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redge · 4 months ago

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Oshi no Ko Chapter 154

I need an outlet for this chapter so instead of posting a thread on Twitter (X), I'll just post my thoughts here.

Rereading this chapter while listening to this song on repeat. 💔

I despise Airi Himekawa. I don't know what horrible things has happened to her but no one, not even Hikaru Kamiki, deserved what happened to him as a child. Airi molesting this child is what started this all and I hate her.

For him to actually tell Ai "let's get married!" like that's the most normal thing going forward like "Taiki's my son I don't know what to do about it but with you, I will take responsibilty so let's get married" oh gosh just by typing this and knowing what are on the next pages is crushing me 😭

Also, Ai 😭 Would she know better? They're both so young that time but Ai left him because she wanted to take responsibility and lift the burden off Kamiki when they could have... 😭

And the way Kamiki just accepted it as it is even when he was so broken because he also believes he's undeserving of Ai or anyone's love 😭

But broken people do crazy shits and one of the craziest thing young broken Kamiki did was to tell her address to Ryosuke. But oh to read this line:

"The despair I felt when the girl I loved so much... That I was willing to sacrifice my life for... told me she couldn't love me." 💔😭

"We were just forcing our fantasies on Ai." He understood the lie she built as an idol but not the most important lie she told him I am heartbroken and I am typing this hearing the lyrics "it's torturous, tonight is gonna be the loneliest" SEND HELP 😭

The DVD oh my god 😭 Imagine how Hikaru might have felt after hearing Ai's voice for the first time in a long time, talking about him, how she understood how he was crushed by the entertainment industry, how she knows he's depending on him.

"The truth is, I really wanted to be with him forever. I wanted to carry the burden he carried and raise our children together. I wanted to live my future with him. After all, he's the first person I've ever wanted to love. Even though I don't really understand love."

"The first person I've ever wanted to love" From this line, you can't help but think, maybe when she was stabbed and said "I love you" to her children then the sigh of relief "I finally said it" maybe it was because on the first time, she wasn't able to say it properly to Kamiki, knowing in her heart that he was the first person she wanted to love. 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 Tears. Just tears. The Entertainment Industry-idols and artists- give happiness to their audience but at what cost?! Both of them were willing to take the risk and thinking of a future together but it's too late now because Ai is gone and whose fault? 😭😭😭

If Aqua's revenge is to crush his father mentally, make him live or die in regret, than good job Aqua because as a reader, I don't feel anything but regret reading through these panels. 😭

And then that last panel with Ruby. Makes me think that maybe she actually know who Kamiki was in chapter 146. Maybe she was not seeking answer from god, but she was trying to get an answer from her father because she knew all along that the man with umbrella was her father, because everytime she visits Ai's grave, she see's him visiting too. What a plot twist it would be if it was actually Ruby who's the first one who knew that Hikaru Kamiki was their father.

Ah. The story of Ai and Kamiki is so heartbreaking it resonates with this lyrics from The Loneliest by Maneskin:

You'll be the saddest part of me

A part of me that will never be mine

It's obvious

Tonight is gonna be the loneliest

Akakasa-sensei, I respect you and your writing. What a chapter.

#oshi no ko #onk #onk chapter 154 #hikaru kamiki #kamiki hikaru #ai hoshino #hoshino ai #aqua hoshino #hoshino aqua #ruby hoshino #hoshino ruby #just go to hell you idiot aqua #this chapter was really heartbreaking all the what could have beens regrets ugh

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skania · 4 months ago

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Oshi no Ko Chapter 154 Thoughts - Or the many many parallels between Ai/Kamiki and Akane/Aqua

In my post about last chapter, I listed a number of parallels showing that the way Kamiki felt about Ai is very reminiscent of the way Aqua felt about Akane.

I also said:

if Aka pulls that, then that would confirm that all of these parallels are very much intentional.

And what did Aka pull this chapter?

To top it off, now it isn't only Kamiki's feelings that parallel Aqua's. Ai's feelings are very much like Akane's, to the point that she nearly quotes her word for word at times 😭

I'll start chronologically because the amount of parallels is just insane. To keep this short, I won't bring up the Kamiki/Aqua parallels since I already went over those here. I'll just focus on Ai!

Ai didn't want to break up with Kamiki, but she did it because she feared that she and her children would be burdens to him, who was almost on the verge of breaking due to the weight of life.

Does that ring any bells?

Akane didn't want to break up with Aqua, but she was willing to do so because she feared that she and their fake relationship were burdening him by worsening the weight of his guilt.

Ai wanted to stay with Kamiki forever, just like Akane with Aqua.

Ai wanted to carry Kamiki's burden and walk into the future with him, just like Akane with Aqua.

Ai didn't know what loving someone felt like, but Kamiki was the first time she felt she wanted to love someone that way. Akane didn't know what loving someone that way felt like, either. Aqua was her first.

Most importantly:

Ai wanted to save Kamiki, just like Akane wants to save Aqua. While it was translated as "help" in English, in Japanese Ai uses the exact same verb as Akane when she says that she wants to "save" Aqua.

Even their expressions when thinking about their wish are similar 😭

And the thing is that — technically, logically — none of this can be a coincidence, because this is a fictional story and Aka is nearly using copy-pasting to stablish these parallels. But since this is Aka we're talking about, whether this will lead anywhere or turn out to be just bait remains to be seen lol

I feel like Ai isn't only paralleling Akane this chapter though, it's also possible to establish parallels between her and Aqua. Namely, Aqua also broke up with Akane to protect her, Aqua didn't understand what love was and he showed that he wanted to love Akane despite it.

Plus, when Aqua broke up with Akane to protect her, he did so in a way that would deliberately paint him in a bad light — just like Ai with Kamiki.

I'd also like to point out that in this chapter, Ai's feelings are described as, well, "Ai" 愛. In Japan, "Ai" 愛 is the strongest form of love, which can be either platonic or romantic. This is very relevant, because by making Ai's feelings for Kamiki so strikingly similar to Akane's for Aqua, Aka has essentially confirmed strongly implied that the kind of love Akane feels for Aqua is "Ai" 愛, too.

