When does Hikaru Kamiki lie?
Aqua: “An instigator who won’t get his hands dirty. A despicable and selfish liar. You’re more hideous than a murderer.”
Aqua calls Hikaru a liar but when has Hikaru Kamiki actually lied?
A while ago @fioryuk asked me when I thought Hikaru lied, so that’s what inspired me to make this post. I structured it in two parts: a part that’s confirmed by text and a part in which I personally believe Hikaru lied. I have so much more to say but had to cut some rambles out to make it more structured but at the same time I admit a lot of rambles are still somewhere in there. Thank you for your very thought-provoking question! I adored writing this post so I hope you’ll enjoy it too!
Explicitly confirmed by text:
Chapter 140 Is This Right? 正しいですか?
For this analysis, I’m taking the 15-year-lie as fact, because we barely have anything to go off regarding his character. This is the first chapter in which we see Hikaru explicitly lie.
Also, this chapter implies that the reason Ai started to dress better (also chapter 34) was because of him. From the text, he says this to prove his point that Ai is weirder than him. Later we see that that was a lie and he doesn’t think Ai is weirder than him, but his words still influenced her, showing how authentic sounding his lies can be. It’s unclear though why he specifically mentioned that. I don’t think it’s just to get leverage in the discussion of who is weirder. Maybe, he thought Ai would be treated better and as more normal if she dressed better, as a way to help her? I personally don’t believe he had any inherent malicious intent towards her as a child.
Even the dialogue which he doesn’t explicitly address as lies are questionable in intent:
Hikaru: “Don’t make fun of me.”
Hikaru: “Stop treating me like a child.”
To me it feels like he uses these statements to solidify a specific perception, as Ai is the one who mentioned the tomato he gave her as if he knew that she would notice that. Maybe he wants to be seen like a child? A bit like Taiki saying he doesn’t want Aqua to call him big brother, even though he does want that. Hikaru’s situation with Airi does make him need to act more mature than he should. I think it’s kind of a persona he puts on. He wants to be seen as a young innocent boy but doesn’t feel that way, as if being empty inside [something Airi described him as (also chapter 155 has Ruby describing him like that) and the live action even explicitly portrays him that way as a child].
He even tries to verify his lies at the end of the date (I also think that’s why he has a more serious expression then):
Hikaru: “Ai, did you enjoy eating with me?”
I think the connection between all these lies is to keep up this persona that he is just a child, doing normal child things. It’s something that he uses to make others love him. I also think it could be what makes him and Ai similar (as she has her idol persona) and what Ai catches onto later.
However, he does question this method of presenting himself to others.
Hikaru: “Is this the right thing for me to do in order to be loved by someone? Someone who doesn’t have anything? Am I really cute? Is this how an innocent boy, who doesn’t know how things work, really act? Is this the right lie for me to tell?”
He puts a cute and innocent child persona on and lies so he can be loved even if he doesn’t really believe he has anything to offer or is innocent and cute. He also tells us that it never failed him before on many people including we can assume his used to be close family (panel were he’s very young and is sitting outside of a closed door).
At the end of the chapter Ai sees through his lie when he says that he’s totally fine and she says that they’re both the same when it comes to deceiving people. They both have eyes of liars that are good at deception. This could allude to the star eyes, that when they have them, they are good at deceiving others.
This sentiment is also repeated in chapter 96 White Roses 白薔薇. Kindaichi tells Akane: “Deceptive eyes that have the power to make lies look like truths […] He was one of our best performers.”
He used to be a performer (Kindaichi uses 演技派 which has a connotation of having excellent acting abilities as opposed to just good looks) that even Kindaichi considers good, so I would say that he’s good at acting, which could be interesting if he uses it to lie or put on a persona as mentioned before. It could also be a reason he got into acting (and thus Lalalai in the first place, but the manga keeps those circumstances mysterious). Akane even says that Ai and Hikaru have similar acting styles and both have these personas wherefor they act/lie.
