Oshi no Ko Season 2

Episode 15

Uh oh, it seems that I forgot what kind of show this was. Despite the conflicts plaguing the play's production team, Oshi no Ko Season 2 has been smooth sailing for Aqua and his contemporaries as they continued to face the challenges of working in the showbiz industry as young entertainers. Only… Aqua, or rather the entity living in Aqua's body, is not exactly the young entertainer he seems to be, is he? With animation direction that borrows from the horror genre, “Emotional Acting” briefly plunges the show into the full extent of its darkness.

At first, there's no indication that the episode is going to take a turn. The Tokyo Blade play's lead producer, Raida, finally discovers his backbone (courtesy of Aqua) and pushes back against Abiko-sensei, urging her to support the original scriptwriter GOA. Fresh from a visit to the last play that GOA wrote (once again, courtesy of Aqua), Abiko-sensei is willing to collaborate. As the pair teamed up over Zoom to write the script together, it made me wonder why the standard practice is the “game of telephone” that was portrayed up to this point. Raida provides the reason for me and other laypeople: there's just no guarantee that the manga creator and the scriptwriter will see eye to eye. In this case, however, Abiko and GOA work together almost TOO well, deleting lines late into the night. The result: a script everyone is satisfied with but one that relies less on lines and more on the actors digging deep to deliver emotional performances.

Of course, this cast loves a challenge, and both Kana and the Lala Lai players are fired up to make Tokyo Blade a success. The novice actors, Melt and Aqua, who sees acting as less of a calling and more as a means to an end, are less enthused. Aqua excels at pulling strings behind the scenes—his fingerprints were all over that Abiko and GOA collab—but he is less confident in his acting skills. He asks Kana for advice about showing more emotion on stage, and she tells him to reveal his true character (ironically, while suppressing her immense joy at being needed by Aqua). Aqua takes this to heart, flipping through a sweet slideshow of his happiest moments—right up until the entity that lives in his psyche forbids any more.

This abrupt tonal shift was executed masterfully. As a viewer, I was sidelined and terrified by the sudden change—even though I've read the same scene in the manga already. The manga was not able to convey the foreboding presence of Shadow Goro with distorted audiovisuals, nor treat Aqua's final memory of Ai's body like a true jumpscare. The experience reminded me of playing Doki Doki Literature Club, a cult horror game that starts out mundane and sweet, and then slowly becomes unfamiliar and disturbing. What makes this descent into horror successful is that it leans into the audience's expectations of a trope. Aqua was supposed to be bolstered by his memories to become a better actor, supported by help from his friends and his own hard work. It would have been a mirror of the first act of the episode. Instead, the appearance of Shadow Goro ground any chance of a neat parallel to a halt. It was a reminder that Oshi no Ko has yet to show its full hand. It's still full of mysteries and surprises.

Rating:

Oshi no Ko Season 2 is currently streaming on HIDIVE.

Lauren writes about model kits at Gunpla 101. She spends her days teaching her two small Newtypes to bring peace to the space colonies.

---

Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.