And Ai's "Ai" 愛 was romantic.

For those who aren't familiar with the concept of "Ai" in Japan, I feel like this post explains it very well:

愛 (Ai): sacrificial, unconditional, love for the other person's sake (often parallels the Greek agape, but can extend into philos as sawa mentions) 恋 (Koi): selfish, conditional, love for one's own sake (often parallels the Greek eros) While both can be used for romantic love, you cannot simply swap out one for the other. The contrast between the two shows up clearly in the したい forms of 愛する and 恋をする: 愛(Ai)したい I want to love [someone in a deep, unconditional way] 恋(Koi)がしたい I want to [fall in] love [with someone and experience the "high" of being in love]

If you ask me, the contrast between those two types of love perfectly exemplifies the difference with the way Akane's and Kana's feelings are being written. Coincidentally, Kana herself described her feelings as 恋 (Koi) in Chapter 150 lol

So considering all of this, I'm having the hardest time not seeing Kamiki and Ai as a sort of "failed" Aqua and Akane. Kamiki and Ai were too broken, and neither could handle their relationship in a healthy way despite their best intentions and how much they loved each other. Kamiki was too dependant on her, Ai broke up with him in the clumsiest way possible and Kamiki lashed out in a selfish, tragic way.

I'd argue that despite their mishaps, Aqua and Akane have already shown that they're healthier than Kamiki and Ai were. Even when he was at his lowest, Aqua was self-aware and did his best to not depend on Akane too much. When he faltered, Akane reminded him that it's important that they remain independent so they can have a healthy relationship.

Which takes me to something I think is very important:

Ai thought that Kamiki would be fine without her, but she was wrong. If she had been right, then maybe she would be alive today and she and Kamiki would've gotten back together later down the line.

I'm sure that Akane, too, thinks that Aqua will be fine without her. Aqua most definitely thinks the same thing about Akane.

And for them to be able to have a healthy relationship, it's important for them to be right. They need to be able to be fine without the other, and as of now, it seems like Aqua is finally making progress in that regard.

But what about being happier? Akane was at her happiest when she was with Aqua, and according to Aqua himself, it was the same for him. If we forget all the recent fiascos for a second and entertain the thought of Akane and Aqua once again, I feel like this should be the biggest factor into whether or not they get back together.

After all, if they get back together it shouldn't be because Aqua can't function without Akane. It should be because he wants to be with her (and she with him). So if Aka were to be a good writer allow them to find their way back to each other, this time spent apart could be crucial to let them restart on a healthy base.

But I digress! 😂 Instead of getting ahead of myself, I just want to enjoy the fact that these parallels are right there for everyone to see. At least no matter what happens, we now pretty much have confirmation that the way Aka wrote Aqua and Akane was both, romantic and the strongest form of love.

As for the plot, the fact that Ai's wish was this clear kind of opens an entire can of worms questions-wise. Moreover, I feel like if telling Kamiki that Ai loved him was Aqua's revenge plan all along, things like these would make very little sense in retrospective:

So for the sake of logic, I'm inclined to believe that Aqua, who didn't know what love was and who held a grudge against Kamiki, may have wanted to believe that Ai truly couldn't love Kamiki. He may have desperately wanted to believe that Ai was saying the truth, because otherwise taking revenge against Kamiki would mean going against Ai's wishes.

I feel like Aqua originally misinterpreting Ai's words is supported by the fact that even during the movie recording, Aqua was shown to not understand Ai.

So, what changed his mind? What made him finally realize that Ruby's portrayal was right and that Ai truly did love Kamiki?

Plus, Aqua has had that DVD for years now, which means that nothing was stopping him from realizing that Akane herself was echoing Ai's feelings for Kamiki throughout their relationship.

But I better stop myself right here, because if I start theorizing about this there will be no end to it. The possibilities are endless, so I'd rather just wait and let Aka either pleasantly surprise like he did this chapter me or continue to disappoint me as he is prone to do 😂

edit;

I just realized there are even more parallels when you get down to it. I mentioned before in my Chapter 97 post that during the phone-call that ultimately leads to their break-up, Aqua and Akane are like two ships in the night. They both want the same thing (to stay together), but in her haste to help him, Akane makes a choice that leads to their separation.

The same thing happens with Ai and Kamiki. They both want the same thing (to stay together), but in her haste to not burden him, Ai chooses to walk away from him.

Ai doesn't understand her own love and is thus unable to understand the extent of Kamiki's. She makes the mistake of thinking that the best way to save Kamiki is to not impose more burdens on him, when all he wanted was to stay with her. I'd argue something very similar happened with Akane. She made the mistake of thinking that the best way to help Aqua was to carry out his revenge for him, when all Aqua wanted from her was to remain by her side.

#akane kurokawa #aqua hoshino #aquaka #aquakane #oshi no ko spoilers #fandom: onk #my aquakane meta #aaaaand break again #if aqua had that dvd all along he could've shown it to akane at any point so that she'd translate ai for him #but boy was too busy dating her for that lmaaao #Akane getting the Vol 15 cover after all is such a let down though #even more so because she couldn't even get it all to herself #Aka giveth and Mengo taketh away I guess 😭

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aihoshiino · 4 months ago

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chapter 154 thoughts

Chapters Since The 143 Kiss Happened And Went Entirely Unacknowledged And Unaddressed Count: 11

Aqua Hoshigan Status: (Still) white

man

This is one of those chapters where, technically speaking, I should probably be tearing it to bits (AND I DEFINITELY WILL) - it represents a pretty substantial break in or retcon to the series continuity as it's been presented to us thus far and the actions of certain characters in the lead up to this event don't quite make sense if they've had access to some of the information that's seemingly been in their hands for a while but… would you guys forgive me if I said I didn't really care LOL. As I've said before, I'm the sort of reader who can excuse a lot of raw Plot Bullshit so long as I feel like the hearts of the characters are intact and for all its fumbles, this is a chapter I think is unerringly dedicated to the hearts of its characters. I've made no secret of the fact that Ai is and always has been my main avenue of investment in Oshi no Ko as a series and in this chapter, we uncover the final secret in her heart in particular after having the entire series thus far dedicated to laying it bare to us.

