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Review contains sensitive topics such as cyberbullying and suicide.

It makes little sense talking about „Oshi no Ko” without discussing the hype around it. When an anime, film, TV-series, book, etc. gets massive hype, many people start praising these works claiming that they are unique or even revolutionary masterpieces, which always makes the veterans skeptical at best; or they react the most toxic way possible and think the recently popular „masterpiece” is hot garbage because there is no way that a community, in this case the anime community, the vast majority of which are teenagers or college students, must not have good taste. After Oshi no ... Ko’s first episode came out, the weeblets said that this series is not your average idol anime and is finally a story about the dark side of the entertainment industry. The first major problem with this claim is Oshi no Ko isn’t revolutionary in this aspect, it gets praised like Perfect Blue never existed because many anime fans don’t really watch older anime or haven’t even heard of those works. I know because most of my friends on Discord don’t watch older anime at all and another friend of mine who participates in a podcast that I’m on hasn’t seen Satoshi Kon’s most famous work yet. Not to mention that OnK is not even an idol anime. Okay, after this exposition, it’s time to ask ourselves the question: Does Oshi no Ko live up to its hype? My answer is that should I really care about the hype? It contributes nothing to the series aside a lot of toxic fans and people should criticize everything on their own without complaining if something is overhyped. But yes, OnK is a pretty damn good anime.

OnK’s first arc (or first episode) made the best first impression that I have ever had in a long time. The 82-minute prologue of the story starts with the introduction of Gorou Amemiya, a doctor, more specifically a gynecologist, who meets Ai Hoshino, her favorite idol who turns out to be pregnant with twins. His fondness for the idol can be traced back to a late patient of the hospital, Sarina Tendouji who used to be the same age as Ai before her early death and since then the doctor has been a huge follower of the idol. Gorou accepts this bizarre situation and agrees to lead Ai giving birth but gets killed by a fanatic fan. The doctor reincarnates as Ai’s son, whose name is Aquamarine Hoshino from now on. Her twin sister, Ruby is also a reincarnated soul who was Sarina in her previous life. The prologue arc can be described as a typical slice of life storyline featuring the secret life of Ai spending her time with her children while trying to maintain the biggest lie of her life: that she’s a perfect girl with flawless personality who loves everyone. Nothing outstanding happens, new characters get introduced, Ai becomes more popular by the time and all we experience is just a not too interesting piece of fiction with below average humor. One day, Ai opens the door and gets stabbed by the same fanatic fan five years after Gorou’s disapperance. This twist is very effective because before that everything seemed to be calm and simple and most people expect that the story continue exploring darker themes while keeping its childcare theme. In fact, a lot of reader dropped the manga before the plot twist because they didn’t find the story very appealing but those who stayed they definitely were shocked and I was no exception.In the heartbreaking scene which Ai was killed was perfectly executed with cutting the sound when the stabbing happened while slowly and painfully reaching its tragic conclusion. The climax of this arc was not only great on a technical level. no matter how sad Ai’s death was, it was beautiful on its own. She was an underage teenager who weren't able to love anyone since she was raised at an orphanage, after giving birth she learns how to love while she wasn’t the smartest person on the planet, she was a very good person. And they took her from Aqua. There is only one thing that this little boy were thinking about. It’s revenge. And according to his speculation, the man who told information about Ai’s whereabouts to the killer must be his father.

The post-prologue episodes are similar to a murder mystery. Aqua starts working in the entertainment industry who doesn’t want to become a celebrity at first he accepts taking part in a live action adaptation of Sweet Today because the producer of the show, Masaya Kaburagi was somehow associated to Ai Hoshino. And just like in a murder mystery where a member of a rich family gets killed and dark secrets are revealed during investigation (Two best friends actually hate each other for a certain incident for example), the live action project turns out to be a cheap commercial which is a butchered version of the source material and it is despised by the original creator and the fans of the manga but it's important to mention what happened in the reality TV episodes, where we learn about the vile ways in which some social media users can behave anonymously. Meanwhile, the other protagonist of the story, Ruby Hoshino, wants to fulfill her dream of being an idol, just like her late mother. Many might object to this decision, but she can't really be blamed for it, since she spent most of her previous life in a ward and her only hope was Ai. The anime contains dark themes which are well discussed in the story but it has comedic elements too. The humor has improved a lot after the prologue arc, the jokes are funny and they aren’t forced. The shift between serious and lighthearted scenes isn't annoying at all, even though I was rather skeptical about it before the anime adaptation, but Oshi no Ko managed to surprise me. The characters have great chemistry with each other and the more serious parts can be melodramatic at time, they are still engaging and thankfully, I haven’t lost my interest.

