Back to SiriusStarlight's Profile SiriusStarlight's Profile

[This is directly ported from my anilist review of the series, which you can check out right here: https://anilist.co/review/26055]

Let me be absolutely clear about this, Oshi no Ko was bad WAY before the final arc came to pass. While the final stretches of the series did introduce an avalanche of series-breaking problems, many of its most major failings were elements fundamental to the story right from its inception. If you’ve talked to me at all for the longest time then you know I’ve had a pretty visceral hatred for the series, but that’s not at all what I wanted to feel going into it. Going ... into the series with no knowledge other than it being written by the writer of one of my favorite stories of all time, getting sucked in like so many other people to the movie-length premiere of the anime. While it did host a solid amount of those problems, its shocking conclusion did leave me excited for what I thought would be something like an entertainment industry-flavored Death Note. My reward for that excitement was disappointment after disappointment after surprising brilliance after a return to disappointment that just kept on spiraling into something unrecognizable to the point where I wondered what even got me so excited for it in the first place.

When you see people trying to sell this series, there’s a 90% chance you’ll hear the sentence “It’s all about showing the dark side of the entertainment industry.” The arguably biggest hook the series has to a wider audience is its nature as a commentary on the true nature of entertainment and how everything isn’t sunshine and rainbows. With how much this aspect of it is paraded, it makes it all the more frustrating how that aspect is minimally explored. It constantly talks a big game about how cutthroat and merciless it is, building it up as some huge boogeyman, but we almost never feel that level of danger at any point throughout the story. Nearly everyone that Aqua and Ruby work with in their quest through the industry is extremely cooperative and nice, most perceived hostility towards them and anyone else almost never actually impedes any progress towards their goals. In the rare times where it ever actually feels like there’s any sort of danger present with navigating the industry, there’s always someone, mostly Aqua (more on him later), whose existence acts as a safety net. It feels like Akasaka’s research into the industry’s capacity for cruelty never went past reading a handful of buzzfeed articles or him really getting into a theater phase. Tokyo Blade is an outlier in how it does a legitimately commendable job of conveying the inner workings of its productions and showing how stressful it is for everyone, but that inversely highlights how the boogeyman approach taken with every other arc makes its commentary feel completely toothless. It makes it all the more aggravating how condescending the series is about how much it flexes its knowledge of the industry while having little to nothing of substance to actually say about it.

The limpness of its depiction of the industry also kneecaps what was the biggest hook for me with its setup; it’s an incredibly boring murder mystery story. For most of the series’ first half, the central mystery of the story, Aqua hunting down his mother’s killer, feels like a background element at best. It feels completely unfocused for the majority of the experience when it could’ve easily done so much more to make the overarching mystery and the individual story arcs feel more intertwined. The rare moments where it is put into focus have the process of mystery solving feel like little more than a repetitive fetch quest with no progress feeling like a strong hook to move things forward. After the Tokyo Blade arc concludes and it finally does take center stage, it still has no idea how to make it develop in narratively compelling ways. Its major red herring with Himekawa is entirely reliant on Aqua not thinking about the information he’s given for two seconds and winds up making him look like an idiot. (More on him later) The true culprit and mastermind behind everything is revealed to us in the most unsatisfying way imaginable, and utterly fails to make his looming presence over the story be felt despite him supposedly being a massive threat. I wouldn’t even say that the story isn’t truly interested in this side of itself because it winds up being the main dramatic core of its final act, so it just leaves me puzzled as to how it barely feels like there was any cohesive planning put towards this element at all.

This lack of cohesion is just as, if not more applicable to its character writing. Not a single character in this entire cast talks or acts like a real person. Aka Akasaka, the series writer, has a bit of a habit with his dialogue where it feels as though he treats his characters like sock puppets and spouts monologues that read more like wikipedia excerpts than something a person would naturally say. This worked in his favor with Kaguya-sama, which featured a setting with an elite school of geniuses that could get away with overly wordy dialogue feeling natural in the context that they’re living in, but in a story centered around supposedly more down to earth people this issue stands out significantly more. It makes them feel detached from reality in a way that doesn’t gel with the series’ goals. This detachment is only made worse with how inconsistent characterization can get. In some cases, characters feel like they learn nothing from their experiences and barely change at all, like with how Ruby’s completely unable to get over a fleeting crush from her past life even after having nearly two decades to move on. In others, they completely flip personalities at the drop of a hat. It’s entirely willing to completely contradict a character’s past motivations or actions for the sake of whatever dramatic moment the story wants to push. If you want me to go through a few highlights…