We pick up exactly where we left off last chapter with the reveal that the HKAI breakup was indeed founded on Ai's pregnancy, as a lot of us had predicted.

This, uh, does not quite line up with previous events!

From what we'd previously been told, in terms of placement in the timeline, the death of Airi and her husband happened after the twins were born and sometime in the leadup to the Dome concert, which would put it in the ballpark of Ai's 18th to 20th birthday depending on how long it was in the works for. But based on how this flashback section is structured, it seems to place their deaths before Ai even knew she was pregnant, let alone giving birth. If it was just clashing with 15YL's retelling then I could dismiss that as an element of the movie's fictionalization that we've seen and Kamiki alludes to but this also clashes with where this event was placed temporally by Ichigo, when remembering a real life event. So… What gives!!!!

Like, at the end of the day, the exact placement of Uehara's death only matters inasmuch as it needs to be before Ai gets her new apartment, since the point Ichigo is really making is that Aqua is pinning his hopes on a dead man who was dead before he could have ever contributed to Ai's murder. But placing it that far back in the timeline - before the twins were even born! - just makes Aqua's willful ignorance in relation to it come off as a lot sillier and more difficult to swallow than if it happened closer to Ai's actual date of death.

I'm also a little disappointed that we really quickly breeze past Ai revealing she's pregnant - it's not the point of the scene overall and it would be weird to go really deep into her POV in the middle of a Kamiki flashback but one of my big issues with the Movie Arc was that it ripped past anything and everything to do with Ai's pregnancy, including how she herself felt about being pregnant. Like I said in my 145 review, skipping over the parts of it we've seen makes sense but I think there's still a bunch of really fascinating potential in exploring how Ai felt when she realized she was pregnant - how did she hide it for long enough that she was almost halfway through her pregnancy and getting fucking enormous before her first checkup? How did Ichigo and Miyako react when they first got the news? There's so much juicy character and relationship work you could mine out of that but the story fails to do so. We sort of get a crumb of this in the DVD but her feelings there are all centered on the pregnancy in relation to Hikaru and even then she breezes past it so fast it's clearly not meant to be the focus of any of what she's saying and idk. For a character whose entire hook is her struggles with motherhood, familial love and all the rest of it, that's a little disappointing.

THAT SAID!!! All that makes me sound like I didn't like what went on with Ai this chapter but I actually loved it. It's so painfully in line with everything we've been told and shown about her thus far in the manga and in this chapter, we see all her strengths, weaknesses and human contradictions laid bare in a way I find incredibly rewarding and compelling.

The HKAI breakup especially is just soooooo deliciously cringe inducing. It's an echo of the argument with Nino that 15YL portrays, where Ai's good intentions, avoidant tendencies and absolute absence of tact all snowball and end up ruining one of her most important relationships. Like… I can't believe I'm about to say this about a conversation in which Ai is one of the people talking, but she really is the reasonable one here! She's right to identify that their relationship is not working, that adding babies and marriage to the mix will only make things worse - her intentions, as they always are, are good and she's making her decisions with Kamiki in mind… her delivery is just absolutely dogshit!!! GIRL, PLEASE, YOUR WORDS!!!! USE YOUR WORDS!!!!!

For all my issues with Akasaka's writing lately, I think he portrays these kinds of two sided failures of communication so well, where you can see exactly where both characters are coming from and why they are failing to get their feelings across to each other. From an outsider's POV it's clear as day that Ai views herself and her children as the burden, one she doesn't want to put on Kamiki for the sake of a girl who doesn't even know if she can love him… but is it any wonder why Kamiki took it the way he did and why his guts were so utterly wrenched out as a result?

Kamiki's attempted proposal and Ai's immediate rejection of it are really interesting with the context of 45510 in particular. Extrapolating from her talk of marriage there, she brushed him off so quickly because she simply didn't believe he was serious… and yeah, he's pretty clearly not fully cognizant of the weight of what he's trying to propose, never mind that he's meeting "let's break up" with "LET'S GET MARRIED" lol.

Also interesting to extrapolate from both 45510 and other material surrounding Ai is that, at that point in her life, she simply didn't understand what the point of marriage was. On top of her being Literally Sixteen And A Child right now, Ai is said to have come from a deeply dysfunctional home where her mother engaged in a number of equally dysfunctional relationships, at least one of whom was with a man who was creeping on Ai even as he was working up to marry her mom. It's no wonder she doesn't really take the idea of marriage seriously, but it still hurts so see her reject Kamiki so bluntly - even more bluntly in the Japanese text somehow, simply chirping 無理! (Muri!) in response, i.e, not just "no way" but telling Kamiki to his face it's impossible.

Honestly this whole breakup scene is so darkly hilarious just in terms of how bad Ai is completely beefing it. Congrats babygirl that's the worst anyone's ever done it!!!

And we finally get the "I can't love you" drop after just shy of 25 chapters of buildup…….. And honestly, it feels a little hollow.

I talked about this a little before so forgive me for repeating myself but that line - or rather, Aqua and Ruby's implied misunderstanding of it - from Ai to Hikaru was given a huge amount of weight in the story when it was first introduced. It was implied to be the lynchpin in which everything else about the HKAI romance rested only for the story to go UH WELL ACTUALLY IT'S ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT AI FORGIVES HER KILLER which is like… fine, it just feels very jarring on a reread or when trying to sew together a plot thread like this. It especially feels strange because the emphasis is placed on them not getting it right or at least that Gotanda disagrees with their interpretation, only for the manga to whip back around and not only return this line to its previous heightened importantance but also to largely not line up with what was established about this line and its place in the narrative when it was first introduced. It's just more evidence that Akasaka's plans for the Movie Arc and its resolution changed in some way during serialisation because these inconsistencies are pretty glaring.