It’s time to talk about the characters, so let’s start with Oshi no Ko’s vengeful anti-hero, Aqua. He was deeply traumatized due to Ai’s death and has become a very cold person. In his childhood, he met Kana Arima who was an extremely popular child actress of her generation at that time. Then, 10 years later, they meet again because they start attending the same high school but aqua has already forgotten her. Between the first two arcs he learnt acting but didn’t have the talent and the charisma either. However, during Sweet Today’s final episode, it is revealed that he is very good at improvising. Thanks to him being a doctor in his previous life, he has high intelligence, but he didn’t need to use his medical skills thus far. To reach his goal, which means taking revenge on Ai’s death, he needs to keep his secret about his mother, manipulate others and seek for information about his biological father. He is sometimes called the new Light Yagami but also is compared to Classroom of the Elite’s Ayanokoji Kiyotaka due to the conclusion of the LoveNow reality dating show. To be honest, he reminds me more of Osamu Tezuka’s two not very well-known main characters who are Otani Tetsu from Bonba and Chikaishi Shougo from Apollo no Uta. While the former story has a revenge plot where Otani wants to have his venguence on those men who are responsible for his beloved teacher’s death, the latter is a story about a man’s life involved with reincarnation and relationships with several women. If we combined all these themes and added a showbiz theme to our equation, then the result would be very similar to Oshi no Ko’s story. Another thing which is important to mention about Aqua is his feelings about Ai. We know that he was reincarnated as Ai’s son, but he never referred to her as his mother in his internal monologues, the two character’s relationship is very complicated, they are mother and son, idol and fan. What if Gorou hadn’t been just a fan but he fell in love with Ai? This is an interesting question which is yet to be answered. Many people considers him an edgelord, which is understandable but he’s a very complex character, his interactions with the other characters are entertaining and his performance in Sweet Today was a treat. He has great character development overall.

Our second main protagonist, Ruby Hoshino can be described as the opposite of her twin brother, she’s more chaotic, thinks less logically and she’s incredibly naïve. Despite being a main character, her role isn’t that important at this point of the story, that’s why the “Ruby who?” memes were very popular among manga readers. She’s so different from the other characters, that she would be fitted more in Love Live!. Fortunately, I’m happy that she’s not a Love! character since I really hate that franchise. She is not talented at what she considers her greatest desire becoming an idol, so she must work hard alongside Kana and Memcho. She radiates innocence and cheerfulness, who also likes making fun of Kana, many people may find her annoying but she’s still a likeable character.
Kana Arima is an interesting case. Not because of her personality, because she’s a typical tsundere anime girl, who is very similar to Maki Shijo, who is a character from Akasaka’s other work, Kaguya-sama: Love is War. Although, when I was reading the manga, she was my least favorite character, later I learned to like her more in the anime. She used to be a successful child actor but that’s only the past now, so she ended up having a personality with low self-esteem, she has a foul mouth and she still thinks that she’s a genius but the only reason that she receives several offers for roles that the creators can work with her without any problems. The reason that I used to hate her that she is the most melodramatic person in the cast but I changed my mind about her thanks to her development which is one of the most exciting aspect of this story. She knows a lot about the entertainment industry so either her or Ruby’s stepmother, Miyako gives the viewer (and Ruby) great amount of info dump about showbiz.

After discussing the main characters, I think that the reality show and Akane Kurokawa’s suffering deserves its own paragraph. First, Aqua agrees taking part in the series because after Sweet Today, he made a deal the producer of that live action Tv-series, Masaya Kaburagi that Aqua must show up in LoveNow if he wants to receive information from him that may lead to his biological father’s identity. This arc’s build-up is like the prologue arc after the reincarnation. Everything seems fine, the atmosphere is comfy, everyone’s having a great time, Kana’s and Ruby’s reaction to the show is hilarious but there is a shy but hard-working girl who wants to make a memorable performance. She is Akane Kurokawa, a talented actress who becomes the unluckiest girl in this planet for a moment. And this arc gets darker and darker. To be honest, I’ve never seen an anime in my entire life that depicts Twitter-based cyberbullying so realistically. We can see different types of hateful comments like “you are an ugly bitch”, or “I’ve followed you so far but you’re now dead to me” until a simple message comes “just die”. And Akane tried to solve this problem in the worst way possible. She tried to apologize to the haters despite one of the characters’ warning. She didn’t talk to her mother about it and one day she can’t take it anymore and decides to end her own life and the tragedy would have happened if Aqua hadn’t saved her life. There was a negative backlash because of this episode since it was inspired by real events but I won’t discuss it here because I want to analyze only the anime without talking about the controversy around it but we know that Aqua wants to take advantage of Akane’s talent to pursue his goals. I thought it's problematic at first but knowing Aqua, who wanted to prevent Ruby from becoming an idol because he doesn’t want her sister to have the same fate as her late mother and since the show is about exploring the dark side of showbiz, I got pretty sure that he won’t cause any harm to Akane.

