REVIEW: ‘Oshi No Ko’ Season 2 Focuses On The Series’ Strengths

With the question of who told Ai’s killer where she was living still unsolved, Aqua (Takeo Otsuka, Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury) joins a stage performance of the popular manga Tokyo Blade to get closer to someone he suspects of being his father. But a lot is going on behind the scenes of this play as Oshi No Ko Season 2 from Doga Koba dives deep into the cast’s lives and struggles as they try to put on the greatest show they can.

The bulk of this season focuses on exploring the cast of  Tokyo Blade. While fans will recognize returning characters like Kana (Megumi Han, Vampire in the Garden) and Akane (Manaka Iwami, Arknights: PRELUDE TO DAWN), the latter now Aqua’s girlfriend, several new characters are brought in to breathe some fresh personality into the series.

This season’s greatest strength is how the series explores this ensemble cast. As it peels back the layers of each personality, Oshi No Ko Season 2 deftly demonstrates that everyone has their struggles and tribulations behind them. Even those hailed as prodigies don’t have it easy. Living up to the expectations of others can begin to wear down even the most stalwart personalities.

While all of the cast brings something to the table, the two brightest stars are easily Akane and Kana. The connections the two girls carry and how they come to challenge each other on stage lead to some of the season’s most finely crafted moments.

Along with the personal drama, the series also explores the trials of the many conflicts arising from the business side of the process. Creators demanding rewrites and working around conflicting schedules threaten to throw the play into disarray.

Even as the drama plays out behind the curtain, Oshi No Ko Season 2 delivers a breathtaking visual performance whenever the play itself is showcased. The gorgeous colors, animation, and sense of grandeur all come out whenever the audience sees the play’s final form. Actors leaning into their fantasy adventure roles hit tremendously through the incredible visual work.

Thanks to the passion that comes through every line, all this visual splendor is reinforced. As the characters perform their shonen-style battles on stage, the voice actors skillfully deliver their lines. Mixing the portrayals happening on stage and the unveiled background tension into their words, the dramatic delivery of lines and internal monologues pull viewers into each character’s mind.

When the play finally wraps up, Oshi No Ko Season 2 shifts its focus from Aqua’s side of the story to Ruby (Yurie Igoma). B Komachi is struggling to grow as fast as its members would like and needs a new project. Mem-Cho (Rumi Okubo, Engage Kiss) suggests the band make a music video for their upcoming first original song. This shows the girls, accompanied by Aqua and Akane, traveling to a secluded town to shoot the video. Unbeknownst to most on the trip, this town hosts the hospital where Ai gave birth to them, and both Ruby and Aqua’s former lives ended.

Just as the opening focused more on the characters, this back section of the season focuses more on the larger plot of the show. There are still some incredibly powerful character moments here, but the story is the star. We learned several interesting new things and met a strange young girl who knew a lot about Ruby and Aqua.

The most impactful aspect of this back-to-back stretch of episodes is how it handles Ruby and Aqua’s roles in the story. The pair’s personalities dramatically shift, causing the duo to almost change places in their purpose in the series. This dramatic alteration only fully comes together in the final episode, creating a great cliffhanger.

The other striking element of this stretch of episodes is how well the series balances the core story’s darkness against the music video’s upbeat pop. Seeing the emotional blow dealt to Ruby in these last few episodes, followed up by her appearance in a candy-coated dance video, is a contrast that fits perfectly, thanks to how the series has built up its narrative. The hell characters go through behind the camera is always put in sharp relief with the fiction the fans will get to enjoy.

One of the biggest things that held back Oshi No Ko‘s first season was the awkward moments surrounding the reincarnation of Aqua and Ruby, particularly when they were young. While a couple of brief moments feel like a setup for potentially bad future emotional entanglements between the twins, this season largely manages to steer clear of the more questionable elements of its plot, opting to focus on the emotions and turmoil of its cast.

Oshi No Ko Season 2 focuses on the series’ biggest strengths while avoiding most of its shortcomings. Its emotional exploration of the toll levied on those who perform comes through fantastically thanks to great writing, pitch-perfect voice work, and animation that brings it all to life with stunning effect.

Oshi No Ko Season 2 is streaming now on HiDive.