Oshi no Ko Season 2

Episode 17

Oshi no Ko Season 2 is good, but I never expected it to be this good. It's no wonder that Oshi no Ko artist Mengo Yokoyari said she burst into tears when she watched it. Storywise, it's a faithful recreation of manga chapters 56-58, but in practice, it's an entirely new experience. Significant scenes have been expanded with top-notch sakuga to bring the Tokyo Blade stage play to life. Even more surprising is that the second half of the episode drastically narrows its focus to a side character, Narushima Melt. Fans of Kaguya-sama may be familiar with author Aka Akasaka's penchant for giving even his supporting characters rich inner lives; Melt's arc is a shining example of his talent for it. Combined with original animation sequences, this is a standout episode in an already impressive season.

As a manga reader first, I've been especially enjoying the way Doga Kobo studio has played with the original material to make the anime a wholly new piece of entertainment apart from its inspiration. The first major change happened right after the opening sequence when we were shown the beginning of the Tokyo Blade play from the perspective of an audience member. Last month, I said I was specifically hoping for this development as an American viewer who has never seen a 2.5D play. All in all, it does resemble the TikTok I linked in my review of episodes 1-3. It offered a brand new acrobatic fight scene between Kana (as Tsurugi) and Taiki (as Blade). And while the content of Tokyo Blade isn't anything special (it's such standard Shonen Jump fare that it's hardly parody), the way this episode fleshes out the story and dialogue from the bare-bones portrayal in the manga showcases the characters' acting abilities—both verbal and kinetic.

But where the story really comes to life is in Melt's half-episode arc. By all expectations, Melt should be a throwaway character: a thorn in Yoriko-sensei's side, an obstacle for Kana to overcome in her acting journey. But author Aka Akasaka has never met a side character he couldn't devote an entire storyline to, something we've seen in Kaguya-sama: Love is War before this. Now we get Melt's not-so-tragic backstory. Rather than a past struggle, Melt's entire past is characterized by the absence of struggle. Everything came easily to him, from girls to gigs, while he simply coasted through life on his good looks. Sweet Today, Melt narrates, was the first time he ever realized that he wasn't as great as his life had led him to believe. This is all running through Melt's mind while he faces off as Kizami against Sakuya as Monme. In contrast to Melt, Sakuya is a skilled actor with tons of 2.5D play experience—even though he's a sleazy playboy in reality, he can act as a character who is his total opposite, no sweat. Paralleling the Shonen Jump-friendly storyline of Tokyo Blade, Melt's narrative leads the viewer to believe he's going to totally bomb. Just when all hope seems lost, he cathartically grabs the upper hand. This is visually depicted as Melt reaching for a starburst that looks uncannily like the sparkle in Aqua, Ruby, and Ai's eyes, which I interpret as the visual depiction of Ai's innate star power.

I re-read the manga, in which Melt puts his blood, sweat, and tears into spinning his katana in the air, then catching it, the same way Kizami does in the manga. In the anime, the sequence is even more impressive and involves a backflip. But it's Melt's emotional acting that clinches it. He found a moment in the character he was portraying that had him teary-eyed like "he just like me fr" and drove that feeling home. There's a psychedelic multimedia sakuga sequence that gives Melt the main character treatment: a visual depiction of the metamorphosis his character has gone through. From a guy who never had to try to one who worked his hands to bloody blisters just to measure up to his co-stars, Melt has come far enough to make even Yoriko-sensei cry. And considering that his real-life manga artist cried too while watching his explosive character arc, it was a rare moment that Oshi no Ko reflected reality for a good reason for once.

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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.