Not just that, but like… it's hard to feel impacted by this line when we didn't even see it in the Movie Arc. In general, it's so fucking weird that so much about the main emotional resolutions going on right now revolve around Ruby's performance in the movie when most of the big emotional moments people are reacting to are happening entirely offscreen. This would already be bad even if it wasn't taking place in a manga like OnK with its increasingly frustrating habit of offscreening more and more bits of the story that are extremely important for the characters. Before this chapter I would've said that maybe we'd see some of it after the movie released but given that Kamiki's arc and the revenge play as a whole is pretty clearly wrapping here, what would even be the point of it?

Idk. It's just increasingly obvious (and just as frustrating) to me just how much of the Movie Arc was wasted time and how much of the setup that needed to happen to make what follows really land just… didn't. This chapter's resolution for Ai and Hikaru, both separately and as a couple, is still excellent, but it could have been a lot better if its foundations weren't so meager.

We also finally get concrete proof from the horse's mouth that Kamiki was the one who deliberately leaked Ai's address and……. honestly this is kind of a wet fart too lol. OnK has previously very strongly implied that "Kamiki is Ai's killer" was a red herring or that we should at least be slightly skeptical of Aqua's assertions and conclusions but… nope, he was right all along, I guess?? Alright………………………… I certainly don't believe his insistence that gosh he totes didn't think Ryosuke would go THAT far and I'm still wondering wtf the two of them were doing at the hospital the night the twins were born but like. Honestly at this point, I don't really think it matters and I care much more about emotional resolutions than I do granular plot details - and boy do we get one hell of an emotional resolution.

I haven't shouted her out yet because I was saving it for this section but fuck, man, Mengo's expression work told chapter is killer as usual but this final stretch of pages is just gutwrenching. Ai's gentle, rueful smile on the DVD contrasted with the look of shocked, dawning understanding on Kamiki's….. Jesus Christ.

And at last, we uncover the final secret hidden at the bottom of Ai's heart. The entire manga thus far has been a process of stripping away the viewer's willful ignorance with regards to Ai's humanity but the DVDs had been an oddly ominous mystery box floating around, containing some implied dark secret that would change the entire trajectory of Ai's character as we knew it… but of course, the person who tells us that is Ai herself, a girl who hates herself, thinks of herself as dirty and impure, irresponsible and incapable of love.

So is it really any surprise that her darkest secret, the thing she can only confess with her eyes shining with black stars is simply that she's a fallible human? That she was a lonely young girl, confused and hurt in her own ways and that she hurt someone she dearly cared for and wanted to take it back?

Is it a little convenient that she put all this in the DVD? Yes, absolutely, and I'll be the first to say that the DVDs existing at all are a pretty clear retcon in service of getting info onto Aqua's hands. But it's also perfectly in line with Ai's timid, avoidant methods of reaching out. It parallels both Viewpoint B and 45510 (moreso the latter) where she pours her heart out in words, waiting for others to read and understand her. In 45510 in particular, her leaving the blog post is an extremely clear and strong parallel to the DVD - love letters put into bottles and thrown to the ocean in desperate hope the person they're addressed to might find and understand them.

As Akane says, Ai is torn between secrecy and a desire to have her true self exposed, so she attempts to craft scenarios in which this must happen, even if her avoidance can only allow her to do so with indirect methods. With the blog and moreso the DVDs & their method of delivery, Ai attempts to create situations where the initiation confrontation and disclosure is out of her hands and she has no choice but to tell the truth.

Ai's entire speech here is just heartbreaking. If the start of the chapter didn't make it explicit enough, we see her here put her good intentions into words to better understand how they were misinterpreted.

This adds SUCH a fascinating additional layer to her death that has me gnashing my fucking teeth. One of the things I've talked about a lot in my Ai meta is that Ryosuke is essentially an agent or even an embodiment of the entertainment industry and the way it has exploited her - the misogyny, entitlement, purity culture and abuse that ruled her life went on to end it. With this additional detail, though, Ryosuke becomes an agent not just of the things that plagued Ai of B-Komachi, but Ai as a human, too. All her life, Ai is willfully misunderstood and mischaracterized by the people around her, assigned narratives and roles without her consent and punished for both living up to and failing to live up to them. Ai's death is the end result of a lifelong cascade of failure on the part of every system and individual that has had the opportunity and responsibility to care for her - and, as Aqua throws in his father's face, that includes Hikaru.

Hikaru's supposed understanding of Ai is not one based in empathy or love but projection and possessiveness - understanding in this context is ownership, exclusivity and frankly, arrogance. A claim to a piece of Ai that no one else knows. But as Aqua forces him to realize… Hikaru never understood Ai, even as she did her best to make herself understood. For all his arrogance of understanding Ai and the nature of their relationship, Kamiki is ultimately just the same as every other person who idolized and objectified her then discarded her when the image they'd created in their mind didn't match reality. Ai wasn't his pure and perfect soulbonded saviour - she was a lonely, broken kid like him, still struggling to understand love after a lifetime spent starved of it.

Once, Kamiki begged Ai to save him. And here, the bitter truth is laid out for all of us: the salvation Kamiki had wished for was waiting for him, reaching out with open arms and he not only desecrated it but irrevocably destroyed any path back towards it. In killing Ai, Hikaru Kamiki killed himself.

The imagery of this moment is so fucking gorgeous. The visual of Kamiki and Ai reaching out to each other, in mutual understanding at last but separated by time and death… the "what if" happy Hoshino family… Ai's words being framed as a 'love letter' that transcended time to reach Kamiki and Aqua's eyes blazing with white as tears pour down his face… Jesus fucking Christ Mengo I'm already dead!!!!!

Like I said up top, I make zero secret of the fact that I am primarily invested in Ai above everything else in the manga and the way her importance has been seemingly downplayed since the late 130s mark chapter wise has really bugged me. As such, this chapter was INSANELY cathartic for me. Not only do we get a really beautiful cap to Ai's post death arc (hopefully finally killing those dumbfuck Secretly Evil Ai theories for good) but it's done in a way that once again recenters her love and her wishes as the heart of everything. Even Aqua's revenge play is completely redefined in this context - no longer the childish, selfish and self destructive lashing out we've seen before but as a quest to both honor Ai and to punish the person arrogantly assuming ownership of her heart even as he so catastrophically misunderstands her.

