One last ride. I want to lay these chapter reviews to rest better than the series dropped the ball for its ending. As always, spoilers for Oshi No Ko Chapter 166 below.
And we are back with Oshi No Powerpoint. Can this manga actually organically show events or is this entire chapter going to be more slideshow?
No—it is indeed more slideshow. Fantastic. Ruby doesn’t even get to be a fucking character in a chapter dedicated to her. Of course. After being sidelined for a good half of the manga this is how the authors deal with her character. By having her get over Aqua in such a half assed manner that it doesn’t feel earned, doesn’t feel resonant, and simply does not make sense considering how she was when she found out Goro was dead. That girl has nothing now. Why is she still striving to become an idol when there’s no one waiting for her at the end of the day when there’s nothing that the narrative has done to make us think she could get over this tragedy?
More slideshow of all the characters. It seems I was wrong. Most children’s television shows can salvage a more cohesive and thematic ending than this slop. I don’t even care about the new B-Komachi member, Kana and Akane’s appearances, even Ruby at the Dome. It’s just a hollow and empty slideshow that’s trying to evoke emotions that aren’t disgust at the ending.
It’s incredible that Ruby turned out to be Ai 2.0 when the revelations made in Chapter 122-123 onward said that she doesn’t want to be an idol that lies and now here she is, being an idol that lies. Thank you Aqua, for being such a supreme idiot. Ruby’s time as an idol will fade but I’m sure she’d rather have that transient career rather than have you alongside her.
The final few panels are a kick in the teeth for every fan that’s gotten invested in this series. I’d say that I would be surprised but it’s become obvious that the quality of this manga has massively declined for ages by now. This ending is one final reminder of that fact.
And that’s the end. Analyzing it further is a useless endeavor. It’s a pile of shit and no amount of pretty art will be able to refute that. I could list off any number of reasons Why I think the ending is a hot steaming pile of garbage but for an ending that fails in so many ways that one could say pretty much anything negative about the ending and it’ll hit somewhat accurately. I don’t even want to give it my time and effort in gesturing to just how bad it is when it’s so plainly obvious. There’s no satisfaction in ripping apart the chapter’s guts when it’s already rotting away in the ground.
This is not a good ending. I don’t want to hear anything about tragic endings and the nature of revenge and tragedy and all that bullshit. All those claims might have some merit if the ending wasn’t a Windows Powerpoint Slideshow that forced its content down the readers throats. Even leaving that aside there are a whole host of subplots that never got addressed, character development that was aborted in this manga’s womb, a complete disregard for the themes established in the previous parts in the manga—it’s just—bad. Bad in a way that’s almost like a “fuck you” for being invested in the manga in the first place.
Tragedy in itself does not make a good ending. Sadness and moving on does not inherently make a good ending. The buildup and relevant character beats for these characters contradict the message this chapter is trying to sell. This ending feels divorced from everything that came before it. I can almost smell that this is a first draft kind of ending that came before everything actually happened.
I’d say that I want the series to put me in my grave so it could let me down one last time, but knowing how bad it fumbled with this ending I don’t even trust it to do That.
I almost want to see how the anime tackles this ending if only because I’m sure that it’ll be canceled before it can even get close to this point. Could you imagine adapting the clusterfuck that were the last couple of chapters? The utter mess that was the movie arc? I can already smell people defending this ending saying it’s actually good because it’s a tragedy and that there was a host of foreshadowing involved. On almost every scale I can come up with in regards to ending does this series’ finale just fucking suck.
On more content adjacent to the manga but related to the series itself; apparently there’s one bonus chapter that’ll be released with the volume? People are really coping that it’ll save this manga but as far as I’m concerned it’s absolutely nothing. No, it’s less than nothing, because it’s the equivalent of a pie to the face after eating a shit sandwich. A joke at the reader’s expense. How despicable. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was another Kaguya-sama crossover. Any additional content that this manga vomits up wouldn’t change the fact that this ending exists in the first place. One final cherry on top of a pile of shit doesn’t change much after all is said and done.
There is also a light novel that focuses on Akane and Kana coming out for some reason. Incredible. Even after all of that the authors are still trying to milk out fans for their waifu bucks when they were handled so shoddily. But the lowest common denominator and yuri fans will be eating, I suppose. If they get disappointed by the quality of the work, that’s as much as they deserve, I guess.
Doing some light research on reactions to this clusterfuck of an ending reveals in an interview that this was the ending that the author had in mind all along which—well. I wouldn’t trust the author to write a book for children after this ending, let alone another manga. But this world isn’t an ideal one so he’s managed to hitch his horse to another manga artist and is now on the way to make yet another manga. From what I hear he’s already 2 for 2 with shoddily written endings and mediocre series so it’s surprising that people let him get away with crap like this.
I don’t think I’ll be touching any of the other works by the author with a ten foot pole. I wouldn’t even recommend this series to anyone simply because of how bad everything was so close to the end. There are better media out there that don’t waste the readers’ time and handle its themes better. An ending is the last word that the author has on their series and more often than not when a series’ ending is garbage it sullies the rest of the work by proxy. Every single arc before this one will be stained by the knowledge that its ending was so shoddily written that it dispenses with everything that came before it.
Guess that’s the end of the line. I’d say that it was a pleasure, but that would be a lie. Perhaps that’s fitting given that the manga claims that lies are love and never quite did anything with it.