- Akane going from being presented as a no-name, naive, inexperienced girl who’s getting way in over her head to a genius method actor who’s been a prominent member of a prestigious theater company since she was a child and thoroughly studied psychology when she was told off to her face by her idol
- Miyako having this grand promise with Ichigo to fill a stage with dazzling lights when her intro directly says she only went along with it cause he said that she’d get to work with pretty boys (and talks about it with gamer speak a bunch for… some reason?)
- Ruby getting a mastermind-level intelligence buff during Mainstay that she didn’t show she was anywhere near capable of operating at previously (which undercuts what otherwise starts out legitimately interesting arc for her)
- Ryunosuke having been in a relationship with Nino, an idol from the original B-Komachi, all along when his entire motivation for killing Ai was her breaking the “purity” of being an idol by having children, making him a complete hypocrite
- Ai apparently having always loved Hikaru and broke up with him because she didn’t want to burden him when the entire point of her character was that she didn’t even understand loving her own children until she was on her deathbed

These and many other contradictions in character work make it hard to feel truly attached to anyone that isn’t functionally a one-off character for an arc. (like the scriptwriters for Tokyo Blade or the reality show crew in Mainstay) It only adds to the directionless feeling that the main plot has when the characters’ journeys feel like they’re just as confused in where they’re gonna go. Kana and Akane, two of the central heroines of the manga, are hit especially badly with how they devolve into having their whole lives and ambitions revolve entirely around Aqua. (More on him… right now!)

Aqua, oh Aqua. From the beginning of my journey with this series you were the element that I despised the most. I initially saw you as the one big thing dragging every single aspect of this story down. While my stance on this has changed, (he’s simply one of many elements that sink it) he nonetheless remains one of the biggest stains on it. First of all, I’m not going to go into the weird implications of his reincarnation. That element is a dead horse that’s been thoroughly beaten and focusing solely on that would distract from everything else that makes him a terrible protagonist. As a perspective character in a story with very little to actually say about its subject matter, it’s impressive that he has even less to say with his own perspective. His genius insight begins and ends with “the industry sucks, it is what it is.” The only remotely interesting character beat he has to work with is having to confront his trauma over Ai’s death in Tokyo Blade. Everywhere else it’s either him being a boring edgy moper or an invincible genius who’s always right about every single mechanical aspect of the world works. It’s bad enough that he’s a very stereotypical anime genius character with none of the charisma that his contemporaries usually have, he’s the absolute worst kind of genius; one that’s exactly as smart or dumb as the plot needs him to be. One moment he's a master manipulator, getting hundreds of blood tests from everyone he comes across and being able to get a crew member of Love Now to work with him in seconds, the next he completely misses the most blatantly obvious holes in the aforementioned red herring and gives up his revenge quest for that entirely. One moment he's considering information about the main villain that he had literally no possible way of knowing unless he read the script of the manga, the next he’s convinced that murder-suicide is his only option in a situation where he has a million other ways he can kill his target while preserving his sister’s reputation. Even when he’s overwhelmingly proven right in his genius, it’s still hard to buy into when his intelligence is constantly in flux. Just like everything else in OnK, Aqua feels completely fake and inauthentic, but not in ways that feel like it’s deliberate.

All of this is why I said, in the face of multitudes of people turning against Oshi no Ko in the advent of its final chapter, that it was bad well before its finale. Every single element that makes this ending a disaster has been a part of its writing from the beginning. Its logic of how acting and filmmaking works completely falls apart by this point. The big confrontation with the main antagonist is a complete anticlimax that assassinates two of the most critical characters to that conflict. Aqua finishes his quest with a move which tells us that he learned absolutely nothing as a person from anything he went through and causes untold misery to everyone who ever loved or cared about him in a way that was entirely avoidable. Why did it turn out like this? Why didn’t it take any of the opportunities it had to turn its shaky foundation into something meaningful? The best way I can think of to respond to that question is to ask one of my own about the face of the series.

