>>109570
I like this post because it's just ten words but basically everything it said was disputed:
>good
>psychological
>thriller
>decade

It's an idol anime.

>>108378
It seems like the creators agree with me and it's pretty much Kana'a show. Episode 10 was centered on her completely after Episode 9 was about 60% her. I wonder if she'll get her own spin-off, because everyone knows she's the best

Protagonist coming through

Oshi no PLAP PLAP PLAP GET PREGNANT GET PREGNANT GET PREGNANT GET PREGNANT

>>110079
the word PEEMAN makes me lol

>>110081
kemo

>>110066
People went into this expecting the wrong thing, a murder mystery, and were very disappointed because of it. They just needed to realize that this anime was actually a Kana redemption story.

kana is a fun character to watch. Glad they pivoted to her, or maybe the manga was always like this

I think it was a pivot, but it's probably there in the source material early on. The two main characters have that reincarnation thing going, but other than that they're very bland and they don't even make use of that trait. Ruby is just a forgettable idiot with a very generic genki personality. They really could have done some emotional stuff with her previous sickly life being cut short and the joy of getting another chance. They could have given her extra backstory about her time at the hospital to make her very sympathetic. She could even have a dream to be an idol that performs for sick children or something else heart-wrenching, but no, Ruby barely even exists as a character.
Aqua is also uninteresting. Just like Ruby, he makes no use of the special circumstance that was shown in the first episode. At best you can say he's better at manipulation than average, but it's not like he has any amazing keikaku doori moments. I assumed the doctor thing was going to play a part at some point. I also thought Ai was going to survive at the end of the first episode because of that, but instead his is also a reincarnation without benefit.

So... what about Kana? She was shown early on as a fellow actor in a scene and she was very cute with the charm of her adorable smugness that was shattered shortly afterwards, showing her vulnerability that makes her immediately appealing to the viewer in both entertainment value and empathetic bonding. Not only does Kana make you smile and laugh, but you see her weakness and you cheer for her to overcome it. No other character has that, despite the first episode's climax.
Maybe the writer realized Kana was more fun to write about than the "main characters", and so a girl that appeared in a minor part of the story managed to also go to the same school after a time skip. Some other girls were introduced, maybe to make it more apparent that there really is an idol industry out there that the main character is supposed to care about, but again it happened to be the case that Kana was still far more interesting than them and the story returned to her.

Maybe the manga is different and has a lot of stuff for other characters, but it can't be accidental that Kana is routinely the focus of the anime. It seems Season 2 is already known to be coming at some point, so let's look forward to more Kana.

Kana curbstomping Akane on stage!

If they're making a S2. I may do an arson attack in japan

>>108522
Remember when people thought it was gonna perfect blue the anime

>>110433
Perfect Blue is anime.

>>110433
I was saying from the start that it barely felt that critical of the industry and more was fanning over idols than anything, and people laughed.

Well who's laughing now?

>>110434
I mean like TV series

>>110430
aqua is OP, he just waltzes in and does whatever he wants and everyone loves him
i agree that the only vulnerable character is kana alongside akane and from reading the general thread a couple times it looks like a shipping war between those two is their main topic
like apparently there's a part where kana just vanishes and it's only akane don't ask me why
>>110435
>Well who's laughing now?
me, i called it
said even ep1 spent most of its time not being a thriller

>>110432
I don't understand why you're getting so upset over a good anime getting a s2 over the other trash that got it......

>>110437
oh no, does it going into terrible romcom tropes stuffed behind industry drama. That's worse than pure industry drama

>>110440
i dunno not gonna read it lmao
you can go and see how garbage their thread is and it's all mangafags

who's they

>>110441
well if the fanbase is bad then i don't really care. it's your own fault if you want to harm your mental health over 4chan postsers

>>110443
i think looking at what a fanbase fixates on can be useful when it comes to figuring out what the focus of a work is even if the fanbase is terrible
that one's all about kanafags and akanesisters and rubychads so i'm not at all surprised by how the show ended up

>>110444
imo, you're just making your life suck

>>110445
nah it was just like fifteen minutes it's okay

>>110435
Well, I thought it was going to be critical, or at least more "ugly". You know, since it had assassination in it. Some of it exists and it's certainly a bit more realistic than something like Idolmaster, but overall it's still very SoL.
Looking back at the episodes, whether or not an episode was good to me depends on how much Kana was in it. The other stories just weren't interesting to me. Kana almost feels like she's in the wrong show since the atmosphere is so different when she's around.


>>110438
Kana thumbnail... she's finally made it!