This is a really fantastic end to Aqua's arc too… on paper, that is. I know for a fact that a certain genre of OnK readers are going to bitch and moan that Aqua didn't run his dad over with a 2003 Honda Civic but I really can't imagine Aqua's revenge quest going any other way unless OnK was intended to be a pure tragedy. Over and over, we have seen that Aqua's revenge is at odds with not just his happiness but with Ai's wish for him to live a full life with a bright future. It is self destructive, hurtful to the people around him and antithetical to any of them moving on and reclaiming what their futures. With the emphasis the story places on moving towards a happy future, in selfishly reclaiming your happiness even in the face of systems that seek to crush you and on honouring Ai's wishes and legacy, it would be flatly thematically incoherent for Aqua to choose killing.

The issue is not with this as Aqua's end point but with the path we've taken to get here. As was the issue with Ruby during the Movie Arc, we don't actually see any of the internal work that happened in service of this arc, just the big emotional end points of offscreen development. But it stings especially bad with Aqua when such a huge chunk of the last few arcs locked us out of his head, sharply contrasting the start of the story that lived and breathed his interiority - AND when this is more or less the capstone to his series long struggle to choose love or revenge. It's not that I dislike this as an emotional payoff for Aqua's revenge - this is more or less beat for beat what I'd expected - but that it lacks proper support from the rest of the story. In general, this chapter falls flatter than it should because all this heightened, dramatic emotion rests on arcs and setup that simply have not been shown to the reader, save for Ai.

Speaking of Ai, the info in the DVD here potentially represents a pretty major break in the continuity of Aqua's behaviour based on when we're told he had access to it but I'm willing to bite my tongue and see if that gets filled in, if only because this chapter review is already so fucking long. Let's just say that I Noticed and I sure hope Aka or his editors did too.

And finally… Oh, hey there, Ruby! Aren't you an interesting little snarl to this chapter. Or maybe "snarl" isn't quite right, but her presence here is potentially interesting either way. I'm not quite sure how to read both her expression and her presence - the expression on her face looks VERY displeased and it looks to me like she's outside the room, so is she maybe eavesdropping and not happy with what she hears? Or is she in on Aqua's talk with Kamiki here and just struggling with her emotions with regards to it all? I'm quiety hoping it's the latter, because it would confirm that Ruby DID recognize her dad in 147 and Akasaka wasn't expecting me to believe he was hitting her with the stupid stick quite that hard lol.

In either case, I'm actually excited to see what Ruby takes away from this. In the ways that AQRB has echoed the HKAI dynamic, Ruby has always been in Kamiki's shoes - the one desperate to be saved, clinging to her oshi and relying on him as her sole bastion of light in the world. So what will she think now after being faced with the logical endpoint of this wished-for codependence? When she sees how destructive and self destructive it can potentially be? Just as she saw Ai reflected in herself, will Ruby see her father in her own reflection - and if so, what will she do about it?

Break next week! So we'll be sitting pretty for two weeks to find out. Not that I actually mind this time because with a chapter like this on top of season 2 of the anime coming back today, a week without a break might have actually killed me… please, akamengo, i'm just a little guy!!!!

#oshi no ko #oshi no posting #chapter reviews #onk spoilers #ai hoshino #hikaru kamiki #kamiai #hikaai

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oshinohoshi · 1 month ago

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Oshi no Ko Chapter 161 Thoughts

I guess we're in the endgame now.

Since last chapter I've been worried that Hikaru's remorse after watching Ai's DVD was all an act but thankfully that's not the case. He was crushed after learning that Ai loved him and so the twins still delivered a revenge worse than death

But regarding Hikaru's motives, what of his words in ch 154?

Does he or does he not understand that Ai was an ordinary girl? Trying to ensure that Ai remains unparalleled is clearly forcing a selfish fantasy on her

I can extrapolate that the guilt stemming from her death created an all consuming need to preserve her memory and a desperation to do anything he could for her, so he decided to elevate Ai of B Komachi while ignoring what Ai Hoshino would have wanted

I just don't see how a supposedly smart guy would think that the best thing he could do for the love of his life was to kill her precious daughter

Hikaru was accused of manipulating Nino but this has Nino written all over it. Maybe she hypnotized him

Hikaru is a conundrum and speculating is getting me nowhere

Now on to the main event. Aqua is trying to give his dad a run for his money with poorly thought out plans

Why have a strategy meeting about how to protect Ruby with all the smart, capable people in your life when you can stab yourself?

Miyako is going to kill him twice for this

But Aqua reaching this point hits hard. Because despite throwing his life away, he's finally thinking about the future. He has hopes and dreams. He wants to call Miyako his mom. LOOK AT THIS PANEL. I'm sobbing. God, he better call Ai "mom" too

Aqua isn't trying to murder Hikaru out of guilt and revenge but rather for Ruby's future. And uhhh... ok, I have mixed feelings about this reframing of his suicidal tendencies

But it is growth and an Aqua who wants to live is better than one who doesn't, even if the end result is the same

Aqua stabbing himself in the same place as his mom with the same look on his face and the same sweat drops while creating a lie stemming from love is too much

I am no longer asking for a spinoff manga where nothing bad ever happens. I am begging on bended knee

Kudos to Mephisto for foreshadowing this

A certain group of shippers want to say that Ruby is the most important person to Aqua because he's sacrificing himself for her and I just want to point out that while of course Ruby is his treasured sister, Aqua thought of Miyako, Kana, Akane, Mem, and Taiki in this chapter. Aqua's love is not finite. We're not dividing up a pie here. No girl has "won" his love over another, okay? There are different kinds of love

Now if only Aqua could truly recognize just how loved he is

Will Aqua die? I've always said that no main character besides possibly Kamiki would die because while Ai's death was a senseless tragedy, she died with a smile on her face. She died knowing she loved her children and having achieved her lifelong dream to love

I never felt Oshi no Ko was a tragedy but rather that it has dark, tragic elements. But I've stopped trying to predict things

Next week: I can't even muster up my usual cheesy jokes. Just please live, Aqua. I don't care if Crow Girl swoops out of the sky riding a dragon called Deus Ex Machina to pluck him out of the sea or Hikaru turns out to be a war medic who can stitch him up, he just can't die.