The show looks good. The facial expressions and the character designs are easily the best ones in the 2023 Spring Season if not the best of the year. Thanks to Hirayama Kanna, who doesn’t waste her talent on audiovisual disasters like Rent-a-Girlfriend this time, the characters look gorgeous, maybe the only exception is a supporting character’s design, who is Frill Shiranui whose eyes’ color is light green and she reminds me of a crocodile. In fact, in a meme subreddit someone made a meme which basically was about who is the better waifu, her or Yoshi from Super Mario Bros. Sound design is also good, it is worth mentioning Aqua’s Sweet Today performance there. The soundtrack isn’t best I’ve ever heard but the opening and the ending are amazing. I could talk about why the opening is a great work of art on its own but the song Idol has its own entry in the database.

Oshi no Ko is not just a fantastic adaptation. It’s the prime example of a passion project. OnK has only just begun but it has so many layers already but most characters of this show just got their introductions this season. And a successful adaptation of a popular work like this would make Doga Kobo’s future brighter than the sun.

I usually don’t say this but thank you for reading. It’s my first longer review which is far from perfect but I’m happy that I’ve been able to finish writing this. Peace.

Originally, I planned to review Revenger from this lack-luster of a season but it was so boring that I’ve dropped it after 6 episodes. What do we have here instead? Another boring romcom, of course! Otonari no Tenshi-sama ni Itsunomanika Dame Ningen ni Sareteita Ken was the highest rated romantic anime of this season and one of my podcast mate said this anime is a freaking masterpiece, so I gave it a shot. After finishing this anime, I can confidently say that this story was not a good recommendation AT ALL. But what went wrong, you may ask. Well, if you don’t want to read ... this review, I immediately come up with the conclusion: Basically everything. If you’re curious what are those flaws which made this series a nearly unbearable experience to watch, here are the details.

Amane Fujimiya, a first year student, who is not very popular at school meets the beautiful, rich, extremely popular, almost completely flawless Mahiru Shiina who is happened to be one of his classmates and she turns out to be she’s one his neighbors. They got close to each other very soon, Mahiru goes over to Amane, she constantly acts like a cold bossy bitch, she tidies the MC’s room and also cooks for him. Amane finds her annoying at first, he doesn’t want this kind of relationship and he’s right, what I saw is not a realistic relationship but doing what real people would do in this situation wouldn’t make a 12 episode anime series, let alone a successful light novel.

Amane is a completely uninteresting main protagonist who is also a self-insert, all he did was lend his umbrella to a girl, who starts acting like her girlfriend in return. He isn’t likeable, he is lazy, messy and even rude sometimes. Mahiru as I mentioned is a typical girl lonely men fantasize about, she’s pretty, kind, she would also make a good housewife, of course. She’s also a typical female lead, who has this different persona troupe and it’s good when it’s done right but her schoolgirl persona has literally no personality, the „I’m with Amane” persona is annoying, completely unrealistic and really boring. It takes seven episodes for something to happen when Amane notices that Mahiru is arguing with her mother. She admits to Amane that she’s actually an unwanted child but this backstory’s only significance to the story is how they first met. The dialogues are incredibly corny at best, written by eight-year-olds at worst, if I had watched this anime with my native language’s subtitles (which is Hungarian) instead of English sub, I would’ve thrown my laptop out the window from the seventh floor, they were that bad which is not too appealing, knowing the fact that ninety percent of the show is basically these two horrible characters doing „lovey-dovey” things. The romantic progression is awfully slow which wouldn’t be catastrophic if the supporting characters weren’t as bad as the main couple.

