Now that I’ve finally caught up on Oshi no Ko, I’m actually satisfied with the way things ended for Aqua/Kane. Like I’m bummed the ship I’m rooting for won’t be endgame, but I do like that they’re moving on and wanting a healthier, more equal relationship with each other, likely as just friends this time.
Also, Aqua can have Kana if he wants, I’ll just steal Akane for myself 😤
This chapter was the very definition of a letdown. Let’s dig into just why that is. Spoilers for Oshi No Ko Chapter 161 below.
We’re back with the Aqua-Hikaru confrontation. Thank fuck. I shouldn’t have to be relieved that the manga didn’t cut away to something completely different in the middle of an important confrontation without warning.
Crow Girl appearance??? During this entire bit??? Are we finally going to dig deep into the more supernatural aspects of the series? It’d be more than a bit late for that if the manga was going in that direction, but I’m still curious to see what she’s even doing at this pivotal stage.
Are they really deus ex machena-ing Hikaru’s motivations here??? That has to be the laziest way to communicate that shit to the reader! It’s good to see that we’ve finally gotten some actual confirmation about why Hikaru does what he does for the readers that lack reading comprehension but doing it in this manner via what is essentially an author stand in is the mark of a straight up amateur!
Her existence isn’t eternal. Technically no one’s existence is eternal but I’m going to be real, with the confirmation that Hikaru is definitively a murderer by what is essentially a literal fucking god in the manga I think I want to shove a rotten tomato in his pretty face, as delusional as he is.
Will your precious Ruby be able to reach the heights of adulthood as the sister of a murderer? Has Hikaru ever heard of self defense or is this one last ditch attempt to dissuade Aqua? With Nino squealing to Akane and company there’d be more than enough evidence to put Hikaru at risk here of being arrested. Gotta love the Japanese conviction rate.
You already have plenty of reasons to live. Aqua does, really, but Hikaru you are absolutely not talking him out of this. You’re egging him on. That is not the behavior of someone that is trying to convince Aqua to not murder you in broad daylight. Not to mention there are plenty of other ways to kill Hikaru without being caught, you know. Accidental deaths, poisoning, just getting a fucking gun and shooting him and running away, pulling a Ryosuke and stabbing him in his apartment without getting caught, carbon monoxide poisoning, the list goes on and on. Aqua doesn’t need to kill Hikaru now, he can just wait with an indirect method later down the line! Even if Hikaru reported this to the authorities Aqua can just lie and say he was with Akane and company! It’s so fucking stupid.
I have my own dreams. Aquaaaaaa. That shot of everyone in Aqua’s support system…damn. Kana, Himekawa, Miyako, Akane, and Ruby…I’m getting the sense that he’s going to fucking stab Hikaru’s ass.
You’re spoiling Ruby’s future, so you’ll die here. And then Hikaru’s fucking face! At a certain point, manipulative words won’t be enough to control someone. There’s only so much a person can take before they snap and lash out. There was an Art of War quote that went something along those lines—something like you should always leave an escape route for your enemy because they’ll fight harder if the only thing left to lose is their lives. I’m bastardizing the quote, most likely, but the idea still holds. Eventually someone’s going to get fed up with Hikaru and decide he’s more trouble than he’s worth—which is exactly what he’s dealing with right now. Good fucking riddance.
Ruby looking off into the distance at the Dome—
AQUA STABS HIMSELF??? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME???
The media and public don’t want the truth so we can trick them completely. I won’t let this lie be exposed. Cool lines! Horrible fucking execution! If Hikaru had dodged or, I dunno, not been standing just before the cliff then this entire scenario just becomes nonsensical! This is soap opera levels of horrible writing right here.
Okay. That was certainly A Chapter. A pretty fucking bad chapter but certainly par for the course with the manga at this point. Let’s deal with the elephant in the room: Aqua and Hikaru’s potential deaths. I’ll state it plainly—I don’t think Aqua’s going to die, if only because of the fact that killing him off here would be a horrible narrative decision. There’s roughly about one or two more chapters left for the current volume of the manga and dealing with the fallout of Aqua’s death so close to the finish line would essentially mean cutting away all the plot threads that Aqua’s character had thrust to the readers and making all of that work related to Aqua’s character meaningless. It’s possible that Aqua dies here, I’ll admit, but there’s too much left unresolved with Aqua’s character for me to believe that he’ll die with this confrontation.
Also—Crow Girl is right there to save Aqua from death. I’m fully expecting a deus ex machena type situation to happen within the next chapter. Kaguya fans might make jokes about helicopters but I think this is a scale higher on the narrative butchery tier list. Creating a character that is a literal god to facilitate the plot moving and justifying bad narrative decisions? That’s the kind of shit that would make an author’s draft go straight into the shred pile with how bad it is. That’s the kind of shit that this series is doing.
