#aohl talks onk

[all-of-her-light]

Ruby and the Unplayed Role

(Warning: Long analysis post.)

In Chapter 115 of Oshi no Ko, as Ruby is preparing to take her turn in the interpersonal acting audition, she reflects on her relationship to acting itself – and describes it as running very deep.

And by "the whole time", she seems to mean the whole time. As Sarina, she "played the role" of a girl who faced her circumstances bravely and bore no grudge against her parents for their neglect, because rebelling against those miserable circumstances would have been futile. Upon her reincarnation, "Ai's daughter" too was a role she played, and after Ai's death, she acted as the bright, innocent, non-grieving idol that she believed Ai wanted her to grow up to be. At this point in the story, we've already seen black-starred Ruby hide her vengeful anger behind a smiling facade, but this monologue suggests broad artificiality in Sarina/Ruby's self-presentation even before her vengeance arc.

Notably, Ruby also wonders here whether Ai's bright persona was an act in the same way that hers was:

This helps set the stage for later story beats like the end of Chapter 134, where Ruby again deepens her insight into Ai by personally relating to her.

And then, as if to drive home the point about her own acting, Ruby's turn in the audition consists of her expressing raw, acute grief over Ai and Gorou's deaths...

...before putting on a bubbly mask and acting like the grief isn't real.

Later on, the scene in Chapter 123 where Ruby spills her guts to Aqua seems to elaborate on the nature of the act that she's been putting on:

Ruby has been burying all of her sadness and anger and frustration, seeking to "smile all the time" in order to be loved. She's been performing a sanitized, idealized version of herself out of fear that no one would love the real her. Just like Ai did. Which, again, gives Ruby a powerful avenue for understanding Ai.

But there's an issue with this analysis. If you look back at Ruby's behavior in the manga's early chapters – before she discovers Gorou's corpse, meets the Crow Girl, becomes vengeful and all that – you'll notice that she doesn't actually express unfailing cheer, optimism, kindness, confidence, or generally Ai-like behavior. She doesn't even seem to be trying, really. She's bright and cheerful sometimes, sure – but other times she's unapologetically not, for understandable human reasons.

For instance, there's that time in Chapter 19 when she begs Miyako to hurry in starting an idol group for her to join, openly expressing insecurity about fitting in with her celebrity peers:

Or that time in Chapter 37 when she approaches Kana to confide in her about her stage fright:

(It's hard to imagine Ai seeking out support from a groupmate like this, at least without them opening up to her first in the same conversation.)

Ruby is also not above being rude or hostile to people, even when it's against her own interests, as can be seen in her bickering with Kana in Volume 2:

And then there's Chapter 23, when Ruby gets on Aqua's case about neglecting family time in favor of LoveNow-related activities:

(This is also one of those things Sarina/Ruby does that takes on a new meaning once you learn about her relationship with her original parents.)

There are more examples of pre-vengeance Ruby expressing various negative emotions to others, but I won't belabor the point. In general, I think perceptions of pre-vengeance Ruby as acting consistently cheerful or positive come largely from exaggerating/simplifying the contrast between her and her gloomy brother, or between her and her "darker" future self. They don't reflect her actual behavior.

Now, speaking of Sarina/Ruby's relationship with her original parents, I think it makes sense that a badly neglected child like Sarina would develop a tendency to avoid behaving in any potentially unpleasant ways around her parents, implicitly hoping that they'll want to spend more time with her that way. I also think it makes sense that she would extend this strategy to other relationships, given the formative role of one's relationship with one's parents – especially in Sarina's case, due to her isolation.

Importantly, though, we don't see Sarina trying to perfectly sanitize herself in her interactions with Gorou. Indeed, they both seem quite comfortable teasing each other (in flashbacks both from earlier chapters and from more recent ones):

The fact that Sarina doesn't walk on eggshells with Gorou suggests that she's relatively secure in her relationship with him, rather than fearing that failure to get along with him flawlessly will drive him away. I think this means Ruby's characterization in the early chapters is compatible with Sarina's later-revealed backstory if we understand Sarina's relationship with Gorou as also having been formative, teaching her that she doesn't need to act perfect to be loved. I also think this interpretation helps elucidate why Gorou means so much to Sarina/Ruby: his robust, reliable love and care for her gave her a level of confidence and security in herself that she didn't have before.