What makes Ai Hoshino special? This sounds like it should be a pretty easy question to answer. She’s the impetus for the entire story being set into motion, she’s at the core of the motivations for our main hero and villain (the latter of which became a literal serial killer so that nobody would shine brighter than her), every time she’s discussed and showcased she’s treated like the world’s equivalent of Michael Jackson with the scope of her popularity blowing up to comical degrees. So I ask again, what makes her special? What about her specifically makes her shine so much brighter than any other idol? We’re told that Ruby has surpassed Ai, that the villain wants nobody to outshine Ai, but we have no quantifiable idea of what that even means. That’s because the series itself doesn’t understand what it means. That is the truest lie of Oshi no Ko. It loudly proclaims it has all of the answers. That it has something to say about the things it points fingers at. All of that is a lie. It’s a work that’s desperate for attention with its dramatic turns and bold proclamations ringing hollow once it’s interrogated with its own questions. It’s all bark with no bite. Too cowardly to truly bring anything to the table because it has nothing to bring. It hopes that the flashy spectacle it puts on distracts you from how empty it really is. Oshi no Ko’s ultimate lie is the idea that it has anything of substance to say, and its lie is not a form of love, but a source of pity.

It speaks volumes about Oshi no Ko that the story arc that has by far the best character work, most engaging storytelling and least active problems with its writing also has the absolute least to do with its fundamentals. The Tokyo Blade storyline is the best its in-depth exploration of industry mechanics gets, Kana and Akane's dynamic gets explored with so much more depth, and even Aqua has some more interesting internal conflicts to deal with. Melt's highlight episode is even one of my strongest contenders for episode of the year. And once this arc ends it immediately goes back to being as shallow, pretentious ... and condescending as it was in season 1 like it never stopped. My highest praises I can sing for season 2 is that the first two thirds where it stops being Oshi no Ko are also by far the best that it has to offer.

Extremely conflicted on its approach to meta commentary. It felt very confused and heavy-handed with the kind of message it wanted to tell with the concept of Gridman. Its message about the beauty of fiction allowing itself to spread and inspire others to make their own creations is something I really admire on paper, but it feels very at odds with the idea it presents earlier of so many ideas collapsing in on itself to the point where it's super overcrowded feels at odds with that, and it doesn't really do enough to make a clear distinction of the difference between the two. It doesn't ... have the balance to its meta that other works I've seen tackle such themes, where there's a much clearer distinction made to the power and beauty of fiction while also showing the danger of getting too lost in it. Without being able to really ground itself in that balance, it feels like it gets lost in its own crowded spectacle. It feels more interested in displaying the power of fiction and creation rather than letting the audience *feel* it. Also the Dynazenon cast deserved better.

After how much of an absolute slam dunk the first TYBW cour was, it's hard not to feel like this one is low on steam in comparison. Compositing is still as strong as ever and animation is solid at minimum, but I can name very few cuts in this I was really impressed by compared to how much I was blown away by the ones in The Battle, Born in the Dark, or especially The Fire. The pacing is also really kicked into overdrive, with fights like Mask de Masculine's and Gremmy's being compressed into single episodes, which is kind of insane considering their chapter ... counts. While it blazing through things keeps its fights from feeling as bloated as the old anime's could at times, I think it winds up looping around to feeling too fast, not really letting things sit or have a lasting impact. This also often results in a bunch of cool smaller moments which have a lot of meaning to them being cut for time, and some things they choose to keep instead are baffling. (Looking at you, Marching of the Zombies) This time around things feel very "monster of the week"-ish in a not-so-good way. Granted, this is definitely a symptom of the story segment this cour is covering being on the more "fight fight fight" side of things, and the vast majority of the Sternritter being woefully underwritten compared to the past antagonist groups. I feel like there's so much more that they could've done to give them more depth, rather than just speeding along like they have been. And given the likely stopping point of this cour, it's not an issue I see likely being solved in this segment.

Do I think that this noticeable step down from the first cour is a bad omen or a sign that this whole revival was a big fluke? No, definitely not. There's still two whole 13 episode cours left in this arc and, judging the pace they're going at by volumes covered, they have very little material left in the manga to cover. That last third is also definitely the stretch of the story that was the most harmed by Kubo having to rush the whole conclusion. I have a good feeling that the coming cours are where all-new additions and changes are going to really add up and matter a lot. What having this in mind tells me is that this cour was comparatively low-priority for Pierott. While I am very optimistic for what's to come in this adaptation, and still think is fun and has a lot of great qualities despite all my complaints, it feels unfortunate that this sticks out as a very standard adaptation when cour 1 went really above and beyond to enhance the material. As far as the segments of Bleach's grand four-part return go, it feels like quality-wise this one will undergo a severe case of separation anxiety.

Also Giselle Gewelle if you're reading this my DMs are open, I love you even if Kubo and Pierrot don't. <3

What… happened here?

