#onk rewatch

[aihoshiino]

feeling myself go into some kind of berserker frenzy at the image of ai of b-komachi's fans crowded around the funeral venue, waving around merch and light sticks and making a scene, while ai's actual flesh and blood children have to sit in the car parked away from the venue and aren't allowed to actually attend their own mother's funeral

#oshi no ko #oshi no posting #onk rewatch #onk anime spoilers

[lavendorii]

aqua is kind of a little shit I think (tone pending)

#legitimately not sure if i like him or not ill have to rewatch some episodes #onk makes me feel so fucking hard im this close -><- to buying the manga if i can find it at the bookstore #its a really popular seasonal anime and they have a lot of niche stuff in their selection i might be able to... #they also have love me for who i am... i never finished that one #txt #anyway gotta get off my phone i am developing a migraine because onk always puts me on the verge of tears. every episode.

[obitv]

rewatching onk i forgot they convinced their adopted mom that they were divine messengers of amaterasu and it was her godgiven duty to look after them 😭

#normal idol anime

[uros-kana]

Naruto the Movie: Ninja Clash in the Land of Snow (onks toi eka naruto leffa emt)

never seen | want to see | terrible | boring | okay | good | great | a favorite

I saw it YEARS ago, but I should rewatch it lmao jesus christ

#naruto #not-her-e #ask #about me #fucking hell dude

[aihoshiino]

the character acting for ai in this moment is another reason i will champion the anime's take on this material as being so superior to the manga's it isn't even funny.

the manga doesn't even let us see her face here but the anime gives her this brief inhale of a moment where she briefly looks surprised - almost awed - and then she bursts into tears. To the end, the anime never focuses on the her bodily agony or the spectacle of the violence committed against her - it is necessarily, unavoidably a bit more gruesome than the manga just by the necessity of adding colour to the scene, but it pulls in much more closely on Ai's face, her expressions of joy, relief and release.

because of that, i think the anime really highlights and emphasizes something that is comparatively easier to miss in the manga's version: which is that Ai says these words to Aqua and Ruby expecting them to be a lie. The realization that her love is true doesn't come until she has already said the words and realized they're true.

Ai doesn't say these words for herself - she says them for Aqua and Ruby. Knowing it's the last and only chance she will ever have, even if it confirms her deepest and most horrendous fear, Ai cannot let herself die and cannot allow Aqua and Ruby to grow up without ever hearing that their mother loved them.

But that's just it, huh? Ai's absolutely desperate need to let Aqua and Ruby know they were loved is ironclad proof that she did, in fact, love them in of itself.

#oshi no ko #oshi no posting #onk rewatch #onk anime spoilers

[aihoshiino]

it's ai's funeral and rather than an image of her as she really was, the photo displayed for everyone to mourn is 'ai of b-komachi'. even in death she very literally cannot ever escape being an idol. she will never, ever be allowed to be a real person.

#oshi no ko #oshi no posting #onk rewatch #onk anime spoilers

[aihoshiino]

this is mostly played as a joke but do you ever think about how the twins' instinctive revulsion and rejection of the idea of ai as a human being who has had sex, based not on any parental sexuality squick but entirely on their continued inability to see her as a human and their mother first and an idol last, directly caused the phone call that doomed ai. hahahah. [shrinks and transforms into a corncob]

#oshi no ko #oshi no posting #onk rewatch #onk anime spoilers

[aihoshiino]

he poured one for ai so they could drink together now she's 20. hahahhahahhah. [ON THE VERGE OF THROWING UP BECAUSE OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL TORMENT]

#oshi no ko #oshi no posting #onk rewatch #onk anime spoilers

[aihoshiino]

really like this little bit as a demonstration of what an incredibly good mother ai is. when she first enters the room and sees ruby having fallen over, rather than draw attention to it, she gently helps ruby up and just acts as if everything is fine. it's only when ruby falls over again and goes down with a real bang that she leaps to making sure she's okay and then identifies the issue right away.

#oshi no ko #oshi no posting #onk rewatch #onk anime spoilers

[aihoshiino]

i hope whoever had the idea to add this little montage knows how incredibly fucking foul and evil they are

joking aside. this really is such an incredibly addition to the episode. it really feels like a microcosm of all the things i've been saying about the way the anime elevates the manga's source material, both in terms of how it serves the character relationships as a whole and ai's character in particular.

this sequence is clearly evoking the old idea of someone's life flasing before their eyes before their death but even though this is ai's POV, we don't see any moments in her life before the twins' birth or any at all that are without them. and i think that's the point - hoshino ai was born again as a real human being when the twins were born. her life restarted the moment they entered the world and despite everything, she was able to use that new start to create a new family and a new happiness for herself. it's none of the pain or isolation that comes to ai's mind in her final moments - just the pure, all-encompassing joy and love that she and the twins filled each others' days with.