Now, what about Ruby's grief over Ai's death? Don't Chapters 115 and 123 imply that to be the single most prominent feeling that pre-vengeance Ruby was burying beneath her acting? How do the early chapters portray the effect of Ai's death on Ruby? Is that portrayal compatible with 115 and 123 (interpreted the way I did earlier)?

I am again going to argue: not really, no. 115 and 123 have Ruby recall "[acting as if] overcoming my mother's death, becoming a bright and innocent idol" (115) while secretly thinking "it'd be easier if I could just forget about her" (123). They seem to portray Ruby's past coping strategy for Ai's death as avoidant in nature; she tried to avoid letting the tragedy affect her or ideally even thinking about it at all. However, the early chapters portray Ruby's coping strategy for Ai's death as distinctly un-avoidant. Allow me to explain.

Starting off, Chapter 10 shows us Ruby's behavior in the days following Ai's death. We first see her reading social media reactions to Ai's murder and expressing anger and distress at people saying she was asking for it if she had a secret relationship, while Aqua listens silently:

A while later, though, after Ai's funeral – in fact, starting in the very next panel – Ruby and Aqua have the following conversation:

This conversation is echoed in Chapter 12, after the post-prologue timeskip, when Ruby, Miyako, and Aqua talk about Ruby joining the underground idol group:

In both conversations, Ruby doesn't deny her family members' claims about the hardships of idolhood, but she expresses a desire to become an idol anyway, not wanting to let the hardships stop her. After all, Ai sparkled, and Ruby wants to be like her.

(To reiterate, by the way, pre-vengeance Ruby's desire to "be like Ai" does not seem to involve never showing any negativity in her personal life. And it's not even as if Ruby never saw any negativity from Ai to begin with; see e.g. Chapter 4.)

But what does this drive of Ruby's have to do with her grief over Ai's death? After all, Ruby has wanted to be an idol – and to be like Ai – since before she was Ruby. She didn't need Ai to die to want those things. And how would her idol ambitions even psychologically relate to processing her grief?

Well, I think we get a pretty good look at a relation between them later on, starting in Chapter 41. This chapter opens with Ruby talking in her thoughts to "Mama in heaven", telling her about developments in the twins' lives from the past few months (which also serves to fill in and recap for the reader). After the recap, Ruby reassures Ai that she's doing well, and then we get these panels:

Ruby believes that performing at a dome – the elite opportunity that Miyako in Chapter 8 told us was "everyone's fantasy" – was also Ai's fantasy. But Ai's dreams of soaring to maximum fame as an idol were dashed by her murder. And now Ruby has taken it upon herself to fulfill them in Ai's stead, giving her another major reason to pursue idolhood.

We see Ruby visiting Ai's grave again and giving her more updates a couple in-universe months later in Chapter 72. Ruby tells her about the upcoming trip to Miyazaki, Aqua having become more cheerful lately, and then:

All of this implies that Ruby has been visiting Ai's grave and connecting with her memory in this way every few months for who-knows-how-long, and she has no intention of stopping.

This is not the behavior of someone who is trying to avoid giving mental space to the death of a loved one. On the contrary, pre-vengeance Ruby repeatedly confronts herself with the concrete fact of Ai's death and responds to it with mental fight rather than flight. The dark side of the idol world may have killed Ai's body, but it hasn't killed her spirit. Ruby copes with the tragedy of Ai's death by turning it into motivation – to preserve Ai's memory, to take up her mantle, to defy the darkness to ensure that her spirit lives on.

So what should we make of these discrepancies in Ruby's characterization between the earlier and later chapters? Honestly, I'm not completely sure. Maybe there's some way in which all of this makes sense after all. Maybe something got lost in the translation from Japanese to English? Maybe some of Ruby's recollections in Chapters 115 and 123 that we've assessed are meant to apply specifically to her vengeful self, or to the times when she was making public appearances? Maybe Akasaka deliberately wrote some of those recollections to be wrong to show that Ruby's awful present mental state is distorting her memories and sense of self? It seemingly wouldn't be the only case of that happening; Ruby appears to claim in Chapter 122 that the reason she became an idol in the first place was to avenge Ai and Gorou, which we know isn't true (and which Aqua also refuses to believe).

However, I think we should also consider the possibility that Akasaka just changed his mind about how he wanted to write Ruby partway through the manga, and the discrepancies in her characterization are artifacts of that without a good in-story explanation. For instance, maybe Akasaka only nailed down the details of Ruby's role in the Movie arc relatively recently, and the things he wanted to do with her required her to be able to personally relate to Ai in ways that didn't line up with her established characterization. So Akasaka tried to reframe what he'd written before to make Ruby more similar to Ai in certain ways, without complete success.

