I am so excited for this season! After coming off of the final episode of season 4 of Demon Slayer, immediately going into a play that is centered around a similar time period with demons and swords just feels like my hype is being transferred over lol. I love how we are immediately shown a bit of the stageplay and oh my gosh, if I was watching that part in theaters, it would have felt just like being there in person. The production of it in the series just looks super cool and I’d totally want to see something like this in real life. I also just love the little details of the small character on the screen actually moving as they are on the big screen. They even animated the freaking slash of the Blade character. Just all the small details in the animation from such a pulled out shot of the characters all the while matching the movement to the close up shots, that’s honestly amazing. They sure knew how to make us hyped for this arc because I am very looking forward to the actual stage play now.
Also, just a warning that I will be an annoying Kana fan and I WILL GUSH about her XD.
Speaking of details, while the song isn’t as much of a bop as the first season’s OP, visually, it is astounding. The song itself had to grow on me, but after a few more times of listening to it, I’ve grown to like it. Definitely not as much as the first OP, but it’s still really good in its own right. However, there seems to be a lot of symbolism in this OP all the while hiding some spoilers in plain sight. However, with how it’s executed, a lot of the plain sight spoilers will go over people’s heads until it shows up in story. Which is what an OP should do. I’m really looking forward to learning what is going on in this OP because clearly stuff will go down.
We jump right into the preparations for the stage play and already, we are treated to a spectacle. I absolutely loved the symbolism of those who are gifted and passionate about acting where they are shown in a vibrant color while the rest are grayed out. And the detail on how Kana does her acting jobs, at first she’s shining, but then purposefully dulls herself to match those around her. Only for Himekawa to douse her with the reality that she CAN act her heart out because he will be able to match her blow for blow. And man, that shot of Kana getting hit with color while half of her is the character… UGH IT WAS SO GOOD. Especially with how the two of them were shining so brightly while dousing the room with color. And man, I loved hearing unhinged Kana lol. The fact that someone is able to allow her to go all out after so long must feel so revitalizing to her. Even Aqua seemed awed by Himekawa’s performance if only for a moment. That whole sequence was just so good with the cinematography, the voice acting, the colors… I just keep replaying it because it was so good.
I am looking to see where Kana goes this season since she is someone to match the acting prowess of others around her. If she’s surrounded by sub-par actors, she will lower herself to their level so she doesn’t make it noticeable and take the viewers out of the experience such as in the drama she did in the first season. However, now that she has someone like Himekawa to allow herself to act her heart out, she could reach higher levels as Himekawa is the theater’s shining star. And acting alongside him, Kana just seemed to have such a fun time and just SHINED in her practice performance. I absolutely love seeing Kana shine~ In the beginning sequence, I was even waving imaginary glowsticks for her when she did her little character intro.
Akane is still an enigma to me where I don’t know if I like her or if I dislike her. She’s just kinda been toeing the line a bit for me so we’ll see if this arc changes anything for me. Especially since this feels like it’ll be heavily focused on her. Though I am a bit iffy on her growing her hair out seemingly in an attempt to get Aqua’s attention. Even going as far as to imitate Ai again, though he didn’t have much of a response this time. I am curious to see what is going on with her in regards to Kana considering on one hand, she claims to be unable to stand her, but on the other, she seems rather invested in her in certain ways. So I suppose we’ll have to wait and see just what their deal is since clearly it’s not JUST that they’re rivals in the acting world.
The shipper in me is reluctantly falling for the Aqua/Kana ship, so the fact Aqua seems to be paying close attention to Kana fills me with joy. But with that joy comes anxiety because of the way they are framing the Tokyo Blade ships. Princess Saya apparently started out as the main love interest to Touki, her subordinate, only for the enemies to lovers ship that involves Tsurugi to end up being favored instead. Though I can hardly blame the audience because, I too would probably ship that as well. Heck, I even started looking around to see if there was information on Tokyo Blade because I got interested in the idea of the ship lololol. However, because of that, Princess Saya was deemed as a “failed love interest” and was slowly being written out of the story. To which worries me in the sense where it feels like Kana is being raised up as the “love interest,” only to be eventually overtaken by Akane to “redeem” the fallen ship in the Tokyo Blade series. And while I am still on the fence about Akane, I do not like the ship with her an Aqua mostly due with how it even came about.