Like in many romcoms, Otonari no Tenshi-sama also has a secondary couple but the boy has no personality, he’s almost invisible, I can’t remember what he does in this god damn show, but her girlfriend really takes the cake. She’s not just an annoying one-dimensional painfully unfunny comic relief of a character, the entire purpose of her existence is just shipping the main couple. She’s so obssesed with them that I wonder why she is still with her boyfriend. They could have been as great side characters as Kazama and Sakurai were in My Senpai is Annoying where Igarashi and Takeda’s romantic progression was pretty slow, the secondary couple in that show was amazing. Amane has a popular male classmate too, he’s not an important character either, the other classmates are mindless NPCs, don’t bother with them. The rest of the supporting cast are Amane’s parents. Their only role is being supportive towards their son. they seem to get along, they are also the most likeable characters in this anime.

The character design is the same as in Project No. 9’s previous light novel adaptations, if you’ve seen Higehiro for example, I’m sure you’re familiar with the character designs. The backgrounds are under-detailed mess, the scenes are barely animated, the color palette is best described as the 50 Shades of Shit, the characters have barely any facial expressions, they also feel like robots who have been brought to life recently and started learning how to be human, so this shows art is the definition of ugly as sin. The official soundtrack of this anime is nothing amazing, you will immediately forget it after you finished watching this series. Many people think that in modern anime bad voice acting is simply non-existent anymore but oh boy, Manaka Iwami is horrible in Mahiru’s role, it’s just painful to listen to her voice and worst of all, she will be the seiyuu of Akane Kurokawa in ’Oshi no Ko’, who is my favorite female character in the original manga (please check out the score I gave to Fruits Basket before you want to give me a friendly reminder that she also did Tohru Honda).

The Angel Next Door Bores Me Rotten is a terrible disaster that makes me baffle its popularity. It’s completely generic, low effort and there isn’t a single aspect of this show that is unironically good. I wonder why would anyone enjoy an anime like this. I don’t want to sound like a gay leftist whose reviews used to be botted but this series is definitely a male fantasy trip for lonely men to fulfill their escapist desires. If you don’t want to waste your time with this filth mocked as an anime, avoid at all cost, if you’re craving for escapism, don’t watch Otonari no Tenshi-sama either, go to the gym instead.

Kubo-san wa Mob wo Yurusanai is a romantic comedy about Shiraishi Junta, who is invisible to his classmates, has very low self-esteem, suffers from social anxiety and doesn't have any friends. One day, one of his female classmates, Kubo Nagisa who is the only person who is able to see him tries to help Junta getting friends until everyone recognizes him for 144 chapters and the reader can follow their relationship from their first interaction to confession of love. Kubo-san already has an adaptation which is unfortunately on hiatus at the time writing of this review.

In my Kubo-san anime review I had already mentioned that ... this work feels like Takagi-san Young Jump Edtition but if we compare it with Komi-san, it's much more similar to that Shounen Sunday manga's early days but its execution is much more generic. Junta looks like Tadano and has social anxiety, like Komi-san and there is a person who will help the protagonist at socializing and they are Tadano and Nagisa in their respective stories but Kubo-san takes place at an average highschool with average characters.

The biggest problem with Kubo-san is the manga doesn't have any storylines but it isn't funny at all either. It's always controversial, when a highschool story gets more serious, people consider these stories as forced drama and many school life dramas have tons of retcons. If Kubo-san doesn't have serious arcs, what do we get instead? The manga just like the anime adaptation, has a pleasant atmosphere, the characters are likeable and the facial expressions are great. On the other hand, the interractions are unfunny, repetitive and the main couple's romantic progression is really slow. Many chapter felt plastic due to its concept, where the generic romcom MC didn't even try to make friends in the first few volumes but there is no information about why Junta is invisible to others either. Nagisa will realize later on that Shiraishi is a great person but that's all you can say about him. Kubo-san is your typical female romcom protagonist, who is almost perfect but she's still more interesting due to her dissatisfaction with her own body, it's such a shame she only gets teased for it. Yeah, she has small breasts but the mangaka could have tried better.

The art is nothing special, the frontpages of the chapters are nice, except for those monologues, which were unnecessarily melodramatic at times, the mangaka stopped writing those at some point, it was a good decision. The characters look generic, Nagisa's female family members looked like almost the same, they literrally had the same faces and the haircuts were just a little bit different. The panels often don't have background at all for pages and switching to dark background didn't work very well, because the manga is still unfunny. The art quality however improved a lot when the reader finally reaches the last couple of chapters, that's definitely a plus.

Kubo-san Won't Let Me Be Invisible is a boring romcom, which doesn't really have much to offer, it has its moments but it gets uninteresting very soon. If you are exhausted and don't know what to do, Kubo-san could be a good choice for some wholesome school life romcom, otherwise it's not worth your time and there are stories which use this formula much better.