#oshi no ko #oshi no ko spoilers #chapter review

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tenebriskukris · 4 months ago

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Oshi No Ko Chapter 154 - My Thoughts/Analysis

Well this chapter was certainly Something. I have very mixed feelings about it no matter the quality of the chapter in question but I’ll save my thoughts below. Spoilers for Oshi No Ko Ch 154 below.

So we’re back to this Hikaru and Ai flashback! I was honestly half expecting that we wouldn’t be continuing this flashback in sufficient detail but at this point I’m glad to be proven wrong.

Wait, was Hikaru having intercourse with Ai and not wearing a condom or anything like that? Their relationship and sexual escapades were definitely consensual given what we’ve seen of them previously but I’m slightly surprised by it—but I guess I really shouldn’t be considering they are just teenagers in this flashback, and teenage pregnancy certainly isn’t something too out of the norm.

Ai’s dismissal to the thought of them getting married though…jeez. If this is their last in-person conversation that the two of them had before that phone call a few years later I don’t think I can blame Hikaru for thinking that Ai didn’t love him after this flashback. That was just… so incredibly callous. It almost felt like Ai was rubbing it in Hikaru’s face with just how offhandedly she broke up with him without the kind of explanation that Hikaru deserved. If a long time partner broke up with you in a similar manner that Ai broke up with Hikaru then I think having some doubts about whether or not that person loved you would be natural given the circumstances.

I do want to reiterate a point I made during my last chapter analysis. I don’t think it’s fair to blame Hikaru for not being able to tell that Ai was lying to him—as the narrative is starting to point in that direction. If we take the movie to be correct in that Ai was honest to Hikaru more often than not, then this would be the nail in the coffin for Hikaru since he was used to Ai’s honesty rather than her lies.

I have a plethora of thoughts about this entire flashback but they’ll clog up the chapter further so I’ll just continue on with the chapter. We’re not even halfway yet, after all.

It was only natural. She knew what I had done so she chose to leave me. That’s definitely projecting. Considering how that entire flashback was angled, I don't think that it was because of Hikaru’s actions that Ai left him. If we were to believe Ai’s words in said flashback—which I don’t completely just yet, but that’s a subject for another time—it wasn’t not because of Hikaru’s past, it was with because of the prospect of a relationship that would last a long time that she just wasn’t ready for at her current state. A true and tried case of “it’s not you, it’s me”.

I gave her address to Ryosuke…but I never thought that he would actually kill her. Two things I want to call out here. The first is how did Hikaru and Ryosuke even meet up in the first place? Crow Girl implies that they met at the hospital in Miyazaki but we don’t quite get context to that meeting. In order for Hikaru to give Ryosuke Ai’s address, Hikaru would’ve had to have his contact details which is something that I don’t think that he would give out to just anyone.

The next thing is that Hikaru is definitely dodging blame for Ryosuke killing Ai. Since we’re unsure of the context of their meeting for the first time I can’t blame him completely here but it’s still highly irresponsible for him to send a stalker of all people Ai’s address.. There was no way that entire mess was going to end well for anyone involved. It’s a good thing that Ryosuke died before anyone could interrogate him because otherwise he might’ve leaked Hikaru’s identity. Perhaps Hikaru actually killed him in order to cover up his tracks? Doubtful.

Did you believe her words? I dunno Aqua, at this point I should be asking you that question but we’ll get to that can of worms after the chapter.

Hikaru’s entire monologue here about how Ai was an ordinary girl rings true. Ai herself wasn’t inherently special. Her own tragic backstory was something that could’ve happened to anyone. The obstacles she overcame weren’t anything that anyone else couldn’t have also gotten past. There wasn’t anything inherently special about Hoshino Ai. Perhaps that was what made the illusion that there was something inherently special about her all the more potent. Her ability to draw in an audience and shine wasn’t something she was born with, but rather a trained skill that anyone could reach if they devoted themselves to shine as well as Ai. Akane proved that much, at least.

Why were we born? Why did Ai give birth to us? Have you ever thought about the meaning behind it? Aqua makes a good point here but I would also counter that some people just don’t have a reason for having children aside from the fact that it’s something that people just do because society pressures them to get married and have children. Sometimes there just isn’t any deeper meaning behind it.

We don’t get to see Ai’s torso in these flashbacks but it doesn’t seem like the pregnancy has progressed as much as we see it in the first chapter. There would've been enough time for Ai to find a way to abort the twins if she didn’t want to give birth to them.

Oh damn is Aqua actually going to show what was on the DVDs in the movie??? That feels like—well. An extraordinary breach of privacy—but Ai is dead, Hikaru is giving carte blanche to Aqua and his revenge plot, and Aqua and Ruby likely engineered this scenario in the first place.

Hikaru going through the ringer like this was about what I expected after the last chapter. The narrative was starting to push the idea that Ai loved Hikaru all along for a couple of chapters now. While I personally don’t have an issue with that narrative choice in a vacuum, I do have issues in how everything around it was handled, as I’ve spoken many, many times throughout the movie arc and afterwards, so there’s no need to tread on that stuff again.

I thought, “he definitely couldn’t take any more than this.” From how Hikaru reminisces about Ai, I think it’s the opposite. He was able to take any burden so long as he had Ai with him to help blunt the worst of his trauma. Ai being unable to understand that she was more integral for Hikaru’s mental health than anyone else is very in-character for her. She wasn’t able to understand love—and unable to understand how much love Hikaru attached to her through this breakup.

I can’t be burdened with you so let’s break up. I can’t love you. Considering we just got a flashback of their breakup—and with all flashbacks in this series being accurate so far I don’t doubt the accuracy of said flashback—that was absolutely not the subtext that was shimmering beneath Ai and Hikaru’s breakup. Maybe Ai is coating their breakup with nostalgia but hmmmmmmmm. More thoughts to be put to pen later.