We get a little bit into how stage plays tend to take artistic liberties with how they portray the characters. To which, I feel is pretty accurate. I’ve watched a couple stage plays before and it is true that the characters tend to be a lot more boisterous compared to their original counterparts. I remember watching the Haikyuu stage play and it just felt like the characters were yelling half the time, even the ones who aren’t as loud. So it was a weird experience lol. But considering they have to have the characters make an strong impression faster, it does make sense why they’d want them to quickly get the point of the characters and make it easy to understand. Especially when stage plays tend to cover a large portion of the original material in a shorter amount of time. Though I can understand that it’s frustrating at the original intent for the character ends up getting lost due to time constraints. It sometimes happens in anime, but I feel like it’s especially prevalent in stage plays. However, because of this change, Akane seems to be struggling a bit to really get into the character. Especially since she liked the original portrayal of the character. However, as an actress, she does need to put aside her personal feelings on the matter and do what she was hired to do.
The mangaka of Sweet Today makes a reappearance and while she absolutely adores Kana and Aqua for the hard work they did for her drama, her incredibly cold reaction to Melt was freaking hilarious. I can hardly blame her considering what a diva he was and made a mess of the drama with his bad acting. I’m honestly surprised that Melt came back since I thought he’d be one off character in the series. Though I am happy to see him taking this more seriously, but we’ll have to see if his acting has shaped up compared to last time. From how Kana’s color dulled when practicing with him, he probably isn’t up to the same level as the others yet. But at least he seems to be trying this time. I’m excited to see more of him too. Funny that he’s actually in the same acting group as Kana again. Maybe her talent will help motivate him to get even better. She will most likely be a good influence on him for sure.
We also meet Abiko, the mangaka for Tokyo Blade and I was shocked to see how young she is. Especially since her manga is pretty popular. My first impression is that she has a lot of social anxiety but has a lot of passion for her work as she seemed to be impressed and excited for the project when she watched a little bit of the actors’ performances. Though the last thing I expected was for her to ask for the ENTIRE SCRIPT to be revised. To which… they’re already so far into rehearsals, how do they expect to change everything now??? Are they going to even allow that? Though from Yoriko’s reaction, it seems like she suspected something like this was going to happen. She definitely made quite the first impression with that massive drop so I’m excited to see how they handle this because that was NOT a simple request.
I am so happy to have Oshi no Ko back and this first episode holds a lot of promise and really set the stage for what is to come. I’m also curious to see what becomes of Aqua this season since he seems to be determined that acting is only a means to an end for his revenge, but Himekawa might end up being the catalyst for a change in his perspective.
Wow. Asking for the entire script to be revised. It reminded me of when I was working on my college thesis and then was told to revise everything after I only needed to work on the last part. (TT_TT)
Am I the only one who is surprised by how fast Akane’s hair grew? Because it feels only a few episodes ago that her hair is still short.
With the manga now reaching the final arc, it’s safe to assume that the anime will adapt the whole manga without needing to wait for much long for each season.
Oof, that’s rough…
Hair seems to grow at the speed of light in anime, so it’s not too surprising for me. Unless there was a lot of time before rehearsals started, though I highly doubt that.
At least there won’t be super long wait periods for this series if that’s the case. Will make sure the hype stays high until it’s finished hopefully.
Shadow, I really doubt that Kana will be overtaken as the main love interest by Akane. The reason is that these 12 episodes show that Aqua has a real interest in Kana he doesn’t show for other girls.
We know when Aqua was pretending to be Pieyon, or however it’s supposed to be spelled, he revealed that he’s a fan of Kana and had been following her through her childhood acting days and that he thinks that she’s cute. That he called her cute outside of when he absolutely had to like when he called Mem-cho cute when was part of the reality dating shows that he genuinely thinks that Kana is cute.
The show also made the point of having Aqua approach Kana when he wanted to vent with their game of catch, which shows she’s the one he leans on regarding that sort of thing. We also know according to Ruby that Aqua acts more like himself when he is around Kana, which shows that Kana brings Aqua to life.
Furthermore, Episode 12 this week shows that Aqua was staring intently at Kana and also remarked in his mind how he doesn’t have any scenes with Kana until the end of the play, which shows he had hoped he’d get more scenes with her. All of this points to Aqua having a romantic interest in Kana even if he is focused on revenge at the moment.
I would like to believe this will come to fruition, but there have been too many series that had built up one ship, only to do a 180 at the last second so I have a lot of trust issues when it comes to if the build up will amount to anything in the end or make it make sense.
I personally think it’s a design choice for Akane to grow out her hair long because she is meant to be the opposite of Kana (in terms of acting style, etc.). She already had long hair when she was a child before she cut it, so it’s not a stretch that she just went back to her old hairstyle. It’s still a quick growth though, since I guess 6(?) months have passed since the reality show arc (Ruby did mention that 4 months have passed since their first concert). IIRC, Mengo mentioned somewhere in her tweet/interview that readers can see that some time has passed between each arc through changes in her hair length lol.
Also star eyed Akane does not always mean she is imitating Ai. For this episode in particular, it is just her acting as Sayahime, albeit imperfect (the stars are small) because the script changed her character. That’s why Aqua didn’t have much response.