Chapter 147 Wish 願い
Ruby tells us she believes in nurture over nature but questions if it’s right to forgive Hikaru. A segment of Hikaru’s answer is this:
Hikaru: “If you come up with an answer after worrying about it so much, then you have to accept it. Everyone does.”
It is shown in the beforementioned chapter that Hikaru has also questioned if something is right. So, we can assume that this segment is his answer to that question. Seeing the former and later chapters, it could be that he sees lying and putting on a persona as the right thing to do and has accepted that as his answer, which I think is interesting to keep in mind for later in this post.
Later on in that chapter, it's interesting that he lies to Nino about the ‘boy A’ thing.
Chapter 147:
Hikaru: “This movie reveals everything about Airi-san and Seijuro-senpai without reserve. It’ll become a hot topic both in a good and a bad way. And yet, I’m referred to as ‘boy A’ here. Kaburagi-san sure is ill-natured, huh? Once this movie is released, they’ll definitely start hunting for the culprit. They’ll ask who ‘boy A’ is in the tabloids and on social media. I guess he’s trying to kill me not by the movie but by the public’s malice.”
Chapter 138:
Kaburagi: “For this work, we’ve obtained usage permission for various people’s names. Because we’d be in trouble if we were sued. However, we didn’t obtain permission from you. Kamiki Hikaru, we’re calling you Boy A in this work. Do you understand this meaning?”
Hikaru: “Yes, of course.”
Boy A has been used for a child murderer and it could be that this is something Hikaru understands and has seemingly no problem with as he smiles at the notion, yet in chapter 147 Hikaru calls Kaburagi ill-natured for doing exactly that.
He could want Nino to think a specific way about the movie and his thoughts about it, but I struggle to find a reason why. Maybe he actually wants the public to search for him and face its malice, but why then tell Kaburagi to not publicize his actual name in the movie. It could be that he doesn’t want to be found out either, yet he talks about it in this chapter as if it’s inevitable and Kaburagi was wrong to not use his name.
He says multiple times that facing the consequences doesn’t bother him. It feels like he wanted the movie to be made but doesn’t care about the consequences if it doesn’t affect him to reach his goals. Maybe he wants Ruby to be as close to Ai as possible and then kill her to feel Ai’s weight and is now setting Nino up for that? I think it’s a problem that we don’t know his exact motivation for sponsoring the movie and lying to Nino. I’m still mulling the ending of this chapter over.
155 Happy End ハッピーエンド
Aqua says a lot of things don’t make sense if Kamiki is the one behind everything (mentioning Ryosuke, Yura and Goro). Aqua believing there is still something going on explains Aqua’s dismissive responses to the two motivations for killing Ai in the chapters before (cf. later in this post) and also why he said his revenge wasn’t over yet in this chapter. Out of nowhere he and Akane conclude that Nino is involved. They say that Nino has been involved with all three of the beforementioned deaths. Nino’s involvement in Yura’s death is confirmed by the anime (how did Aqua and Akane find out about this though?). Her involvement in Ryosuke and in Goro’s deaths is mentioned by Kamiki in chapter 160. Chapter 165 confirms her involvement in Yura and Goro’s deaths.
158 Jewel 宝石
Ruby receives white roses with hearts and Ruby-chan on it. Ruby’s words in that chapter are comparable to what Kamiki says later in chapter 161 (the way he drops his iPhone always kills me lmao). Maybe that is the reason the author gave white roses as Hikaru’s calling? The roses bloom only once and are bound to wither away. This could just be to give the readers a sign that Hikaru is a threat to Ruby, but I’d like to think there is a more symbolic meaning to it that I’m struggling to fully comprehend yet.
Later in the chapter, from Nino’s conversation on the phone, it seems that Hikaru told her that they should hand themselves over to the police. Nino disagrees vehemently. Hikaru didn’t make any attempts to contact the police and it makes me wonder if Hikaru knew she would take extreme action after that or not, making Hikaru’s words towards Nino here lies. Together with the bouquet and Aqua’s dismissive responses, this puts dialogue from chapters 153, 154 and 155 into question (cf. later this post).
Chapter 160 Eye
Hikaru: “I even told them that I was unsure whether to go see her, since she was about to give birth at a hospital in Miyazaki. I had no idea what happened there.”