>>110444
/a/ is so desperate to replicate the DitF shitstorm imo

>>110430
I feel like the manga is probably the same. Pretty much everything that doesn't work in the anime would be a lot more acceptable in manga format. Going an entire season recruiting one girl at a time feels slow and disjointed, but a manga can get away with short arcs that don't involve the whole cast. The detective stuff didn't come to anything here, but I can see how it's used to string together events in a much longer work where the payoff can be way down the road. Ruby's lack of focus likely wouldn't stand out as much if the season didn't end before getting to her arc.

Kana was clearly the secondary heroine from the start and it makes sense the part of the story about assembling the group focused on her the most. Ruby already had her relationships and dreams laid out early and the big developments there are too important to the plot to reveal this early. If it were made with a 24 episode anime in mind, you could cut the Akane stuff and recruit Mem-cho through a Ruby arc, make Aqua's first clue more substantial which causes Ruby's past identity to be revealed as the mid-season twist, then you've got your love triangle, your mystery, and your idol story all set up for tandem escalation and resolution in the second half.

I don't like reincarnation plots in general, but they work okay here for establishing interesting personalities and character dynamics. Aqua is pursuing a very different life than before, so the only time his medical knowledge was really relevant was when he was a little kid with no realistic way of treating a fatal stab wound. It's more about personality, he's disinterested because he's an old man who already lived his life and cares more about avenging injustices against young dreamers than anything related to himself. Ruby's backstory is sort of the opposite in that she didn't feel she got to live at all and now she gets an amazing second chance where everything goes her way. I also think her wanting to be an idol for Sensei is way better than some cliched thing about sick kids and fits well with the theme the series seems to be setting up about doing it for one person.

>>110444
It's really not. Fanbases gravitate towards topics that are easy to repeat day in and day out. You can only discuss plot events so much, but you can waifuwar 24/7/365 to keep your home alive. You're a retard for putting any weight into what people who use newfag suffixes waste their days repeating.

>>110455
Well, it's true that Aqua's general apathy could be seen as a trait that carried over, but it's not interesting. It doesn't set him apart from a similar person that didn't experience such an event. I guess what I mean is that I was expecting such a major thing to have a major effect on the story.
I could see how my ideas for Ruby would be cliche, but at least it would be something. As it is she should be someone in the little corner of a promotional poster instead of front and center. She has good interactions with Kana, but so does everyone. Kana is carrying this show!

It's an interesting little sidenote that the animation director's family name is Kanna and that she was one of the main figures in getting the production greenlit

>>110467
>I was expecting such a major thing to have a major effect on the story
It's the source of the entire detective angle which fuels all his forays into acting, so I'd say that's pretty major. If that seems insignificant to you, it's because the entire season was just setting the stage. That may not make the anime any better, but the plot points themselves can't be deemed pointless until things actually start moving.

Do not click on this picture unless you want major spoilers.
>>110455
>>110470
I think Ruby's story would have more weight if it focused more on their two deaths, if she were the one keeping alive the memory of her mother with her passion, or if she went out of their way to help other ill kids, but that's not the case. Everyone and their mother remembers Ai, and Ruby's goals are the same as any other character's: to be a great performer. There's nothing in her character that only she could have, a unique trait that requires death to be justified, she's just a genki girl with regular motivations. It doesn't stand out, and it doesn't really matter for whose sake she's doing it if she isn't doing something different.

Aqua does have something special, Ai's death motivates him to go out and look for stuff, that's very much true. Sadly, it's kind of neutralized. Acting is supposed to be the means through which he explores the industry, but effectively it's the ends. Being an actor is the least stealthy path, and arguably the one with the most pointless effort. A solid chunk of the time he spends acting or doing stuff like pretending to be Pieyon is time he could've spent socializing with film crews and getting info out of them, which would've been much more straightforward if he was an assistant to any sort of manager or a manager himself, and he barely goes out of his way to intermingle with important people. Could've gone to parties/events/anything, could've singled out relevant figures and sought them out to convince them of this or that, could've lied his ass off about whatever with how godly of an actor he appears to be. But, the people he is shown interacting with the most are other performers, I don't see him as being very proactive in that sense, and the detective angle is more theory than practice.
I disagree in that he had already lived out his life (dude died at 30, not 70), but I can see what you mean in how he intervened to save Akane.

>the entire season was just setting the stage
Serious manga spoilers: so we're at chapter 40, and the father appears in 72, which would be towards the end of the second season, right? But from what I'm getting Aqua has yet to make his move, and it took until chapter 122 (the last one, which I just read) for the two siblings to fully realize who the other is. And they turn it around, making Aqua renounce revenge while setting up the twist that Ruby had the exact same motivations? I'm lacking context, but in any case it's... eh. Honestly, it seems more of a subplot to me, one that advances very, very slowly.

