Oshi No Ko: Beyond The Hype

Greetings everyone and hope you're all doing well. It's been quite an eventful month for me. I've been keeping up with my blogs and I dare say it's been smooth sailing so far. So today I've come to talk to you about the recent anime that's been on everyone's lips.

Oshi No Ko.

At first glance, my judgement of the anime was quite arbitrary. I thought it was just some over-inflated, rewritten pop idol nonsense with girl characters that look like the conventional anime. I'm happy to say that for once, I can be honestly happy to report that this isn't the case.

Oshi No Ko is not a story that relies on simple-minded, materialistic things that cover all the plot holes with "cute moments" that have no storytelling value whatsoever. This is not some poorly written SpyxFamily garbage. This isn't one of those repetitive series where all you want to see is Anya running around doing stupid shit or making noises that make certain people feel something somewhere. It's not the surface-level waste of time that SpyxFamily and other anime like it are. It is much much more.

Oshi No Ko has a beautifully woven storyline that goes beyond the initial impressions it gives. It's an anime that took a huge risk by making its first episode a prologue that's almost 1 hour and 30 minutes long. That's unheard of to me at least. This can't be all that profitable too because making a prologue like this basically kills any chance of making a prequel series/movie like they love to usually do.

The concept of the animation is also very purposeful. In a time where we mistake new animation styles for better ones, there are maybe one or two anime that use animation in a way that blends it with the notion of cinema itself. What I mean by that is that animation is a part of the subtlety of storytelling and not something that detracts from it by making fancy-looking animations. Oshi No Ko does that and more. Let me explain.

WARING! Spoilers from this point forward for episode 1 of Oshi No Ko

Aqua and Ruby are born with a star in one of their eyes. The use of animation here that transcends what film is able to do is the stars in their eyes. Now with Ai, both her eyes shine bright, as if they're foreshadowing her immense success as an idol and how she might follow in the steps of many famous idols/musicians and burn too bright but only for a short while until she's killed by her own fan/stalker.

After her death, we see two profound changes in her children. Both are motivated by the death of their mother. Ruby chooses to honour her mother's legacy by becoming an idol herself. She chooses the path of the future and moves forward which is why she does not lose her star. It still shines bright. But now we go to Aqua.

Now Aqua chooses the path of revenge and makes it his life mission to find his biological father and kill him for his mother, Ai. He loses his star. Making it a dark shadow that looks threatening and evil of sorts. Like when a cloud looms over a star in the sky.

So that's just part of the reason why I feel that the hype surrounding Oshi No Ko is justified and even a little underrated still.

That's it from me. I'll be doing a full review of this amazing anime soon so stay tuned for that and till the next one, take care and thank you all for reading. Your support is very much appreciated!