love with Maina and decides to devote her life to supporting the shy and reserved rising star. Eripiyo's charismatic presence and iconic red tracksuit soon give her recognition as Maina's one and only unrivaled fan.

Whether it be a performance or a small fan gathering in the middle of nowhere, Eripiyo is guaranteed to be at every event Maina participates in. Not even an injury or Maina's seemingly cold attitude toward her can stop Eripiyo from pursuing her dream of seeing her beloved idol perform at the world-famous arena Budoukan.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Eripiyo Main

Fairouz Ai Japanese

Ichii, Maina Main

Tachibana, Hina Japanese

Hakata, Maki Supporting

Enoyoshi, Maya Japanese

Yokota, Aya Supporting

Itou, Manami Japanese

Kumasa Supporting

Maeno, Tomoaki Japanese

Teramoto, Yuka Supporting

Watada, Misaki Japanese

Mizumori, Yumeri Supporting

Ishihara, Kaori Japanese

Yoshikawa Supporting

Nakamura, Yuuichi Japanese

Matsuyama, Sorane Supporting

Hasegawa, Ikumi Japanese

Misaki Supporting

Satou, Satomi Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Ootomo, Toshiya Producer

Hasegawa, Yoshinori Producer

Terada, Yuusuke Producer

Reviews

Jun 29, 2024

homfi

Recommended

Don't let the poster fool you: this is not an idol show. It's a comedy about idol fan culture, anchored by the main character Eripiyo, whose animation and vigorous vocal performance (by Fairouz Ai) delivers a steady stream of hilarious moments.

Although the scenes without Eripiyo don't attain the same level of quality, Eripiyo is on-screen enough with inventive new antics that the show never becomes boring. Sometimes shows can suffer from having one standout character and then not using them enough, and that isn't a problem here.

There's substance here too by offering a window into idol fan culture, but the main draw is the humor.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Jun 8, 2024

lycoping

Mixed Feelings

Often when I mark an anime "mixed feelings", I actually have fairly strong feelings about the anime, but I mark it that way because I know that there's a decent chance that people won't share my feelings and could easily believe opposite to my opinion. That's not the case with this anime, this anime is truly "mixed feelings" for me.

This anime follows Eripyo and her friends, all of which are, well, otaku. Not the "Buy a few anime figurines and fantasize about your waifu" kind of otaku, the "buy as many CDs as possible of your favorite idol so that you can get ... tickets to a handshake event and hold her hand for thirty seconds". This girl is unhealthily obsessed, as many otaku of that type are. But this anime also follows the object of her obsession, a marginally successful idol who has very few fans. In fact, Eripyo is her most dedicated, and perhaps only, fan. The arc of this anime follows the parasocial relationship that both the idol and Eripyo have with each other - and their clear desperation to transcend that relationship.

This anime deals with the parasocial relationship between an idol and her (arguably) biggest fan in a fair, nonjudgmental, and impartial way. We see the relationship through the eyes of both Eripyo and the idol. We see how obsessed Eripyo is with the idol, but we also see how profoundly lonely, insecure, and shy the idol actually is. These are two people who need "something genuine" as much as anyone does, and yet all they can do is court parasocial relationships and hope someday to find that which seems to be utterly eluding them at every turn. The relationship is played for laughs sometimes, but it's really not funny.

And that's why I have mixed feelings. It's a fine anime, with good music, animation, voice acting, all of that. It has a story to tell, it's an interesting and important story, and at the end I just found it depressing. Because this is realistic. It's how idol otaku culture actually is. And I feel like I would have been better off not watching it. Because they tell the story too well. The underlying sadness - the sadness which is hidden from both Eripyo and her idol as they bumble through their individual sides of a parasocial relationship - is palpable and comes off the screen in waves. And they're so invested in their parataxic distortions that they will never, ever see it.

As is the case with many real life idol otaku, and idols as well.

But if you can look past that to the entertaining it was clearly *intended* to be, you'll probably enjoy it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Sep 7, 2020

Tardivex

Not Recommended

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 crazy ... about 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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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