This explicitly contradicts Tsukiyomi in chapter 79 Duty 役目, who tells us that two men were around the hospital and one was in middle school, more or less, at the time of the twins’ birth. The second season of the anime (ep 24, 9:45) confirms this by showing us child Hikaru talking to Ryosuke. Crow girl has never been shown to be wrong regarding her takes on the narrative, if I recall correctly, so that would mean that Hikaru lied in chapter 160 of not knowing what happened there.
Speculative:
132 Nino ニノ and 154 15-Year-Lie 15年の嘘
From Nino’s one-sided conversation with Hikaru on the phone, we can imply that he wanted to make sure that Ruby is different from Ai. Further, in the conversation one could say that he also doesn’t want Ai to be surpassed just like Nino, but we don’t have his conformation on that. It’s also quite unclear in what Ruby could surpass Ai or how she should differ from Ai. Is it fame, charm, legacy or something else entirely? This is never explicitly mentioned in the manga so I could be one of the three things I just mentioned, but it could be something else too, like having a similar “weight” to Ai. This motivation is implicitly mentioned in chapter 161 where Tsukiyomi says “Hikaru Kamiki, consumed by the obsession that killing those who could surpass Ai Hoshino would increase her significance (= 重み = can also be translated to weight).” The words 重み (=weight, inconsistently translated to importance and significance in some chapter for some reason), 重さ(=weight) or 背負う (=to carry on one's back to be burdened with, to take responsibility for) get mentioned (I would say around 9 times independently iirc) in regard to his character, so it wouldn’t surprise me if that is what he searches for.
The statements in chapter 154 make me think that he doesn’t have the same motivations as Nino. He calls Ai a normal/ordinary person twice and says she’s like everyone else, so why would he want nobody to surpass her?
Is he lying to get Aqua to be on his side? Yet, at the same time, Aqua has not really been shown to humanize neither Ai nor Ruby explicitly, so why? Is it a conclusion he reached after watching the movie as he says that “we were forcing” their selfish fantasies on her, so maybe he had that belief before but that changed? If she is normal, how can she not be surpassed by others? She was like everyone else could also be used to gain pity from Aqua, as he believes no one really loved him.
I think Nino and Hikaru’s motivations sound the same but differ substantively. He doesn’t want anyone to surpass Ai just like Nino, but for Nino it’s so Ai can be the ultimate idol, for Hikaru it’s so the weight of his life increases and thus the presence of Ai. I think Hikaru’s worry is not being caught or dying but not being able to feel Ai to the fullest anymore, which killing Ruby would have supposedly given him.
153 Fiction フィクション
I wonder if these father-like feelings he shares here are true.
Hikaru: “You must be annoyed because a crazy murderer who killed your mother is forcing his father-like feelings on you, but that’s how I really feel.”
I wonder why he says these last two sentences. Firstly, he calls himself a crazy murderer who killed Ai, even though it was Ryosuke who was the murderer, which I think makes sense with the self-blame characteristic we sometimes see of him. Secondly, he is glad that he could finally talk to Aqua and has father-like feelings which is how he really feels.
Why does he say finally? Could he have not met Aqua a lot earlier if he just tried? Why only meet the twins right now? This is never explicitly explained, but I think he met with Aqua because of Ruby who is becoming a popular idol and the 15-year-lie making her come closer to Ai in popularity but also in acting like her. It’s still not fully clear why he didn’t see a reason to meet them earlier and why specifically Aqua now.
Also, I think the father-like feelings are quite weird actually. Is it a lie? Could it be to create a fake sense of security for Aqua that he won’t do anything crazy? Yet in the same breath he calls himself a crazy murderer so that gives the complete opposite effect. If it is the truth, then that’s also weird. Because, didn’t Ai in his eyes break up with him because she was pregnant with the twins and he was already a father and that’s a burden where she didn’t want to add more onto? Where do these father-like longing and feelings come from? Istg, I think about those last two sentences a lot and really wished we got more introspection about what he actually thinks about the twins and Taiki too.