A show like this, which presents itself as a bold, creative, unconventional and unapologetically crass callback to the early Gainax days, should’ve been an absolute slam dunk in every regard. What we got instead was a painfully dull, creatively bankrupt mess that seems desperate to appeal to people who irrationally hate current mainstream anime while doing nothing that any of its inspirations haven’t done a million times better. The show itself doesn’t even feel like it’s having all that much fun with itself. It goes for the safest bare-minimum gags at every turn and refuses to do much beyond the characters’ one ... or two comedic traits that makes up the entirety of their characterization. It feels like it didn’t realize that its own bit would get to that point and is embarrassed by itself.

That applies to the visuals too. Outside of its stellar OP/ED and magical girl transformations, it winds up leaving a lot to be desired both visually and creatively. Episode 2 has a potentially insane drug trip sequence, but the most they could come up with is making a set of MC Escher stairs, a Drakengard reference, and calling it a day. It was shockingly underwhelming.

Maybe it’ll have some major twist later on that’ll make me completely change my tune at the end, but halfway through its 12 episode cour at this point it feels like it’s already too late to turn it around. It’s been a massive disappointment all around.

I know people who are really into sports and I can confirm they are exactly like this.


Blue Lock manages to be absolutely overflow with charm by sheer virtue of being as over-the-top and deranged as humanly possible. Every single episode you'll hear a teenager talk about their pride in their skills or resolve to be the best Soccer player they can be through saying it in the most unhinged ways imaginable, accompanied by an extreme visualization of that exact phrasing. Even if the amount of depth a character has can vary in how deep or shallow they are, everyone manages to be really memorable in ... their own distinct brand of insanity that contributes to the constant high-energy feel of thhow. A big contributing factor to that is its stellar voice cast. Pretty much everyone here brings their absolute A-game into their roles with a powerful intensity that's unique to each and every one of them. My particular favorites were Kazuki Ura as Isagi and Tatsuku Kaito as Bachira, which is especially impressive given that they're pretty much entirely new faces in voice acting. I'm really happy that these leading roles were given to such promising newcomers, and I really hope that their phenomenal performances lead to really bright futures in their careers.


Another one of the core pillars that makes Blue Lock what it is are its visuals. However, I should address the fact that its animation is an area where it stumbles a bit. It feels a bit apparent that it wasn't given as much of a large budget as it could have, or if it ran into issues in production, but it does have a noticeable impact on its animation. It often relies on stills or really rough-looking CG models in a lot of areas in a way that's pretty off-putting to see when those cracks show. That being said, its animation often being a tad inconsistent is more than made up for with its fantastic direction. Its use of incredibly intense expressions and shading that feels reminiscent of Attack on Titan at times, effective use of distinct imagery like the puzzle pieces connecting to and breaking off of Isagi or the "monster" that resides around Bachira, and incredibly strong storyboarding that makes its big headlining shots land with the same impact as a spread from a manga page give it a striking sense of style that feels very unique to it. And make no mistake with my earlier complaints about its animation, when they need to sell an impactful moment, it shines really brightly. I just hope these production issues get ironed out by the time season 2 comes around, so both the animation and direction get to work in harmony and shine ever brighter.


The thing I found most compelling about Blue Lock story-wise is the nuance of Blue Lock's goals as a facility and the type of player it's trying to be. I've seen a good amount of criticism towards the series' supposed notion that a striker is the only player that matters in a soccer team. That's obviously entirely true, but I think that angle is looking into the whole "making the best striker" aspect of it a bit too literally. The way I see it, Ego sees the problem with the Japan team being that their focus solely on fighting as one made it so that the players' individual strengths suffered as a result, so the goal for Blue Lock is to refine the selected players as individuals and bring out their latent strengths. It's an approach that encourages the players to have somewhat selfish and egotistical mindsets in how they evolve, which doesn't sound like it'd work all too well. However, the show ironically makes it so that this drive ends up strengthening their teamwork. It invites a spirit of competition between its team members where they manage to work in harmony by spiritually devouring each other (the show's words, not mine) in order to make major bursts of improvement, and those clashes of wills end up letting the players work in harmony very well. It's a very unique angle to take a sports series in storytelling wise, one that I haven't really seen before at least. I imagine that it's definitely really unrealistic and over-the-top, but the series fully embraces that aspect of itself.


Watching this show week to week was one of the most fun experiences I've had keeping up with a seasonal, and I'm glad I got to experience it so often through the phenomenal stretch of Fall 2022 and the admittedly less enticing stretch of Winter 2023. I'm fully hooked on checking out the utterly insane clash of wills through soccer that Blue Lock has in store for the future, and I'm looking forward to its eventual return with Season 2 and the Episode Nagi film.