?Oshi No Ko?: Full Season

June 29, 2023 11:07 PM - Season 1 (Full Season)

The surprising hit of the Spring 2023 anime season, from relatively unknown anime studio Doga Kobo. An adaptation of a manga written by Aka Akasaka (Kaguya-sama: Love is War) and illustrated by Mengo Yokoyari (Scum's Wish), the show offers a look into the Japanese entertainment industry covering entertainers, creators, producers, and consumers with a focus on the perspective of young entertainers in the industry.

The show carries some major punchy spoilers upfront, so reconsider browsing this conversation until you've at least watched the hour and twenty minute premier episode.

Season 2 has already been confirmed.

posted by C^3 (4 comments total)

Wow ok so I (legally) downloaded the first episode as one of a number of things that I was planning to watch on a trans-Pacific flight and the first episode was just such a wild ride that I was hooked immediately. You think it's your standard idol show with the additional spice of having to hide a secret family, to a reincarnation isekai, then downshifting into an entertainment industry slice of life, before finally revealing that it's a revenge story.

The subsequent episodes aren't quite as bombastic as the first, but the show settles into a nice groove of mostly being an entertainment industry slice of life with the revenge story moving forward in the background. It hits some powerful dramatic notes while injecting a lot of commentary about the state of internet discourse around celebrity during the reality dating show arc, which for me was the peak of this first season.

This feels like one of the freshest things I've seen from an anime in years, and all of the stuff surrounding how the internet at large treats entertainers felt very accurate even in regards to English social media despite the cultural divide.
posted by C^3 at 11:23 PM on June 29, 2023

I tried watching the first episode over a period of days and was very bored and didn't finish it.
posted by one for the books at 2:09 AM on July 1, 2023

I was very surprised by the first episode, partially in the length but of course also the content. It starts out with some anime tropes and then goes places.

In general, I appreciated that it had female characters who didn't have to be all that likable. You could empathize or have curiosity about their thinking, without them having to be perfect exemplar people.

I also appreciated that the story as whole wasn't predictable. There are several genres going on at the same time, with plot threads overlapping and interweaving between. I look forward to finding out where the story is going and how these elements will interlink.
posted by past unusual at 11:24 AM on July 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

I enjoyed the twists and turns of the first episode but haven't been able to work up any interest in watching this guy doing a revenge story for the fridged best character in yet another high school setting.

For now I'm just gonna headcanon that the culprit is the guy he recruited to be his mentor who for no apparent reason seems to be above suspicion.

I really did like the pilot though.
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 2:12 AM on July 4, 2023 [1 favorite]