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I'll be frank. I was drawn to this manga originally by Mengo. I was a fan of hers. I had heard of the Kaguya manga at the time, it was impossible not to, but hadn't taken that plunge yet, so I didn't really know who Aka was. As I write this, I firmly believe Mengo and her particular talents are wasted on this man. If you were like me, stay away from Oshi no Ko.

Make no mistake, I was willing to ride with this until the very end, but it has become abundantly clear that there is not a satisfying outcome to be had ... here. The Prologue arc pulls you in with a strong hook and a promise of the direction, the Sweet Today arc was a needed reprieve, given how intense the prologue concludes, and the Love Now arc mistakenly makes you believe Akasaka Aka has talent as a writer. The only talent here is an ability to drawn you in for more abuse, and create a work that feels both rushed and dragged out simultaneously.

From here on, Aka squanders his initial setup, meandering around his hook with lukewarm takes on the entertainment industry that you could find on Wikipedia at best, outright being an apologist at worst. Characters cease to be characters, either acting as mouthpieces for Aka to spew his trite points, or as chess pieces to bring about predetermined outcomes. At least until chapter 80, he attempted to weave these moments together with a sense of cohesion, but past 80, more and more important events begin to occur offscreen, and he timeskips his chess pieces, I mean, characters, to the position he needs them to be in, all while meandering about the original premise. Revenge? Reincarnation? What's that? We need Kana to cry more and Akane to be unreasonably good at figuring out the plot.

Some people may blame hints of incest as the downfall, but I'd argue it was one of the few interesting things this writer did. No, it was the endless meandering about a cliche love triangle, bending the story over backwards to a character that will repeat the same character arc over and over again, the awful pacing, and ignoring the actual premise that was this story's undoing. Aka has demonstrated he has no teeth with this work. Ai died so no one else would face consequences, ever, and once he skipped over much of her backstory with the main antagonist (a comically absent presence in this manga if I could add), it seemed unlikely he would deliver on his promise. I stopped reading at chapter 149, finally deciding to let this go, realizing that no amount of salvaging would provide a satisfying conclusion. I suspect Aka will give the most trite, generic ending imaginable. Safe is in his DNA.