Could this be him trying out different personas towards Aqua? A murderer or someone who cares? Maybe he’s probing which one works best on Aqua so he lets his guard down around his sister? It’s hard to truly tell…
154 15-Year-Lie 15年の嘘
Hikaru is instantly shocked to hear Ai and doesn’t express anything else during her soliloquy. He even loses his stars. I’ve always felt like losing the stars meant losing purpose or being lost for a while at least in the Hoshino’s case. This makes me think his reaction was genuine. Outside of this first shock, his further expressions are unclear. Maybe it could be a red herring to confuse the audience, maybe that is the actual him someone empty, it’s hard to really say with the later chapters…
155 Happy End ハッピーエンド
The narrator (Ruby?) calls Hikaru powerless and empty, something that he has already been called before by Airi. We don’t see his face, though, so it’s hard to interpret how he’s feeling. He only says that he’s going to do what he can for Ai. We don’t really get any conformation on what exactly this is, as the next time we hear from him, he tells Nino to hand themselves over to the police and the confrontation between him and Aqua happens. Does this mean he wants to kill Ruby for Ai (in a way that makes him feel her)? But that’s something that Ai wouldn’t want at all, so I wonder what else he was thinking at that moment and what exactly he means with doing what he can for Ai. Is it really for Ai or for Ai’s presence/weight?
I also wonder why he doesn’t stop for Ruby. He doesn’t seem to have an interest to stay with the twins at all after seeing the video. Unfortunately, we don’t know why. I still wish for another conversation between Hikaru and Ruby that is not as meta as 147 and where they acknowledge each other as related. Still weird that we never saw how Ruby came to the conclusion to forgive Kamiki.
160 Eye
Hikaru: “What are you talking about? What did I do? Stab someone? Push someone off? I didn’t do anything like that.”
He denies anything suspicious and twists Aqua’s supposed words, like Ruby’s attempted stabbing and Yura and Goro’s deaths from being pushed off a cliff with a smile. He indeed didn’t do anything like that but we as the audience know that he instigated them (except maybe Goro’s which could’ve actually been accidental).
Hikaru: “Both Nino-kun and Ryosuke-kun approached me first. I thought they were friends. They were nice people, so I had no idea. I didn’t know they were that obsessed with Ai. That’s why I told them my pathetic heartbreak story while being vague about it. I even told them that I was unsure whether to go see her, since she was about to give birth at a hospital in Miyazaki. I had no idea what happened there. The day Ai died was the same. I still didn’t have the courage to meet Ai, so I just had him deliver her the bouquet for me. I never intended to hurt anyone.”
Aqua: “That’s a lie too, right? To me, it all comes down to the fact that you didn’t protect your daughter. The fact that you understood Nino's mental state but you stood by and watched without intervening says it all. You tried to kill your own daughter, Ruby, didn’t you? You tortured the hearts of others on purpose and stoked the flames of madness on those who were weak. You continued to bring forth killers and victims for your own convenience. An instigator who won’t get his hands dirty. A despicable and selfish liar. You’re more hideous than a murderer.”
Hikaru seems quite shocked with Aqua’s accusation about not protecting Ruby and not helping Nino. It makes me wonder why. Maybe he’s realising that Aqua sees through his lies? He then does the iconic creepy smile panel, after which Aqua accuses him of trying to kill Ruby. If we already take chapter 162 into account, this makes sense as that was indeed Hikaru’s intention.
When Aqua accuses him of manipulation, we see one page of a younger Hikaru smiling at Ryosuke and Nino. We find out that Hikaru was there when Ryosuke committed suicide and seems to comfort Nino. It could be a reason why Nino seems to care a bit about him in chapter 147. It could not only be that they’re “friends”, but he was also one of the first (maybe only people) to comfort her after the loss of both Ai and Ryosuke. However, why is he not surprised if he just wanted Ryosuke to scare Ai or didn’t want to hurt anyone? He doesn’t seem to be upset about it at all (cf. later this post).