#oshi no ko #oshi no posting #onk rewatch #onk anime spoilers

[aihoshiino]

cutting out all the rest of the interview segments only to hit us with this as the singular one retained and retooled for the anime is perhaps one of the most diabolical big brain moves in an adaptation full of diabolical big brain moves

#oshi no ko #oshi no posting #onk rewatch #onk anime spoilers

[aihoshiino]

interesting to see that all the things this girl lays out as being wrong with her idol group are not only things that we eventually find out were rotting at the core of original b-komachi, but that go on to poison the second gen group as well.

as such, it's especially insidious to see miyako, who saw this first hand in original b-komachi and goes on to perpetuate it in gen 2, dismiss it as 'groundless rumors' stemming from jealousy. because, like... that all really did happen! both ai and ruby were unfairly favoured by management because of nepotism and prior emotional investment, to the point that the other members were left feeling unappreciated and unsupported by management. their careers suffered and the resentment created a toxic social environment that harmed everyone... but hey! they were still making money, right?

i think these similarities - and the way miyako dismisses them - are a good reminder that even likable and good people like miyako aren't innocent of perpetuating harm when it comes to conducting business. the entertainment industry is a disease and everyone who touches it comes away infected, no matter how hard they try to avoid contagion

#oshi no ko #oshi no posting #onk rewatch #onk anime spoilers

[aihoshiino]

back on my 'there's no nice way to say this so i'm saying it the mean way' bullshit but returning to this scene always makes me so fucking insane in terms of how plainly and straightforwardly it lays out its intended text and themes and how many people are STILL, over one hundred chapters later, failing to catch up with this central idea, established at the very start of the story.

ai tells us, in her own words, with no veil of pretense of need to mask what everything has always been about: she desperately wants to give someone her love and to know she is doing so sincerely. she wants to know that she can do it, that she isn't broken - that she's a real human being with a real, beating heart inside of her chest.

that so many people, after chapter upon chapter of the story screaming this in your face over and over, still act as if the supposed 'real ai' is some huge mystery or that there is no insight into her feelings and motivations when this has been right fucking here since volume one is so inexplicable to me.

if you genuinely are still out here trying to argue that ai is this inexplicable enigma and we don't know anything about her and that everything has always been a lie and we still don't know the truth then.... sorry, but you just can't fucking read! terrible you had to find out this way.

#oshi no ko #oshi no posting #onk rewatch #onk anime spoilers

[aihoshiino]

this is a little exchange that has only gotten more and more fascinating the more and more we find out about kamiki. there's sooooo many implications here just in Ai's side of the situation - she could easily get in contact with him, Kamiki has presumably never expressed any interest in seeing the kids and when Ai brings it up, his immediate assumption is that this is leverage back into a relationship with him. Without more info about their relationship in general or Kamiki's side of the convo it's hard to know what it all adds up to but it itches my brain all the same

#oshi no ko #oshi no posting #onk rewatch #onk anime spoilers #onk spoilers

[aihoshiino]

crying. screamng. throwing up, even

This is far from the first time I have said/will say this but the more and more understanding we get of how fucking horrific a relationship Ai had with her own mother, the more special this moment between her and Ruby becomes to me. Every person in the Hoshino family is someone who suffered the absence of parental love in their lives but Ruby and Ai in particular share the experience of growing up with toxic and neglectful mothers - even before she began physically abusing Ai, the Da Vinci magazine interview (via Ai's perspective) describes a home life where Ai was largely ignored in favour of Ayumi's romantic partner and felt unwelcome and unwanted. It's not hard to see echoes of Sarina's neglect and abandonment at Marina's hands in that.

As such, it's just so incredibly sweet and powerful to see that, despite every single obstacle in her way, Ai is able to overcome her own pain and be nothing but a wonderful loving and supportive mothers to the twins but especially so here, with Ruby - two daughters of toxic mothers are able to forge a real, genuine mother-daughter bond founded on love and empathy for each other and its their salvation.

#oshi no ko #oshi no posting #onk rewatch #onk anime spoilers

[aihoshiino]

a friend and i were talking about this scene recently and she expressed a sense that it sat weirdly with her that ai remembered ryosuke, and felt that it went oddly with what OnK says about idol fandom - that it undermined the idea that ai did not owe these people any more than she already gave them, if that. i disagreed and couldn't quite put by finger on why but i think i managed to articulate why this works for me so well as we were talking.

ai's response here not only disarms ryosuke but it undermines and deconstructs any validity his rage might have had, on any level. to ryosuke, there is no nuance to this situation; if ai is not a pure, virginal flower eternally and exclusively dedicated to her fans to her own detriment then she must be a dirty, lying slut who was mocking them behind their backs when she even remembered they existed at all. it is pure white and black with no room for grey.

of course this isn't the case. but this is the dichotomy that the idol industry intentionally creates and perpetuates. it's why he can't handle it when ai shatters it.

i also think it's important to what OnK is challenging about the idol industry with this scene in particular that ryosuke is a fan who was 'close' enough to ai to be recognized - even years after they stopped seeing each other at handshake sessions. it means he was a particularly devoted fan, who was particularly all-in on the gachikoi kool-aid and with this exchange, OnK highlights that it's not just the idols being exploited by the industry; it's the fans, too.

ryosuke was also a victim of the idol industry, through obviously to a very different degree and in a very different context to ai. ryosuke is clearly not mentally well - like, genuinely, i don't mean that in a shitty glib way. he clearly is genuinely very mentally ill and vulnerable people like him are the ones most primed for the idol culture meat grinder. and he came out the other end having been turned into a monster.

no, ai does not owe him anything. but it is a testament to her pure, sincere kindness and a condemnation of ryosuke and the idol industry that created him, that she remembered him and thought fondly of him all the same. and that kindness and nuance is so incompatible with the world the industry created in ryosuke's mind that he would literally rather kill himself that reconcile them.

#oshi no ko #oshi no posting #onk rewatch #onk anime spoilers #suicide mention