[Oshi No Ko] Volume 11 Review
Kana Anima is in the idol group B Komachi, but her heart lies in acting, and in a drive to land herself a big part, she ends up going back to the home of a well-known film director. This one mistake ends up being caught up a photographer of a magazine, who plans to run the story of a ‘sleepover’ between the pair. This scandal could affect the idol group, and Kana Anima’s career, forever, but is there a way to stop the magazine from running the story? Meanwhile, Aqua, now back on his revenge quest, has the name of his mother’s killer and a plan to make his life as miserable as possible before going for the kill, but is he willing to sell out his mother’s own name to get what he wants?
Volume 11 of the extremely popular series covers the rather short Scandal Arc and starts the Movie Arc. Despite this book being a big turning point in the series so far, I found myself not being as engaged as I would have like to have been, considering the big emotional story twist in this book.
The Scandal Arc covers 8 out of 10 chapters of this volume, which seems to be a decent length, but I couldn’t help but feel like the story was rushing through it. On one hand, I get it, we had a similar vibe story with the Dating Reality Show Arc, with one female character having their career suddenly on the edge of being over before it’s even begun and the threat of fans sending abuse to them. However both instances have a different flavour to them. When Akane got ‘cancelled’ in the Dating Reality Show Arc, it was something that was happening in the moment, as it happened as the show was airing and still filming, so we saw and felt her downfall and collapse in real time. In the Scandal Arc however, Kana is given warning of the story being printed, she and her agency are asked for an interview BEFORE they run the story, so Kana is stewing in her own anxiety and feels like a failure for ‘being caught’ even though she didn’t sleep with the director. But it’s the perception of an idol ‘not meant to have boyfriends’ that causes her to spiral, and imagine all the horrible things that could be said about her. The thing is, we have seen many instances of this very thing happening in real life, so we know it can be a huge problem for an idol’s career. However since this arc is mostly ‘what ifs’ and anticipation for the article running, it doesn’t have the same emotional connection and impact. We’ve also seen Kana spiral and internalise her issues a lot already in this manga. I do feel for her, and her being pulled between her passion for acting but also feeling guilty for letting her idol group down: that contradiction is very human, but I feel we’ve already done this song and dance already. It would have maybe made it more interesting if we also got to see the movie director’s perspective on the scandal, or react to Kana’s distress to make the problem feel more real, but after Kana leaves his apartment we never see him again, so he’s mostly a story tool, rather than a character suffering consequences for his actions. On the other hand, we do get some interesting information from their manager Miyako Saitou, about how difficult it is for celebrities to truly shake off reporters and have a private life, making the comments from the general public about ‘being careful’ and ‘it can’t be that hard to avoid them’ seem baseless and naïve.
In my last review, I said that if this arc ended up with Aqua saving Kana, it would be weak writing. Well, bad news is that Aqua does end up saving Kana from the scandal, but the good news is that his gambit ends up being the major turning point in the series. I won’t spoil what he does, but the trading of one scandal for another is clever, and it’s nice to see Aqua pull a major stunt like this, when his previous actions have been mostly information gathering, pulling strings and making connections to find out the truth. But now that he knows who the killer is, he’s making big swings to get closer to him. So yeah, the arc ends as expected, but the move is well played and it’s nice seeing people’s reactions, even if they’re just quick panel shots of the news breaking. It would have been nice to have more from Miyako Saitou, considering she’s Aqua’s and Ruby’s adoptive mother, but the explosive fight between Aqua and Ruby is enough, and adds real tension between the twins. Will they be able to resolve it and hopefully come together to track down Ai’s killer? We’ll have to wait and see.
The last two chapters set up the Movie Arc, where Aqua and his director friend Taishi write a script to pitch to a producer, based upon Ai’s life. Considering the connections Aqua has made up until now, it’s no wonder that the movie gets green-lit so fast, and it’ll be interesting to see some returning characters play parts in the movie. This means that the build-up is very fast-paced, again adding to the feeling of not being as engaged as I would like to be, but I’m hoping most of the energy will be spent on the movie-making itself, which will be interesting to see. This book also gets the first look at our ‘villain’ of the series, who finally makes an appearance in quite a chilling way, showing him end another star’s life. The chapter is quite short, and it doesn’t quite hit the mark as his target is a character we’ve never seen before, but I hope we get more from him as the series goes on.
Art continues to be strong through the book; there’s no major set pieces but Kana’s meltdown after discovering she was caught at the director’s place, and her heart-to-heart with Aqua after are well presented and nicely framed too. The translation by Taylor Engel continues to be a strong read, with a few translation notes at the back.
[Oshi No Ko] is not hitting the highs and emotional beats that we know it’s capable of, but that doesn’t take away from the continually interesting story, and media industry insider information along the way. Let’s hope the Movie Arc brings the shine back into the story soon.
Our review copy was supplied by Yen Press.
