#goro amamiya

[gabbyp09]

[hyllatavorianaldan]

I've seen the argument that Oshi no Ko would work just the same/better as a story without the reincarnation element, and for a while I tossed around the pros and cons of this idea before finally coming to the conclusion that OnK absolutely needs the reincarnation plotline, because at the end of the day, Aqua Hoshino is a thirty-something year old man who's an obsessive idol otaku shoved into the body of an eighteen-year-old boy and is both unable and refuses to move on from the death of a twenty-year-old girl, and it really shows.

[centralammonites]

The Biggest Missed Opportunity: Not Discovering the Reincarnation

There are a lot of dropped plot threads in Oshi No Ko, but maybe the biggest is that no one ever learns about the reincarnation in the story proper.

Akane in particular definitely had the knowledge to figure it out, mostly from the Private arc, where she learns, in quick succession, that:

(1) Aqua knows a lot about Goro Amamiya's personal life and childhood, and of course that he died and his body was somewhere in the woods (I wonder if Akane thought that Aqua murdered him?). Note that Aqua really wanted her to know about both of these things; I think he hoped her uncanny insight would figure out his last secret so he wouldn't have to tell her.

(2) Ruby was very, very closely attached to Goro Amamiya, to the point of wanting to marry him. She sees that Ruby doesn't break down on seeing a body, only on realizing who he was.

(3) Aqua believes in the supernatural.

Of course, Goro died long before Aqua and Ruby could possibly have known him or grown attached to him, which Akane would have known as soon as the police report was filed. And it looks like she comes very close to putting all together before getting distracted by the kiss.

You could make the argument that she wouldn't be able to figure out the reincarnation for Bayesian reasons (the prior on supernatural intervention is so low that even with Aqua and Ruby's inexplicable knowledge, the probability is negligible), except that she figures out that Crow Girl is a god within a few weeks of Aqua's death just by investigating her background. So it's not like she refuses to think in terms of supernatural explanations, she just doesn't in this case. The reincarnation is the one thing about Aqua that Akane didn't either figure out herself or get told, and the story should have let her do this, if not in the Private arc (see: kissing distraction), then during the Movie arc when she learns for sure that Goro died the day Aqua/Ruby were born.

Not only would discovering the reincarnation recontextualize Akane/Aqua's relationship (he has 30 years of additional memories!) but it has the potential to do the same for most of Aqua's other relationships. How does Miyako, who thinks of him as her son, react to this? Kana, who thinks he's basically a normal, if unusually good-looking and talented, high-schooler? What about Director Gotanda, who first got to know him because of how impressive he was as a toddler? His half-brother, Taiki? You could easily write several chapters of just Akane coming to grips with the reincarnation, or an entire arc of the rest of Aqua and Ruby's circle doing so.

If I were to write ONK fanfiction, this would be the jumping off point.

[ecargmura]

Oshi No Ko Episode 23 Review - Reunited, But Not Like This!

The finale of Season 2 will be aired on Sunday, October 6 instead of its usual Wednesday time slot. I think it’s because of the influx of Fall anime airings that one premiere probably took its time slot. Anyways, just a heads up on this just in case if you’re gonna wonder why the finale review is gonna be late next week.

Aqua brings Akane to Miyazaki for the company R&R and Kana is not thrilled about it. To be honest, if this was going to be an R&R for Tokyo Blade in addition to the MV shooting, shouldn’t they bring some other characters too like Melt or Himekawa? It feels weird that Akane doesn’t have other schedules given that she should be busy as the rising star of Lala-lai… Man, this episode is just gut-punching Kana because Ruby was like “Will you two get married?” towards Akane, causing Kana to be even more upset. Also, I’m surprised that Aqua is that comfortable around that many girls.

I guess it was nice seeing the Aqua and Akane moments, but I do think that Kana would probably be end game in the sense that Kana gives Aqua the least amount of mommy issues. There are way too many parallels with Akane and Ai in the sense that she’s essentially mimicking Ai—her hair is even parted towards the left despite it being parted towards the right during her debut. If there are incest shippers out there, Ruby looks identical to Ai, so it probably wouldn’t be best to have her as end game either. Kana has the least amount of Ai parallels, which is probably the best choice for him in the long run, but this is just coming from someone who has to pick a girl for Aqua. For all I know, I wouldn’t even mind if Akane and Kana were to get together. Though, I do feel bad for Aqua as all the step forward he had with Kana now took three steps back.

The Goro and Sarina flashbacks were very bittersweet. People probably thought of Goro as creepy idol fan in the beginning of the story, but if you look at the flashbacks and Goro’s backstory from Aqua’s words in this episode, you can sort of tell that he’s a toxic people-pleaser; he’s got a lot of depth. His biological mother died due to childbirth, but he decided to become a OBGYN doctor because of guilt and what his grandmother would want and not what he truly wants—to be a surgeon. Because he couldn’t cure Sarina, he’d make empty promises like promising to marry her when she turned 16 just to please her. He even became an Ai fan because Sarina wished she could’ve gone to a B-Komachi concert. Everything he does is for others and never himself…and that mindset got implanted onto Aqua. It’s really sad that Goro is a person living with inner guilt to the point that he self-sabotages himself all the time. He’s always putting others before himself to the point of being a toxic trait. No wonder Aqua is very complicated. He has Goro’s mindset, but also has the limits of what a teenager can do. In a sense, it feels Aqua and Goro are different people.