The truth is…I really wanted to be with him forever. Hikaru’s face in some of these panels… He must feel so poleaxed at Ai’s words. Hearing that she loved him all along and that he had her killed must feel—well. I wouldn’t want to be him right now. I wouldn’t even be surprised if he took his own life somewhere along the line. It’s obvious from how he talks about Ai and his reactions to the movie and otherwise that he’s still not quite over Ai leaving him like this. I doubt he’s even dealt with his trauma in a healthier way since Ai’s death—a trait that Aqua would share if he didn’t have his own support system.

Well that was a gut punch and a half from the DVDs. I want to know if those are the only things on Aqua’s DVDs and what was on Ruby’s DVD but I’m sure we’ll be getting those answers soon—I just hope that they set it up better than how they did with Hikaru and Aqua’s conversation.

Ruby eavesdropping! There’s my girl! I wanna see how they all decompress after this conversation. That’ll be a conversation and a half, I think. Will we finally get to see them interacting more or are the authors going to leave that as another bombshell to drop later?

As well as our revenge to you…for not understanding her. Gotta be honest though, if Hikaru didn’t kill Ai this would’ve been a fucked up thing to do to him. I don’t blame Hikaru or Ai for being fucked up teenagers who made bad decisions when they were younger. Aqua and Ruby doing all this to rub it in Hikaru’s face would be shitty enough as is—but Hikaru is the reason for Ai’s death anyway so this is a moot point.

That was certainly A Chapter. Before I vivisect this chapter right down to its bones I have to give credit where credit’s due. This was a chapter that the series has been waiting for for so long. Aqua unveiling this bombshell on Hikaru and finally getting some of the answers we’ve been wanting since the series has started is a godsend. Hikaru’s reactions in this chapter were art. The onions being chopped up on a silver platter with that one image of a happier Hikaru and Ai taking care of a baby Aqua and Ruby. It wasn’t necessary to add that but they did and FUCK they could’ve been a happy family.

But for all this chapter’s good points it was absolutely was not worth the slop that the last 5 chapters put us through. Not worth the sudden timeskip, not worth the fact that Aqua suddenly has white star eyes again without explanation, and certainly not worth the fact that the start of this interaction was poorly structured in the first place. A shit sandwich with an exquisite piece of cheese in the center does not mean that it is not a shit sandwich. It just means that there’s a single good point out of the trasheap.

Before I get into the flashback I want to vomit out a crackpot theory. Is the person in the video actually Ai? We know Ruby can manage to give off an incredible Ai impression so I’m wondering if this entire thing was just a honeytrap to lure Hikaru to confess. Would Hikaru be able to figure out a difference between the actual Ai or the Ruby impersonator after more than 15 years have passed since he’s seen Ai in person? I doubt this is a plotline the series is going to lean towards but I’ll have to give it props if it could pull a rabbit out of a hat like that.

Now onto my thoughts about the flashback. I think the questions I have to face now are twofold. The first question I have is why did Ai make these tapes to give to Aqua and Ruby if the point of it all was to help Hikaru if he was still lost. You’d think that Ai would be able to do this herself if she was alive since she fully expects to be alive when Aqua and Ruby reach 15 by her own words. If she was so concerned about Hikaru’s mental state enough to prepare tapes asking Aqua and Ruby to help him fifteen years into the future, why didn’t she expend more effort in making sure he was okay when she was still alive? From their one sided conversation earlier in the manga it appeared that she didn’t have much contact with Hikaru before she contacted him about visiting the twins, so what’s that about?

The obvious answer is that she still had her hangups with intimacy to contact him and was gathering up the resolve to try and make sure he was okay, but that’s a cop out if I’ve ever seen one. This isn’t quite a case of characters acting illogically because they’re human or making imperfect decisions��Ai narrates this tape explaining her logic to a grown up Aqua detailing her rationale for their breakup. She makes it quite clear that the younger Ai already had these thoughts in her head when she broke up with Hikaru—or it only appears that she had them at the time, which is another can of worms I’ll deal with later. In any case, this desire to help Hikaru carry his burdens contradicts with her stated goal of doing it after fifteen years.

Why would Ai wait fifteen years to help Hikaru if he was still lost—and through Aqua and Ruby and through the DVDs—if it was that important to her? If she suspected that Hikaru wasn’t doing well after the breakup then why did she only contact Hikaru years after they broke up and only to have him meet the twins—perhaps she was planning on doing so after she had introduced them but that in of itself is also just speculation based on nothing concrete we’ve seen in the series.

The next question has to be asked: Did Ai actually love Hikaru or is this tape too, a lie? We’ve seen how effective Ai’s lies have been in deceiving people, and I’m not that type of reviewer who believes everything a character says just because they vocalize it. While the narrative is pointing in the direction that, yes, Ai actually did love Hikaru if his tape is to be believed—I think it’s relevant to look at these tapes objectively alongside the events that Hikaru himself experienced to make an assessment.

So that leaves Hikaru’s flashback, which for one, is the most accurate representation of their relationship so far since flashbacks in this series don’t lie wholesale about their contents. Ai’s words through the DVDs can be doubted since there’s no one else who can attest to what Ai’s true intentions were, and then all of the Ai-Hikaru interactions throughout the movie arc, which are arguably semi-fictional unless Ai was the one who gave Aqua certain details throughout the DVDs—which is still possible but left up in the air.

Is there enough evidence out there to point in the direction that Ai loved Hikaru? Yes, and the narrative even seems to be endorsing it. Is it possible to definitively prove that Ai loved Hikaru when the interpretation that she never loved him is still plausible given the circumstances? Certainly not unless the manga goes on and outright has Ai confirm it with a flashback or something. It’s still possible that Ai’s justifications for breaking up with Hikaru could be lies—spoken ex post facto to paint herself in a better light or to convince herself and Aqua and Ruby that she was doing the right thing—there’s enough room for doubt knowing Ai’s propensity for lies.

Perhaps Hikaru was right all along that Ai never loved him. From his perspective the woman he loved threw him away the moment he became too much of a burden. Would it even matter if that person carving his heart into pieces had nothing but good intentions while hurting him as much as she did? That’s something that would be juicy to get into later in the series—and something that might be cool to see Hikaru wrestle with.