If this hypothesis is true, then Ruby isn't one fully consistent character throughout the whole manga; we have to distinguish "Old Ruby" and "New Ruby" at a minimum. And that idea disappoints me; Ruby is one of my favorite OnK characters, and inconsistencies of this size in her character progression interfere with my ability to appreciate it as it continues into the future. I also just kinda like Old Ruby better than New Ruby; I think Old Ruby better distinguishes herself from Ai and contrasts her in an interesting way. Old Ruby (pre-vengeance) is a person who knows the feeling of loving and being loved, values living authentically, and largely succeeds at it from day to day, but is nevertheless building her life on a couple of big lies and misunderstandings. (Ai didn't dream of the dome; Ai didn't want her children to remain a secret forever; the Ai who Ruby has dedicated herself to honoring is not the real Ai.) I think a character like that is a valuable addition to a story like OnK, and I'm disappointed at the idea of Old Ruby's arc never getting a proper, non-retconning second half and conclusion.

#oshi no ko #aohl talks onk #ruby hoshino #sarina tendouji #onk spoilers #long post #abuse cw

[all-of-her-light]

So Chapter 138 of Oshi no Ko opens with the reappearance of Ruby's patterned pajamas complete with droopy nightcap, to the joy of some of us fans.

But did you notice that these pajamas look a little different from the ones back in Chapter 68? These are short-sleeved with a dot pattern, while those were long-sleeved with a star pattern. (Even the pom-pom on the hat was a star!)

This implies that Ruby has owned not one, but at least two distinct sets of pajamas in this style. (Maybe the short-sleeved ones are for summer and the long-sleeved ones are for winter.) I think that's pretty great.

#oshi no ko #onk spoilers #aohl talks onk #ruby hoshino #tongue in cheek

[all-of-her-light]

Aqua, Guilt, and Gorou

Let's set the stage. It's Chapter 50, in the middle of rehearsal for Tokyo Blade, and Aqua is trying to learn emotional acting from Kana. She tells him that in order to portray a moment of joy from his character, he should remember times when he himself was happy.

And so Aqua begins collecting his happy memories. (Perhaps meaningfully, all of the ones we see him recalling are from the past few in-universe months.) It's enough to put a smile on his face, and even make him blush a little as he looks back at Kana. But then –

An apparition of Gorou in Aqua's mind berates him for enjoying himself when he couldn't save Ai, and Aqua begins to have a panic attack. As the next chapter opens, Aqua leaves the rehearsal session to go rest, but Ai's death and the Gorou apparition haunt his dreams:

This is the first time we directly see Aqua struggling with guilt over Ai's death. Of course, Chapters 11 and 12 show that he's strongly motivated to prevent Ai's tragedy from repeating with Ruby, and in Chapter 26 we get a hint that he feels some kind of responsibility for Ai's death:

Guilt and self-blame are conspicuously absent from Aqua's extensive monologuing about Ai's death in Chapter 10, though. I think the in-universe explanation for that would have to be something like "the idea that Ai's death was in any sense his fault is too painful for him to even consider so soon after it happened" – and maybe that was Akasaka's intent, or maybe Aqua feeling guilty just wasn't part of his plans yet. Either way, though, as of Chapter 50, Aqua's guilt is very much present and here to stay.

Notably, Chapters 50 and 51 are also the first time that the manga plays with the idea of a Hoshino twin's past life as a separate entity from their current self. (For instance, Aqua has always referred to Gorou in first person in his inner monologue, and likewise with Ruby and Sarina.) I think it's clear that Aqua is not literally being haunted by Gorou's ghost here – for one thing, Crow Girl strongly implies in Chapter 75 that Aqua's soul is Gorou's soul – but the split does make sense symbolically and psychologically for Aqua. After all, Gorou was an adult who took on the responsibility of caring for Ai and helping her achieve the family life that she wanted...

...and when that life was ripped away from her before his eyes, it's understandable that he'd feel like he ultimately failed her. But Aqua Hoshino, who was only three years old when Ai died, is someone who obviously has no business feeling guilt like that, and indeed no one holds him at all responsible for Ai's death. So Aqua's guilt manifests in his mind as Gorou, his past life standing in the way of him properly living his current one.

After Chapter 51, we next see the Gorou apparition in Chapter 55, just before Tokyo Blade's opening performance. Aqua prepares for the show by staring at a picture of Ai on his phone and recalling her death, reaching the verge of a panic attack – and summoning the apparition.

