“Oshi no Ko” Episode 4

It’s official. I absolutely love Kana and she deserves all of the happiness in the world. She really learned from her mistakes in the past and came into her own. I feel like it would be incredibly difficult to go from a child actor to an adult one, especially when it seems like their talent is only recognized as a kid. However, she kept trying, even though she was met with a lot of criticism and not as much opportunities. So she’s trying her dang hardest to make this current project as much of a success as she can. But man, it absolutely kills me that she has to deal with such a faulty production where they don’t seem to care much for the overall quality. Especially when dealing with a co-star who apparently can’t act to save his life, or so it was assumed. From how things were going, it looked as if Kana was just going to end this job having just taken part of a crummy live action adaptation without being able to really show her acting chops.

It’s even more sad that Kana really likes the original manga and she was hoping to at least be able to make the climax the absolute best it can be in these circumstances. But oh my gosh, the odds were severely stacked against her with Melt’s freaking terrible performance. There was just no way that she could bounce off his performance to make the scene a success all the while keeping in mind to make him look as good as possible. It was just a lose-lose situation at this point. And it hurt to see her just start spiraling once she realized that no one seemed to care about the acting quality.

Thankfully Aqua was able to turn things to her favor by basically changing the feeling of the scene. Instead of awkwardly going along with Melt’s terrible acting, he basically provoked him to get a genuine reaction out of him, as if showing him the right way to express the emotions in the scene. He knows how to read people’s feelings and figure out what they want to hear due to being a doctor in his previous life. I never expected that aspect to help him be an actor. And because of this, he essentially opened the door to allow Kana to act with her full potential. All the while most likely taking what he experienced from Ai’s death at the hands of the stalker as inspiration on how to act like one. Which is incredibly morbid, but artists often take what they’ve experienced and use it in their mediums sometimes as an outlet of sorts. And of course, once the baton was tossed to Kana, she absolutely killed it. As Aqua said, crying is her specialty lol. But I’m sure there were genuine tears in there as well since I’m sure she realized what Aqua was doing for her.

I like the difference in acting techniques that Aqua and Kana use. Kana is more flexible and able to adjust to her circumstances, even if it means bringing herself down a level or two so she doesn’t outshine her co-stars. While Aqua uses everything around him to his advantage, even forcing others to match him despite it being slightly manipulative. I appreciate that the director didn’t stop the performance despite Aqua changing things up and recognized that what he was doing was good and let it continue. Even adjusting things so it could match the feeling that Aqua had set. Their acting styles really compliment each other and I do hope that we get to see them act together again.

I love how they touch on how mangakas must feel when someone else takes their works and essentially butchers them in an adaptation, whether it be anime or live action. I often do wonder how they must feel when the work they put so much time and effort into get a below-average adaptation. Just as one of the assistants said, it must be very frustrating. It’s probably very true that when their series get picked up, they try to go in with low expectations since if the creator isn’t part of the development process, it’s basically a gamble at what the quality would be. In this case, it’s very touching to see that the mangaka of “Sweet Today” was moved to tears by Kana’s performance of the penultimate scene and despite the overall quality of the adaptation being low, she was still glad to see her work be made into a different medium. It was honestly really heartwarming to see a cycle of sorts with her manga making Kana cry and then Kana being able to make the mangaka tear up with her performance.

Seeing what people have to say about the adaptation felt like what has been said on low effort adaptations in reality. Heck, I probably said some of the same things on adaptations that I thought weren’t as good as the source. coughcoughspyxfamilycough* And it is sad when you think about how many people worked on a project and the time and energy that went into it, only for it to get waved off so easily by viewers. It sucks at times, but that is just reality. Nothing is exempt from critique whether it be good or bad. Especially if the source material is beloved by a lot of people. Though it is still sad that source materials get trampled because whoever is in charge is just trying to promote someone or something. All the while not respecting the source material and not caring about the overall quality. coughavatarthelastairbenderliveactioncough* I really like how real this series feels and isn’t afraid to really go into detail about what happens from the industry perspective and the fans perspective. Such as despite the final scene of the “Sweet Today” live action being the best out of the entire series, it didn’t garner an overwhelming amount of praise and instead felt very contained within a smaller fanbase that stuck around with it to the end. Which definitely makes sense since a lot of people would have just been too frustrated with it and dropped it early on.

Just as I expected, Kaburagi indeed isn’t Aqua and Ruby’s biological dad. It would have been way too soon to introduce him. However, he ended up possibly having some information on Ai that could benefit Aqua in his search. Even bringing up the fact that Ai was seeing someone during his time working with her. In order to get this information though, it seems as if Aqua’s next gig will be that of a “reality dating show.” To which the bartering theme that the other director had pointed out continues. If he wants something, he’s going to have to do something for it.

We get thrown back to the end of the first episode with Aqua and Ruby starting their first day of high school. And not gonna lie, but it definitely has that vibe of Utapri and Enstars where the main character gets into a prestigious entertainment school and are surrounded by already shining prospects. Though I guess in this case, everyone seems to already be in the industry in some way… Aside from Ruby who has yet to start her career as an idol. Which ends up embarrassing her in front of this one famous entertainer who she looks up to. But man, everyone has such interesting eyes in this series. This new girl, Frill, has some pretty bright and almost cat-like eyes. I wonder if she’ll be a prominent character in the future. Someone with those sorts of eyes has to be in some form or another.

Unfortunately for Ruby, things seem to be pretty slow going for her eventual debut as an idol since they have to be careful on who they recruit. Not to mention needing a scout to begin with since it seemed as if Ichigo was the one to do it initially. It also becomes a problem that Strawberry Productions isn’t a bigger company while the girls auditioning tend to go for the more popular groups and they’re also trying to avoid recruiting girls who are already with a different agency. Which definitely narrows down the possible candidates. Though it seems as if they may scout Kana to be part of the upcoming idol group which… not sure how she’s gonna feel about that since she wants to be an actress. Though considering the state of her career, it doesn’t seem she have much work and beggars can’t be choosers in these situations. However, we have seen instances in other anime coughidolish7cough where idols do get acting jobs during their idol careers. And I’m sure if she becomes an idol, she could get more publicity that way. So it’s not a total career derailment.

At this point, I think I can safely say that Kana is my favorite character from this series so far. She is both endearing in the way where you want to cheer for her while also finding her antics amusing. My second prediction of her ending up developing feelings for Aqua also seems to be coming true with her conversation with Aqua during the after party. Look at her trying to be slick lol. I’m definitely excited to see more of Kana and where she will go in this series.