I also want to say that Aqua is without a doubt a reincarnated protagonist:
¥praised as a kid and respected by the director
¥salvages the dorama by making others act better
¥successfully gets into the reality show, praised again
¥rescues Akane from suicide and fixes her public image
¥makes her fall in love with him
¥manages to pass off as Pieyon even though they look nothing alike, helps the girls do their best
He's unmatched, breezing through everything.

Isn't he a former doctor who graduated from an elite university and has been fixated on revenge for something like 10 years, plus 30 additional years of life experience compared to the people around him who are emotionally immature kids?

>>110473
How many doctors do you know that are peerless actors?

>>110475
Being a doctor doesn't make you a good actor. Being smart (as doctors tend to be) and having the mind of a grown man, being in showbiz from an early age, and having a keikaku that involves rising up the ranks in showbiz probably would, though.

>>110476
>as doctors tend to be
I've met a decent amount of doctors, and about half of them were average or worse. I've gotten wrong diagnoses, and two docs were outright negligent. I know this because the other docs told me.
>having the mind of a grown man
None of the other adults are particularly smart.
>being in showbiz from an early age
So was every other character, and he's still better than them by miles.
>having a keikaku
Which he doesn't execute, see >>110471.

You can also take a look at all the other real life, even more experienced authors that say stupid shit, ruin their lives, or get caught up in awful scandals. There's nothing to justify how insanely capable Aqua is.

>>110471
>I disagree in that he had already lived out his life
It's something he said himself in one of his monologues. Whether you agree or not, he doesn't feel like he needs a second chance at life and that's why he has to be strongarmed by the girls into doing things the less boring way.

Not reading the spoilers, but I don't have a lot of faith in serialized manga to progress the plot at a reasonable pace so I'll admit I might be giving it too much of a benefit of the doubt expecting it to actually weave all the plot elements together.

>>110477
Do you actually think it's unreasonable to assume that, on average, doctors are more intelligent and disciplined than the average person?

Point is: he is established as a smarter-than-average character; he is driven because he understands, with his adult brain, that to achieve his goals he needs to become a good actor (compare this with child actors who do it because their parents make them do it, because they like getting attention, etc.) Yes, he has the "MC is better than everyone" thing going on, but I don't see how it's surprising that he outperforms his peers by leaps and bounds. Also I'm pretty sure Akane and the glasses guy are supposed to be better actors than Aqua, no?

Aqua is an above average actor with good social skills and some tricks to fake it till he makes it. He knows how to problem solve and do some good tricks, but is getting the gigs for his pretty face. He can more efficiently put in effort because he's literally 40 years old, but Kana and Akane have parts of them that are genius... their social skills are poor though

>>110479
I'd be okay with him being extra smart if he came across situations that challenged him, but every event that others couldn't deal with he has solved effortlessly. Dude has no weaknesses, he doesn't make any consequential mistakes. He's not just smarter than average, he does a better job at PR than the reality crew (and gets off scot-free), he's a better director than one at the drama, and they rewrite scripts to fit his performances because he's just that good.
As for Akane, I can't take her seriously because of how hard she flopped at the reality show. Good actors don't cave in like that, and her ability to perfectly imitate Ai afterwards is an incoherent asspull. It's beyond legendary for any performer to act like a long-dead person so well that it shakes their son to the core, it simply doesn't make sense for an unstable teen of all people to be able to pull that off.

>>110478
Alright, I can accept that being something I glossed over. It's true that he doesn't spend any time having fun.

>>110449
Which is funny because the DitF stuff was the final nail in the coffin for me to decide that I'd never look at /a/ again.

For how much of a bang the anime started off with, Oshi no Ko really dragged its feet following Ai's death. It took the more romcom/idol route instead of focusing more on Aqua's digging into their father, and I think I would've preferred a more Monster-like story set in the showbiz industry as opposed to what we got. It was still pretty good, but now the dust has settled I don't think it lived up to the hype.

KANA!
She's the real star of the show which I think I said in this thread last year. Season 2 will hopefully focus even more on her.

>>121307
An AI image of Ai, huh. Ehhh...
Well anyway, it diverged a lot from the original premise, yeah. That's why I think Kana was able to steal the show so easily. I don't care about either of the twins at all.

>>121313
i'm told she has a rather hard life going forward
lots of romantic competition with the other one

>>121313
>I don't care about either of the twins at all.
NO