Here, Aqua reciprocates the apparition's practice of referring to him and it as separate entities. (Which makes this the first and only time as of Chapter 136 that Aqua internally refers to Gorou as a separate entity, if it counts.) Even so, though, the guilt that the apparition embodies is intermingled with the emotions that Aqua consciously experiences:

And why is Aqua practicing calling his own trauma to mind like this? So he can use it for emotional acting, of course. (Pretty messed up.) We see the fruits of this in Chapters 64 and 65, when Aqua's character has to react to the apparent death of the one for whose sake he fought, and Aqua himself is in about as much turmoil. But this encounter with the Gorou apparition – the final one of the arc – goes a bit differently from the others.

This time, Aqua refuses to separate the apparition from himself, instead recognizing it as a manifestation of his very own past trauma. Correspondingly, the apparition's form as Gorou – an identity that Aqua has left behind – dissipates to reveal Aqua as he was in the immediate aftermath of Ai's death. Aqua still maintains some conscious distance from those feelings, represented by his current self existing separately in the scene and handling the narration – which makes sense, since he's trying to control the feelings for acting purposes. But they're nonetheless his feelings, and he takes advantage of that to fuel his acting.

Also notable are the apparition's own words here, which frame Aqua's revenge as an obligation that he has no right to be happy before fulfilling – presumably because of his failure to save Ai. Aqua's revenge quest, it seems, is motivated in large part by his guilt; making himself miserable living only for revenge is an attempt at penance, and all of the blood and suffering that he intends to extract from Ai's murderer is an attempt to repay Ai for everything he let her lose.

And then Chapter 68 happens. One of Aqua's DNA tests has revealed that he and Taiki Himekawa share the same father. Taiki's father is Seijuurou Uehara, who is dead. Which means Aqua's father is dead, and avenging Ai is no longer possible. Right?

That's certainly what Aqua chooses to believe. Because if avenging Ai is no longer possible, then it's no longer obligatory, and Aqua doesn't have to make himself miserable anymore. He's finally free to do the things that make him happy without being crippled by guilt about how he should be obsessing over revenge instead.

Also, since Aqua is no longer bound to penance for Gorou's failure to protect Ai, thoughts of Gorou's life don't demand nearly as much space in his mind now. There's really only one loose end from his past life left to tie up:

Of course, the corpse that Aqua wants to find is Gorou's. He stops looking for it once Akane points out that the "pet's corpse" is probably either buried or scattered – but when she stumbles on it later anyway, he's very grateful to her:

By the way, it seems like Aqua means it when he says he always wanted Gorou's corpse to be found. This monologue of his echoes one in Chapter 7 of all places:

And as it happens, on the very next page, we see Aqua ask Ruby about her past life – a conversation which swiftly ends as follows:

In general, it seems like Gorou wasn't a very happy or fulfilled person, so it's not surprising that even aside from carried-over guilt, Aqua is motivated to forget about his past life in favor of his new one as a young person full of potential. I'm inclined to see his desire for Gorou's corpse to be found as at least partially a desire to symbolically say goodbye to Gorou; to see Gorou confirmed to the world as dead and laid properly to rest.

Speaking of carried-over guilt, Chapter 75 reveals that Gorou was at least implicitly made to feel guilty by his maternal grandparents over his mother's death from giving birth to him. And then in Chapter 78, when Aqua is talking to Akane, he blames himself for her having seen Gorou's corpse even though she ended up finding it by chance. He even claims that he tried to manipulate her into finding it for him when Chapter 75 pretty clearly shows him giving up on it being found. Akane comments a couple times in Chapter 78 that this behavior is typical for him:

So it seems like the Takachiho arc is intentionally establishing "feels guilty and responsible for things that aren't really his fault" as a general character trait of Gorou/Aqua, stemming originally from how Gorou's grandparents made him feel about his mother's death. (Chapter 122 takes this trait significantly further by portraying Gorou/Aqua as so guilty about being unable to save Sarina that, despite suspecting Ruby was Sarina, he spent his whole life as Aqua in denial of it. Please forgive me if I smell a retcon.)

Let's continue with the story now. Aqua spends about a year in-universe believing that Ai's killer is dead – but then in Chapter 95, Ichigo points out to him that Seijuurou Uehara died before Ai moved to the apartment where she was killed, and the DNA test doesn't eliminate the possibility that Uehara isn't Taiki's biological father. Aqua begins spiraling, and we see the Gorou apparition confront him for the first time since Chapter 65. Alongside it is a separate apparition taking the form of young Aqua; it seems to embody sadistic hatred for Ai's killer while Gorou embodies Aqua's guilt.

