When a manga wins first place in the seventh Next Manga Awards (2021) and the Best General Manga category in the 46th annual Kodansha Manga Awards (2022), it has over 3 million copies in circulation and is also inspiring a live-action film and television series adaptation, a question resonates in the minds of readers and fans grappling with the adaptation of the second animated series of “Oshi no Ko”: is it possible to bring the atmosphere of the original source and preserve it when new authors turn it into an animation? For all its layers of plot and shifts back and forth in time, this tangled anime on the mysteries of reincarnation keeps its narrative lines clear. But let’s see if Jin Tanaka, Chao Nekotomi, Kanna Hirayama, and Daisuke Hiramaki are able to accomplish the lofty goal of expressing excitement, unnerving feelings, and shock as it was originally portrayed.
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What would you do if you were reincarnated as the child of your favorite idol? This is what happened to Aquamarine and Ruby Hoshino, two teenagers who have embarked on a career in showbiz. While Ruby is firmly convinced of following in her mother’s footsteps and struggles to find job opportunities for her fervent idol-pop trio, the B-Komachi, Aqua Hoshino, along with Kana Arima and Akane Kurokawa, find themselves in the cast that will bring to life the 2.5D stage play of Tokyo Blade, the new show based on the eponymous manga. Rehearsals for the theatrical performance are ongoing, and the stage presence of Lalalai’s leading actor Taiki Himekawa inspires the entire cast to give their best. But while all the actors intend to take the stage out of love for acting and the desire to shine, Aqua embarks on this career with a different goal: to uncover the connections between Ai, the idol, and the representative of the Lalalai troupe and director of Tokyo Blade, Toshiro Kindaichi. However, all work comes to a halt and remains in uncertainty when the author of the manga Tokyo Blade, Abiko Samejima, requests to rewrite the entire script and fire the screenwriter Goa.
Exploring the artistic performances of Aqua and Ruby proves to be an experience that familiarizes the audience with many of the technical aspects and the various roles of the people involved in the realization of an artistic production. At the same time, the series does not overlook various threads like suspense, real-life industry dynamics, romcom, and character acting connected with the psychological growth of the protagonists. For example, Aqua’s relationship with emotive acting pushed to the extreme of a self-harming way, Akane’s awareness of having become the kind of brilliant talent she saw in Kana when she was little, the climax that drags Kana to joyfully show her dazzling talent under the spotlight, and Melt Narushima’s rebirth. The animated journey into his inner self is a brilliant and eclectic mix of different animation styles that accompany his performance: the Melt, who desperately practices to reach the stars that seem to elude him, and his injured and swollen hand are powerful metaphors that show how difficult the work of an actor is, because it often requires entering into crisis and discovering one’s own fragility and traumas in order to strip oneself bare and surrender to the creation of a character.
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The contrast that involves the author of Tokyo Blade, Abiko Samejima, the producer, Sumiaki Raida, and the screenwriter, Goa, reflects the complicated communicative dynamics that occur in the process of adapting an original work. It is a painful journey: both for the screenwriter, who engages in a long and complex writing process that on one hand maintains the emotional core of the original text and on the other adapts it to theatrical or animated performance, and for the author, who considers the characters as children and demands that their feelings can live in the adaptation and resonate with the audience. Paying homage to a masterpiece also means finding a compromise between treating the author’s needs with kindness and care and expanding or reducing the original material based on the new visual, auditory, and scenic languages necessary to make the adaptation work.
The calm and reasoned plot of the first episodes takes on an energetic pace in the central part (see episodes from 6 to 9) during the 2.5 stage play adaptation of Tokyo Blade. Hiramaki’s camera work expresses itself in overwhelming movements that make the setpieces exciting. Chao Nekotomi transforms animation into a tool capable of tuning into the reality of theater without forgetting details such as the visible wires and mics during the action, the diegetic lights on the stage, the visual and sound effects, and lengthy shots from the audience’s perspectives.
The impressive look of the series relies on the usage of color that emphasizes the visual impact of characters and scenarios, capturing the attentive gaze of the audience through carefully studied chromatic mixes. The team in charge of handling colors in depicting the pivotal moments of every episode resorts again to the technique of the color script in shaping the storytelling. For example, Kuniyasu Nishina, storyboarder, color script artist, and assistant director (see episodes 1-7-8-12), enriches the anime with beautiful snapshots of color, well-defined transitions, and smart editing: in the first episode, the splashes of paint emanating from Taiki Himekawa’s acting overwhelm Kana Arima, conveying the contagious effect of passionate acting and triggering her enthusiastic responses, which in turn overwhelm Akane Kurokawa and then the others… And so, through their performances, the protagonists paint the scene they want to bring to life, while the other actors, still as the audience, cannot avoid being struck by all these colors that simultaneously become a key to understanding the feelings the characters experience and express towards acting and the passion of the anime’s creators for other forms of art.
All voice actors strive to ensure that the characters’ personalities remain consistent. Seiji Maeda‘s role as Melt Narushima stands out in showing the growth of his character’s acting abilities: the weak vocalization, the tendency to breathe a lot while speaking, and the exaggerated verbal rhythm are gradually replaced by a much more effective and incisive pronunciation and vocalization. Manaka Iwami delves into the expressiveness and enthusiasm in Akane Kurokawa’s acting. Her performance allows the character to establish an emotional connection with the audience and hit them intensely when she delivers those lines of support to Aqua, who intends to kill a famous person (see episode 5): Iwami immersed herself in so many details to express Kurokawa’s dark side that she created a scene impossible to forget.
Those who had fallen in love with Mengo Yokoyari‘s eye-catching visuals and Aka Akasaka‘s mysterious and complex plot will not be disappointed. But “Oshi no Ko” also has the merit of showing the transformative power of the theater: once on stage, the diverse characters of the anime become a brilliant cast whose teamwork can create dynamic choreographies with a passionate flow and grace and bring the audience to tears through layered performances. Moreover, it is an informed and sympathetic look at the world of production for theater and musical video: it focuses on the experience of people who study, write, and film without neglecting the emotional storytelling in the process.