What I do expect, however, is Hikaru dying. Despite Aqua being in a worse state that Hikaru in general after they went down together I don’t expect that he’ll survive this mess. Does it make sense logically? Absolutely not. Hikaru didn’t get stabbed and is fully developed physically compared to Aqua. It’s more probable that he’d be able to swim out of the sea unless he’d hit his head on the rocks or something. But because the narrative likely demands it I doubt he’ll survive. Let him rot. I wanna get confirmation with him dying before I give my final thoughts with him as an antagonist but at this point there’s no escaping the fact that his time as the main villain was so incredibly half-baked at best.
Now let’s talk about Aqua’s half assed plan to frame Hikaru for murder and simultaneously keep Ruby’s name from being sullied. It’s downright idiotic. On one hand, I understand his logic and the lie I want him to sell. On the other, there are countless ways off the top of my head that I can think of for him to get out of this situation without fucking STABBING HIMSELF.
Have Akane and Ichigo say that Hikaru tried to kill Aqua, fail in killing Aqua, then stab Hikaru and say that Hikaru jumped off the cliff trying committing suicide. Or better yet, just fucking stab Hikaru and claim self defense. Aqua can even stab himself to make it more believable. Hell, if Aqua was sure that Hikaru was guilty he could’ve killed Hikaru with an indirect method! Aqua talks so much shit about how he wants to live but doesn’t even attempt to think of a scenario where he comes out of it alive!
One could argue that it’s an in-character flaw that Aqua has here with dealing with Hikaru himself but character flaws serve the narrative, not the other way around. There are times where characters don’t make the most correctly objective decisions in the heat of the moment and that’s completely fine but Aqua himself points out that he wants to live and that he’s had time to try and save Hikaru, ergo he’d anticipated this entire situation to begin with! At a certain point if you think about it for more than two seconds there are countless ways to deal with him now that Nino has been captured and with Akane and Ichigo’s cooperation. So why the fuck is he still STABBING HIMSELF trying to deal with Hikaru???
I also don’t want to bring up the fact that we don’t know how Hikaru and Aqua met up suddenly for this second confrontation again but I have to because what the FUCK would Aqua done if Hikaru wasn’t conveniently standing just before a cliff? Would he have just killed Hikaru and then himself? What was his plan then? What if Hikaru had fucking dodged after Aqua STABBED HIMSELF? Aqua would be injured and what was his plan then???
This entire plot point is just stupid. It’s all so fucking stupid. The story is just leaping off a cliff and trying to make itself look cooler than it actually is when in reality none of these characters are making logical actions. If the series was better written and had more thought put into it maybe I’d be a bit more forgiving but this manga has already squandered so much goodwill as it closes to the ending.
There are also a couple of panels which have stirred up some discussion in the community that I’d like to give my two cents on. The first is when Hikaru says falling in love. Fans of Kana seem to think that this confirms that Aqua has feelings for Kana, to which I say that a single panel is not an absolute edict that confirms Aqua’s feelings for Kana. It’s good evidence, sure, but it isn’t anything that the series hasn’t done before with trying to handle the absolute mess that is the series’ love triangle.
If we were cherry picking panels within the series that prove or disprove our own agendas and interpretations when it comes to these characters, I’d point out that in Chapter 151 where Aqua doesn’t catch the ball Kana threw at him after she says she wants to be the only person Aqua looks is quite damning evidence against Kana winning the Aquabowl considering Aqua prioritized killing Hikaru over coming to Kana’s graduation concert. Dealing with Hikaru is something that Aqua could’ve done after the concert after Nino was captured. The implication being that, for Aqua, dealing with Hikaru is more important than attending the concert for Kana’s sake. Not exactly a scenario that inspires confidence in Kana’s chances in winning the Aquabowl, does it?
I would also like to note that Ruby is in that same panel, but I don’t think this panel confirms anything in particular beyond that Aqua feels a certain degree of attachment towards these girls, which is highlighted by the next set of panels I’m going to talk about.
The second panel, or rather, set of panels, that have garnered so much discussion are when Aqua responds to Hikaru about all of his own dreams. This one’s a bit more complex but the conclusions that some people make are just as outlandish. I’ve seen both Kana fans and Akane fans take these panels as confirmation that their girl is going to “win” the Aquabowl—which is laughable in some aspects. These two pages describe what people interpret to be a “winning flag” for their character of choice. Aqua wanting to respond to Kana’s feelings and also him wanting to rebuild an equal relationship with Akane.
The same issue as the previous panel applies here. A single panel and tongue and cheek references by the narrative do not constitute meaningful confirmation towards any sort of victor to the Aquabowl. While these panels do constitute some good bits of evidence to support either of the heroines winning the Aquabowl they’re certainly not the slam dunk confirmation that people seem to think they are. Unless we see an actual confession from Aqua’s side or a kiss that Aqua himself pursues of his own volition I doubt any sort of actual confirmation will be reached.
The end of the manga seems to be on the horizon anyway and truthfully I just want to be done with this whole love triangle business. It’s already diluted the ambience and the tone of the story so much throughout the manga’s runtime.