I think the logic behind the two distinct apparitions is this: the reason why these feelings manifest as apparitions separate from Aqua in the first place is that they're egodystonic feelings that he doesn't want to feel, and as of late he's been trying to avoid feeling both his guilt over Ai's death (Gorou) and his hatred for her killer (young Aqua) for the sake of leading a normal happy life.

Aqua now consciously believes that he cannot pursue revenge and be happy at the same time, but he struggles with which one to choose. He comes to Akane for advice in Chapter 97, probably hoping that she'll tell him to forget about revenge – but instead, she tries to deal with the culprit herself behind his back. He catches her, though, and reveals that he's made his decision:

And when he says he's going to hell, he may not be exaggerating. His renewed pursuit of revenge is much more directly self-destructive than before; he deliberately pushes away Akane and later Ruby as well, consciously intending to die or at least ruin his life in the course of revenge, and not wanting his loved ones to suffer when it happens.

(For what it's worth, this is not the first time we see Aqua consider dying. There's also an instance in Chapter 10, though that one is framed more as Aqua just feeling completely lost in life without Ai.)

Aqua's renewed revenge is also somewhat more consciously sadistic than before, I think; despite knowing the culprit's identity, he puts off killing him for the sole purpose of executing a plan to make him suffer as much as possible (see Chapters 99 and 108). Granted, that plan was one he came up with when he was little (Chapter 108), and wanting the culprit to suffer was always part of his conscious motivation (Chapter 13), but just as often he'd state his goal as simply killing him (e.g. Chapters 10 and 52). Black-starred Aqua, however, displays a level of intent to make the culprit suffer while alive that was previously only the territory of the apparitions from his mind's dark corners.

Speaking of the apparitions, all of black-starred Aqua's talk about going to hell and making Ai's killer suffer and "I've thrown away the naive thought about being happy" (Chapter 108) seems like it should be right up their alley, but after Chapter 95 (and as of Chapter 136), they're nowhere to be seen. I think this is because Aqua's guilt and hatred essentially won the battle for his ego that occurred in Chapters 95-98; they now manifest directly in his thoughts and behavior instead of as apparitions. Black-starred Aqua consciously believes that both he and the culprit deserve nothing but suffering for their roles in Ai's death. It's Aqua's desire to move forward that's marginalized in his mind now.

Perhaps relevantly, in the panel after Ruby bids Aqua farewell in Chapter 106, Aqua himself appears as a black silhouette – just like the Gorou apparition in several places in the Tokyo Blade arc. And then in Chapter 122, when Aqua has discovered Ruby's past identity and is trying to convince her to stop worrying about revenge, this exchange happens:

It's possible that Aqua here is mentally "being Gorou" or speaking as him only as a reaction to this specific situation – but given everything else we've talked about here, I can't help but suspect that this reflects a stable feature of black-starred Aqua's self-concept. Black-starred Aqua thinks of himself as Gorou, the man who failed Ai. "Aqua Hoshino" is just a mask that he's been wearing – once to hide from his responsibility, and now to fulfill it through his revenge plan. He doesn't deserve to sincerely call himself by the name that tempts him with a chance at a happy life.

@aihoshiino points out that Aqua has been acting somewhat awkward around Ruby since the mutual past-life reveal (e.g. in their talk in Chapter 132), and theorizes that part of the reason for this is that Ruby is now seeing Aqua as Gorou, but Aqua doesn't want to be Gorou. Given what I've been theorizing here, though, I think Aqua's discomfort is more precisely because Ruby is seeing him as Gorou and loving him for it. From Ruby's perspective, Gorou is wonderful and it's wonderful that she's been reunited with him. But from Aqua's perspective, Gorou let Ai die. Gorou is a failure. Gorou doesn't deserve Ruby's love. (He doesn't want her love in a romantic sense anyway, I think, but he feels he doesn't deserve any kind of love from her.) And he feels especially bad because he's letting her love him regardless for the sake of the movie revenge plan, which eventually involves his destruction. He's using her for a purpose that she'd never agree to and that will leave her heartbroken if it succeeds – even if he believes that what she loves is a lie.