Inu to Shounen is an animated music video made by Wit Studio which became very unpopular due to the fact it used AI art and many people found it offensive. The music video is about the relationship between mankind (shounen) and artificial intelligence (inu). It tells a story from the time the two "characters" first met to an apocalyptic event occurs until the two best friends reunite in a post-apocalyptic environment.

The art style is definitely not the worst thing that has been made into anime, it's not great but AI art has some potential if it's well-used. The thing that actually ruins the whole experience ... is auto-tuned voice that manages to fill the song with melancholy but it's impossible to enjoy it and this is said by someone who doesn't consider auto-tune to be of the devil.

Inu to Shounen didn't do anything outrageous, it's just simply an experimental project which may feel soulless due to its several problems where its biggest flaw wasn't the art itself, it was just a horrible song and that's all.

Alongside isekai, romance is one of the most common genres in anime thanks to its huge amount of subgenres: School romance, romcoms, romantic dramas, harem, ecchi romance and the list still goes on.
You can even mix the aforementioned subgenres and themes and if the author has its own unique style and makes an effort to create compelling characters with engaging storylines, which the audience may find relatable or believable, it has the chance to become a memorable love story. But there is one big problem: Romance, not only in anime but in every piece of media is one of the weakest genre because a lot ... of works are generic, corny, awkward and basically the copies of each other. Unfortunately, Kubo-san Mob wo Yurusanai or as I call it, Takagi-san Young Jump Edition is no exception.

After the unnecessarily long exposition, let’s talk about the anime itself. The main protagonist, Shiraishi Junta is an average higshchooler with a pretty absurd problem; nobody can recognize his presence, the fact that his picture is added on the school photo despite being in the picture says a lot. This is also really weird because in most school life anime or manga which contain the students having lessons, the teacher always reads the list of the students’ names at the start of the class. One day, Nagisa Kubo, the titular main character decides to have a closer relationship with Junta and they start spending quality time with each other. You may ask why Kubo-san is a seinen. Its source material is serialized in Young Jump, which is seinen demographic, so Kubo-san is a seinen anime.

Junta is the typical introvert romcom MC, who doesn’t really have much personality, he’s complitely unremarkable, maybe that’s the reason why he’s so invisible to his classmates but who knows. He’s so boring that I have to look up his name from the characters’ list because I didn’t remember it at all. Kubo-san is not much better either. First of all, she doesn’t only wants to help Junta, she seems to be in love with him and the anime hasn’t explained it so far why the latest disposable waifu is so affectionate towards bland MC Nr.42069. Kubo-san’s presence makes this anime another generic male fantasy, where the loser main protagonist doesn’t have any friends, the main girl likes him for no reason, who is also flawless, which is a very concerning sign of bad writing, when it comes to romantic fiction. They also have no chemistry despite having several wholesome moments, which may be engaging but this show wouldn’t feel different if the main couple were replaced.

As I already mentioned, the anime is another iteration of Takagi-san but is also very similar to Nagatoro-san, which is a sadistic and more straightforward romcom version of Takagi-san. This paragraph is about why Kubo-san is the worst anime from these 3 shows. Takagi-san is the story of two middle schoolers, where the main girl teases Nishikata who sits next to her, at first we don’t why she does that, later the anime shows this is how Takagi-san shows her love towards Nishikata. Takagi-san’s humor is pretty repetetive and unfunny most of the time but the two protagonists’ relationship is realistic and wholesome in a natural way. Nagatoro-san on the other hand is about a bully who is actually not a bully tries to help his senpai who is also an introvert but doesn’t really want to socialize at all, that’s why she interacts with him in such a radical fashion. They’re not flawless, the senpai is anti-social, the girl sometimes goes too far and she’s more often jealous due to her other friends. When it comes to romantic chemistry, Nagatoro-san is the best from these three. These things cannot be said about Kubo-san.

The art is decent, the character designs are okay but the background art is pretty nice both terms of colors and details. I haven’t seen so many Pine Jam shows so far but they are one of the studios which may not have too much budget to make anime but still manage to have good production values with their style and Kubo-san has a very soothing atmosphere despite not being a great show.

Kubo-san wa Mob wo Yurusanai is another generic romcom which has its moments but it fails to be entertaining due to its bland characters and overused formula. If you want to see a good anime about an introvert who struggles with socializing because of her childhood trauma and is also made by Pine Jam, check out one of the hidden gems of 2021, Kageki Shoujo!!, you won’t be dissappointed.