Oshi no Ko (推しの子) is an 11 episode drama based on the manga of the same name by Akasaka Aka with art by Yokoyari Mengo., The anime originally aired during the Spring of 2023.
Hoshino Ai is an aspiring pop idol and the front of a moderately successful group named B Komachi. Hey agency, a relatively new start up, Strawberry Production, announces that Ai has to take some time off from performing due to an undisclosed medical condition. The condition...pregnancy. Ai being pregnant causes a few problems the agency is trying to conceal. The first being that Ai is only 16. The second being the backlash the fan base would unleash on her for breaking the spell of attraction. The agencies owner, Saito, secrets his client away to a hospital in a remote village, to help hide the pregnancy. The gynecologist who meets with them unfortunately knows AI quite well, being a fan of her work. The doctor, Gorou, had been introduced to the group and the love of idols in general from a terminal cancer patient a few years earlier. The girl, Sarina had a significant impact on the young doctor and her death has led him to carry on her love of Ai and idols as a memorial. Ai refuses to terminate the pregnancy, even after learning she will be having twins. Saito pledges to support her as much as he can and helps keep her secret.
The night of her due date, a strange man approaches Saito outside of the hospital, rambling about Ai being there and being pregnant. Concerned as to why someone would know what is going on he chases the man into the woods only to be attacked and knocked down a cliff, falling to his death. The next thing he knows is his perspective has changed to that of one of Ai's newly born babies. He has been reborn as one of her twins, a boy she names Auqamarine. He has all of the memories and knowledge from his previous life and relishes the opportunity to spend more time with the girl he worships. Quickly he realizes that his twin, the girl named Ruby, is also a product of complete reincarnation and the woman that inhibits the babies body is a super fan of their idol mother. Together the two infants work together to support and protect their mother as she returns to the world of celebrity.
-WARNING- The rest of the overview of the series contains significant spoilers that will alter your viewing experience if you have not yet completed the extra long first episode.
The return to work for Ai comes with complications, given the extreme effort everyone will need to put in to keep the existence of her twins secret. Saito tasks his young wife, Miyako, with playing the roll of the twins mother when in public. This will allow Ai to interact with them while outside of the sanctity of their apartment. Miyako isn't sure about the arrangement and soon grows weary of tending after the babies, even though they are quite well behaved, being the embodiment of people who remember their previous lives. They overhear a plan she begins to concoct to expose the secret for money, as a way to live comfortably and leave her husband. The twins decide a desperate plan is needed and begin to act as if they are possessed by gods, forcing a mandate from heaven upon the beleaguered woman. They instruct her to do everything she can to protect the safety and identity of the twins. Without realizing the strange reality behind the situation she relents and the secret is once again under control as Ai begins to work on building a better future for herself in the entertainment industry.
A few years pass and things are going well for everyone, with Ai branching out into other venues in the industry beyond being the front of an increasingly popular idol group. The babies are now old enough to not raise too many questions with their mature behavior. The director of a drama that Ai is cast in for a small roll shows interest in having Aqua act for him. Aqua, having no interest in entering the industry, refuses. The director contacts Strawberry Productions later, to offer a new acting opportunity for Ai, on the condition that Aqua also appear in the production as well. Understanding that accepting this role could very well give his mother the break they are hoping for, he relents. While on set he encounters a co-star, child prodigy Arima Kana. Kana is spoiled and cocky and when Aqua's mature analysis of the directors intentions upstages her, the spoiled girl causes a commotion, teaching Aqua an important lesson when it comes to being a performer and how you treat those around you.
The role did what he hoped for and Ai finds more recognition and fandom, opening up more opportunities. The director however wants Aqua to become an actor himself, sensing a quality in his approach that could be fostered into a successful career. Aqua outright refuses to continue acting, wishing only to support his mother in her career and bask in her radiance. But on the day of a performance that will be the hallmark of her raising career, the stalker who had tracked her to a remote hospital year ago has discovered where she is living. He arrives, with a bouquet in hand, masking the knife and his intent. He stabs the startled woman in the stomach, Aqua in the same room, and begins to rant about how Ai had lied to everyone and treated them poorly by becoming a mother in secret. The betrayal of the obsessed fan. Ai understands she is dying and offers an apology to the man as a representative of her fans, an apology for carrying the role of lying to the public so well. A task that celebrities have to take on in order to appease the public, the lie of love. The man flees, understanding the gravity of his actions. Aqua is desperate to save his mother, knowing the dire situation she is in due to his medical knowledge. But it is too late, their mother dies in front of them, parting them with her love.
