Quick Review #92: Oshi no ko - Autumn 2024

Title: Oshi no ko / 推しの子

Rating: 7 / 10

Recommended for: 

Those who are keen to watch stories exposing the dark side of the Japanese entertainment industry and/or are fans of the young cast 

* Currently available for viewing on Amazon Prime Video (availability subject to geographical restrictions)

Liked:

- The parts depicting the dark side of the Japanese entertainment industry (probably the same elsewhere too) were intriguing to watch especially if you know or have read about some of these things in the media before. However, it can get a bit uncomfortable because some of the "examples" featured in the drama will bring back bad memories of how some of these things led to tragic or unpleasant outcomes e.g. the part about how a young girl was almost driven to suicide due to cyberbullying caused by skewed editing in a reality show and the trouble in real-life adaptation projects between the production side and the original material's authors. 

- Although the drama was short with just 8 episodes, the cast lineup was pretty impressive with quite a number of well-known names in cameos or key supporting characters. However, I also think the young cast such as Sakurai Kaito, Saitou Asuka, Saitou Nagisa, Hara Nanoka and Kayashima Mizuki including the two child actors who played Aqua and Ruby deserve special mention for their promising and engaging performances. While I have never read the manga nor watched the anime and cannot tell if they match the images of the original characters, I thought that their acting definitely helped to make this drama better than I expected. 

Disliked: 

- Although I have heard about this title for a long time, I never had the intention to watch the anime nor the drama until I read in the media that Ninomiya Kazunari appeared in this drama as a surprise towards the end. Unfortunately, despite his character's significance in this story, he only appeared in 2 miserable scenes and one of that was in the ending credits for the final episode. To be honest, I kinda felt a bit cheated because 2 scenes were hardly enough to justify me spending so much time watching the entire 8 episodes. Looks like his character will only be fleshed out in the movie version which I'm not sure if Amazon Prime Video will pick it up anytime soon. So for Nino fans, you won't miss much of him even if you don't watch the drama.

- While the suspense aspect of trying to find the identity of Aqua and Ruby's birth father was a key element of the story, I thought that the process to reach the right answer wasn't that challenging although to be fair, the correct name only popped up towards the end. In addition, as a key part of the background story about how the two souls who got reborn as Aqua and Ruby wasn't explained clearly in the drama, it felt like I was heading into the story blind until I did some research online on what had happened prior to the drama's start. Might be good to check out the anime or manga beforehand or else you will find yourself in the same situation as me.