I’ll tell you my biggest issue with Ruby: she still thinks she’s Sarina and not a completely different person. Like, Aqua is written in a way that you can tell that there is a difference between him and Goro as it does feel as if Aqua has an ego of his own, but I never really get that with Ruby. She goes around imagining that Goro will attend a B-Komachi concert and find her. Not once does she ever realize that Ruby and Sarina are two entirely different people and that Goro could not comprehend supernatural phenomena like reincarnation if he had been alive in the present as he is a man of science. I mean, I get that her past self was twelve years old, but that’s old enough to comprehend and develop an ego. I don’t know. I guess it’s probably because Ruby isn’t really included into the story as much, but that’s what I’m getting from observing her.

Two new characters are introduced. We got Anemone, Mem-cho’s acquaintance who is a music video producer. It’s interesting how flashy she is despite living in the countryside. Her voice actress is Yukana, who you might know from various media like Code Geass as C.C. and Tales of the Abyss as Tear Grants. Then, there’s the mysterious white haired girl. I’m gonna call her Crow Girl for now. She sounds like she’s voiced by Hina Kino, who voiced Miri from Buddy Daddies and Lishu from The Apothecary Diaries. Given her parallels with the crows and how she led Ruby to Goro’s corpse, does she have something to with the the reincarnation? Just what is she?

I feel really bad for Ruby. All of her fantasies about meeting Goro in her new life got instantly shattered. I really liked the effect of the star on her left eye diminishing, showing that it could disappear if met with an extremely traumatic effect… Don’t tell me… is Ruby gonna get those dark stars like Aqua? Is she going to seek revenge against her supposedly-dead-to-Aqua father? What’s going to happen?

[greatwyrmgold]

I find it interesting that this is where Aqua drew the line. He put up with Ruby's BS until here. He's inhumanly tolerant with Ruby being...Ruby, which makes it all the more remarkable when he objects to Ruby being Sarina.

I'm not the first to note that the twins reacted very differently to being reincarnated. Ruby thinks of Sarina the same way she thinks of baby-Ruby: As herself, the person she was almost twenty years ago. But Aqua sees Dr. Goro as a different person whose memories he happens to know.

So far, this difference in perspective hasn't lead to any conflict, or even conversation; the twins barely talked about their past lives. Even when Ruby started getting clingy with "Dr. Goro," she didn't say or do anything that might distinguish between how she feels about Aqua and how she feels about the doctor. Why would she? They're the same person! And Aqua just hasn't effectively communicated with his sister.

He's communicated more with her in chapter 143, but mostly about his present-tense, personal insecurities.

It's good for Aqua to open up to someone—anyone—about this kind of thought; his sister is a pretty good choice for this kind of confession. I'm glad Aqua is getting less emotionally constipated.

But that monologue obscures the "I'm not Dr. Goro any more." It leaves room for Ruby to interpret it as "I'm depressed, so I can't act like I did when I was a doctor". It leaves room for Ruby to assume that if Aqua gets un-depressed, Dr. Goro can fulfill his very serious promise to marry Sarina when she grew up.

And that seems to be what happened! Ruby's response monologue addresses the narrow concerns of "I feel guilty about how many people I've hurt" by talking about how he's made her life better, about how he's her idol, about how she loves him, and by the way we're kissing now.

We don't see Aqua's response; the chapter cuts to the film set, the scene where Hikaru and Ai (played by Aqua and Ruby) smooch. We don't see Aqua's response, but the way we don't see it suggests that he continued to not effectively communicate with Ruby.

Which is frustrating; he came so close to actually clearing the air, having an important conversation with Ruby about their relationship and past lives and everything. So close, yet so far away.

[viewpointb]

hey, don't cry. onk 150, okay?

bonus:

[up-loader]

[aihoshiino]

What is goros relationship with his grandparents like

(wasn't sure how to tag this for blacklists but there's mention of death in childbirth in this answer)

From what little we know of it, it seems strained! Awkward and a little distance and with a lot of baggage - Gorou is specifically stated to have felt a ton of guilt over the circumstances of his birth which is part of what pushed him into his chosen field of medicine. It also seems to have enforced some distance between himself and his grandparents - as he puts it, his relationship with his grandmother wasn't bad, but it's implied that he and his grandfather didn't get along at all.

Actually I sometimes see people talk about his grandfather being abusive towards him, even physically so, but I don't remember that being in the manga...? So I'm not quite sure where it comes from. It's definitely possible it just slipped my mind or that I'm looking at the wrong chapters to recap myself on that info tho.

Slight tangent, but I actually find the way Aqua talks about Gorou's mom really interesting...? I fully admit this is probably the part of my brain hardwired to see Ai everywhere, but the combo of her hiding her pregnancy from her parents (implying she may have been young and/or not with the father) and bleeding to death sort of echoes Ai's situation in a vague way, too... especially since Ai literally does die as a result of having children as well, even if not in quite such a direct way. Much To Think About...