Aqua realized the stalker who killed his mother is the same person who
killed him. He focuses his grief and loss into drive to uncover the truth behind the stalker finding them. Through analysis of the situation
that lead to her death he suspects that someone close to her was the giving out information to the deranged fan. Understanding how few people Ai ever
had contact with, Aqua suspects the person behind everything is
quite possibly the man who got her pregnant, a man who Ai refused to
ever identify. With this as his starting point he decides he will need
to enter the entertainment industry to track this person down. The fan
who killed her committed suicide afterwards so he has zero leads. He
contacts the director who has showed interest in him and agrees to begin
working with him, hoping in time he will be in proximity to likely candidates for the man who would be his father.
The story skips ahead to twelve years later. The truth about Ai having given birth to twins has remained a secret. Saito abandoned Strawberry Production, leaving it to his wife to run. Miyako has grown fond of the children and the tragedy of Ai's murder brings her closer to them. They were quietly adopted into her family following Ai's death and she has raised them as her own ever since. At the same time she has taken over running her husbands abandoned talent agency, moving away from idols and onto other more lucrative opportunities in the ever changing entertainment landscape. Aqua and Ruby are about to begin high school at a prestigious academy which caters to child performers. Aqua has transitioned to being the directors secret assistant, learning editing and directing skills along the way. His real intent is to find the man responsible for his mothers death and kill him. Ruby has started to set her sight on becoming an idol herself and picking up where her mother left off.
That is pretty much the synopsis of the first episode, which is in reality the first three episodes that serve as a prologue to the series. The rest of the series follows the twins as they pursue their goals. Aqua is laser focused on uncovering the identify of their father, believing it will lead him to who gave information to the stalker who murdered her. At the the same time he works hard to thwart his sisters attempts to become an idol. Ruby, oblivious to her brothers dark path, moves forward like a bright light, eternally optimistic and cheerful. She has complete faith in her ability to honor her mothers memories by carrying on her work as an idol. She is also fulfilling the dreams denied her in her prior life, as the cancer patient and generally ill child Sarina. Each twin understands that the other is a reincarnation who remembers their past life, but neither have talked about that to each other. They do not know they were once doctor and patient in their past lives, a connection that has carried them into this life and has formed the basis of everything that motivates them currently.
I was drawn into the series on two parts; the first being my misunderstanding that Yokoyari Mengo's role was only the original artwork and not the story. The second due to the intense internet chatter around the show as it aired. I am a huge fan of Yokoyari's previous work and had hoped for something similar. While disappointed at first, the story stood on its own merits as an interesting and thought out journey that only took me half a year to return to. Whats even more striking is the real author is the same who created Kaguya-sama Love is War. A series I grew to dislike quickly and never returned to. At the core of it, Oshi no Ko is a supernatural murder mystery. The bulk of the story is more a product to highlight to struggles individuals who work in the entertainment industry face in the shadow of their public life. Through the writing of the manga, Akasaka worked with many people he knows in various entertainment sectors to build an understanding of the problems they face. According to an interview with him, many of the events depicted are inspired by things that have happened from his research or personal conversations with people. This kind of representation isn't new though, the influential movie Perfect Blue is centered around the abuse and misuse of young pop idols.
There is no resolution to the central plot in the first part of the anime, much of the narration spends time establishing other characters and expanding on the punishments tied to fame. One sticking point is how well the twins have been able to hide their true parentage. Its also astounding that someone so obsessed with killing the idol he holds dear did not spread the truth of her giving birth in the years between the first and second murders he committed. Eventually the truth of their mother will come out, there's no way the author would dismiss that type of drama at some point in the show. Its the weakest part of the story over all. The idea that these two kids can avoid detection when they have the same legal last name as Ai and are being fostered by the owner of her talent agency.. What will really be interesting is how many twists will show up on the path to Aqua learning his fathers identity and then the path to uncovering who fed information to his mothers murder from there. He is willing to sell himself wholesale to the devil to get to his end and his assumed strength of planning will likely be his temporary failure. We will see a resolution to the central mystery and Aqua's revenge plot, the real question and what will make or break the story is what price will he have to pay in the end. At some point the twins are going to tell each other about their past existences, putting a different twist to their relationship. I eagerly await the second season but don't know if that will give us he rest of the story...I guess I will have to start reading the manga.
The anime is currently available in sub and dub formats on HiDive.
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