I doubt the manga will ever give the reader a clear answer to whether or not Ai loved Hikaru—and while I do agree that there is merit to that reading, I think there’s also merit in understanding the contradictions of said reading. It’s impossible to divine the intentions of a dead woman when all that remains are her actions. What is left of Hoshino Ai are the actions she took and the people she left in her wake.

#oshi no ko #onk #onk analysis #oshi no ko analysis #onk spoilers #oshi no ko spoilers #onk 154 #S2 of the anime came out recently!#not going to do any analysis on that since there isn't going to be much to say that other ppl haven't caught on that by now #but i do love the visuals of the op! it isn't as musically compelling as the first to me but it was still a bop

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sunsetsmakemesad · 4 months ago

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Guys did you know that this movie is a timeless loveletter from ai to you, aswell as our revenge for not understanding her

#oshi no ko #oshi no ko chapter 154

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lielove · 4 months ago

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oshi no ko chapter 154 spoilers under the cut but hey i'm in fucking ANGUISH !!!!!!!!!!

SHE WANTED TO LOVE HIM SOOOOOO FUCKING BAD I'M CRYING !!!!!!!!!!!!

#【♥】 𝒐𝒐𝒄 ; i'm just a little guy.

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solarapplejuice · 4 months ago

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what the fuck is going on in oshi no ko bruh ;n; (part 1)

155 spoilers / spoilers for all of the oshi no ko manga akasaka is scaring me maybe i just have too many rose-tinted memories of love is war but it feels so much more tightly written than whatever is going on in onk right now. the most recent chapter and really the entire 15 year lie arc feels like a bit of a letdown compared to what was being built up by this entire story.

my fuckin thesis is this: the final arc of this story reeks of akasaka not liking the story or the characters and wanting to get things over with. he insists on ending almost EVERY chapter with a cliffhanger instead of letting the story progress naturally, concluding core and fundamental parts of the story's plot in one to two chapters which denies them of further growth and speculation, the worst thing you can do to your fucking mystery novel. admittedly this is a pretty biased opinion but i will explain!

the recent chapter is the most emblematic of this because it's the perfect embodiment of why oshi no ko is so frustrating, because if i were to describe the narrative up until this point it sounds like it makes sense, but the way it was handled and the sheer SPEED at which it came out is what makes it bad. specifically in 154 and 155 we learn that kamiki just didn't think that ai actually loved him, but turns out she did and now he regrets killing her! and it turns out NINO also had involvement in ai's death and is maybe the actual villain.

none of this is necessarily bad and i actually really like the idea of nino being the true antagonist at the end of the tunnel. nino is just more compelling; she's ai's coworker and peer but can never be an equal to her because she wont let herself, because she wont let ai in, because she both looks up to ai as an idol to be loved and despises her as an entertainer to compete with. if we are to believe that 45510 is from her perspective, it makes this turn of events all the more tragic.

kamiki never playing a big part is also kind of expected. queer manga fan moment but i never thought the idea of ex bf being the killer was super compelling esp since you can see the "she never really loved me" coming from a mile away, so it's good to see it being played straight for AI's development. turns out that ai "lies are love" hoshino was just trying to protect him from the inevitable backlash of the world's top idol having a boyfriend and thought she was doing the best for her first relationship as a teenager who was forced to grow up too fast.

all of this is really cool, too bad it doesnt land like that in the story because it all gets resolved in one chapter! just because kamiki was the red herring doesn't mean that he should have been wasted like that, it would have been nice to see more conflict between him and the hoshino siblings, perhaps threatening other characters the way he has other idols. lets not forget that this dude is a serial killer who likes targeting women! we were waiting for him to try and pull something on say, kana or akane (i have FEELINGS about them and ill get to that). meanwhile all that would have been done to set nino up as the true villain in murder-mystery fashion is to just include 45510 as a part of the manga before the 15 year lie arc. it would be a one-off look into the horrors of the ways in which ai hoshino's would-be peers rejected her as an equal, later re-contextualized as the hiding-in-plain-sight motive and backstory for the villain and the entire plot as a whole.

we don't get any of that, instead we get aqua and ruby moving past kamiki so quickly that you almost get the sense that they knew more than the audience. which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but feels almost insulting considering how important he and the conspirators of ai hoshino's death have been so far. nino being reintroduced again is jarring since the setup with her intervening in kana's attempts to emulate her is not enough of a setup, and instead feels like they wanted to hamfist her in as an 11th hour threat.

and the problem is, pretty much every major narrative plot point in oshi no ko has been resolved like this and its a pattern that seems to not stop. it started when goro and sarina finally found each other, a moment that is so important and we've been waiting for a while, and it spiraled from there. aqua and ruby's incest will-they-wont-they was pretty much handwaved, the very fucking important and good conflict of ruby and kana's competition for success mirroring ai and nino was denied any sort of growth or possibility in the like three chapters they spent on it. it's just like, theres so many things that while they have been alluded to before, that's just it: theyve been ALLUDED to. the reasons for these conflicts to happen are there, but the conflicts never really got the chance to happen, instead it's just a character initiating the fight and the other character shutting them down a chapter later by being the bigger person or whatever, something that is jarring for a cast of characters defined by not simply bad communication but the BELIEF and CORE THEME that LYING IS LOVE! the very thesis that we're supposed to be constantly contending with, if it's true or not, and the reason that these conflicts drag out; because the characters lie, and sometimes those lies can make relationships worse instead of better for some illusion of stability. why are these characters all of a sudden excellent communicators when they historically haven't been, in a MYSTERY story where incomplete information and unresolved threads should be common place? the story ending soon is not an excuse for this to be happening! it doesn't feel like we're earning these conclusions, more like aka is forcefully shutting the lid on pandora's box and letting it blow up in our faces.

ill be making a second part of my thoughts since this is already so long but i also gotta talk about how akasaka did my girls kana and akane dirty.

#oshi no ko #oshi no ko 155 #oshi no ko spoilers #oshi no ko manga spoilers

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