#oshi no ko #aohl talks onk #aqua hoshino #gorou amamiya #onk spoilers #long post #ptsd cw #death by childbirth cw #suicidal ideation cw

[all-of-her-light]

@kyrieeleisonelise

This isn't something I've thought about a whole lot before, but I can think of various potential factors:

Unlike Akane, who's been able to focus solely on her acting career, Kana has had a lot of her time and energy eaten up by idol work.

In Chapter 20, when Kana is considering Ruby's offer to join her idol group, she worries about losing acting jobs as soon as she starts as an idol. The industry may have a predisposition against casting idols for normal acting roles, and only unusually popular idols (like Ai as of Chapter 5) can bypass that.

Mem has her own popular YouTube channel and can cross-promote between there and her appearances in B-Komachi. Unlike Kana, she doesn't need to rely on job offers from other people to gain popularity on the side from her idol work.

Kana was the best singer in B-Komachi when they started, but according to Chapter 128, Ruby and Mem have since caught up with her in singing skill. Kana may not have anything to make her stand out within B-Komachi at this point.

Kana joined B-Komachi in the first place for Aqua's sake, and in their first concert in Chapter 38, the thing that enables Kana to overcome her insecurities and put on a good performance is Aqua's encouragement and her desire to be special to him. But Aqua spent over a year in-universe ghosting Kana, which distressed her a lot. That can't have been good for her motivation in her idol work.

While Kana is a talented actress, she spent a while holding back her acting chops for the sake of playing maximally well with her co-stars and being easy to work with. And maybe it's the case that that approach is valid as a bare-minimum survival strategy, but it's not how you really impress people in charge of casting, and Kana's genuinely excellent performances in places like Tokyo Blade and the last episode of Sweet Today didn't fully dislodge her previous reputation.

#oshi no ko #aohl talks onk #onk spoilers #kana arima

[all-of-her-light]

I've seen quite a lot of symbolic analysis of Oshi no Ko that defines Aqua and Ruby entirely in terms of their relationship to Ai. The simplest and most obvious is stuff like "Ai's eye color is a mix of the twins' eye colors, and Ai has stars in both her left and right eyes while the twins have one each. This represents how the twins are two halves of Ai." But of course, the analyses tend to elaborate beyond that and try to relate the symbolism to Ai, Aqua, and Ruby's literal-level characterization.

And I don't know if I think this sort of analysis is wrong, exactly? The obvious stuff with the stars and the eye colors suggests at least some correspondence to authorial intent, I think. But it's always felt strange and uncomfortable to me – viewing Aqua and Ruby as mere reflections of Ai like that – because it directly clashes with the themes of OnK's literal-level narrative. After all, that narrative practically beats us over the head with the idea that Aqua and Ruby are their own people and it's not good for them to spend their lives mentally in Ai's shadow.

I also think this view of the twins is the only sensible one from a realistic perspective. After all, Aqua and Ruby in-universe are full human beings just like Ai was, with all of the potential for growth and self-determination that that implies. And it is not in fact psychologically healthy for a human being to build their entire identity around their relationship to a single other person.

I don't know exactly what to make of this conflict between OnK's literal-level narrative and (possibly) its symbolism; I just thought it was worth pointing out. (To be honest, I'm not big on analyzing literary symbolism in general; I find it both more comprehensible and more compelling when a story explores its ideas through what actually happens to its characters.)

#oshi no ko #onk spoilers #aohl talks onk #ai hoshino #aqua hoshino #ruby hoshino

[all-of-her-light]

Random thought: I kinda wish Kana could see her official stats from Chapter 128. Maybe if she saw that big ol' S in acting skill, she wouldn't be so hard on herself.

But then again, maybe seeing an objective measurement of her comparatively low popularity would just make her more insecure about it. Especially if she could see the stats of people like Akane, Ruby, or Mem-cho too.

Poor Kana. She'll find an environment where she can thrive someday, I hope...

#oshi no ko #onk spoilers #aohl talks onk #kana arima

[all-of-her-light]

hi, your post did get me thinking about Ruby’s character and I ended up making my post.

Do you take requests for things to discuss/Character interpretations?

First of all, thank you for making that post. I may not have agreed with everything you said, but I thought it was a valuable contribution to the discussion.

Anyone is free to send me asks and make suggestions for analysis post topics, though what comes out of it will depend on how much new and interesting stuff I think I have to say on the topic, as well as how much personal interest I have in it. I won't often make posts as long and detailed as "Ruby and the Unplayed Role", especially since that one took me a few days to write.

#aohl talks onk