The panels with Ryosuke seem to be implying that he manipulated him with a toothbrush, which is kind of funny to me. I think it’s possible though and it’s premediated. It could be possible that Hikaru wrote Ai’s name on a spare toothbrush and then said the evil manipulator words or something like that to Ryosuke. It feels to me like the black face Hikaru with a smile is meant to represent the evil manipulations or something like that, at least I think that is what the author intended (“stoked the flames of madness on those who were weak”), so yeah that’s that. I’m heavily disappointed that we have no dialogue of these scenes though. They just don’t hit at all and can be interpreted in different ways that I have seen others do. It’s annoyingly vague.
The background is also not black as is normal for later Oshi no ko flashbacks (at least that I’m aware of), so there is a chance that he is lying to us (or they forgot to make it black or the background being black is not something consistent). This could also be Aqua’s imagination of the event, but I don’t think that it is an interesting angle to come from and could also be applied to chapter 154 (cf. later this post).
From what Nino tells Akane earlier what he says here could be the truth, but there are also signs that these are lies. Nino and Ryosuke approached him for an unknown reason. This is the weirdest part out of all, like they just randomly met on the street? Those two randomly approached a 15-year-old on the street, like what? I’m disappointed we never got a proper how did they meet for these three. Hikaru has a lot more reasons to search them out than vice versa. It is easier to manipulate a fan and a colleague of Ai (of which he knows the relationship dynamic of) to do his bidding than some random people who have no connection to her.
They then became friends from his perspective (consistent as he keeps referring to them with the suffix -kun). Interestingly enough, in every chapter Nino calls Hikaru, Kamiki-san (chapter 132, 147, 160).
He doesn’t have to call them with the honorific -kun when he isn’t talking to them, so maybe he genuinely sees them as friends. They’re both also older than him, which makes the use of -kun a bit unusual. Or maybe he wants to manipulate Aqua in thinking that he thinks of them as friends and doesn’t see Ryosuke and Nino as such, so he seems more innocent, I guess? Maybe, it’s both at the same time?
He doesn’t use any kind of suffix for Ai (-san one time out of formalities) yet does for Ryosuke the one who murdered her. He even refers to him with -kun in the same breath as speaking about him being the cause of Ai’s death (chapter 154). I wonder if that has some kind of underlying meaning. Maybe he saw Ai as the most equal to him and thus does not feel a need for a hierarchy suffix? I think he also isn’t able to let go of anything, not Ai, nor Ryosuke and Nino being his “friends”, even when Nino seems to see it as a business matter and Ryosuke having murdered Ai, or even Seijuro being his senpai and Airi-san still getting an honorific. It makes sense with his mentality of wanting to keep carrying his weight and not wanting to let any of it go. I’m not that familiar with these suffix uses so if anyone has more ideas feel free to share!
Thereafter, he says he didn’t know that they were obsessed with Ai. This could be true, but if he was manipulating them then this is a lie, as he could have deliberately kept talking about Ai to rile them up, as Nino has also implicitly said to Akane.
Next, Hikaru told them about their breakup. He says he was vague about it. Why would he do that? To protect Ai because she’s an idol or is he lying and was he explicit about their breakup? Why even tell them about it? I’m confused why he mentions this and if he did say anything about the breakup how that would even help him.
THE HOSPITAL, the inciting incident in chapter 1 and we still don’t know why they were even there. We have no idea how he even knew she was at that hospital and we also don’t know why he was at the hospital to meet Ai. To talk, to kill or like he said just to see her? Why did Ryosuke talk to Goro and not Hikaru himself? Why did Hikaru tag Ryosuke (and Nino) along? He also knows that Ai was in Miyazaki specifically. How did he acquire that information?
A weird choice of the author to like never properly flashback this, I thought the author would at least give us closure on that by the end of the manga, but I guess not.
It makes a difference if Ai told him she was at the hospital or if he and the other one/two stalked Ai enough to find that out and they coincidentally went there right when the twins were born. The latter is possible because the only reason that Ai contacted Hikaru in chapter 8 was because of the kids and otherwise, she would have likely waited until Aqua watched the DVD as far as we know.
But at the same time, it doesn’t feel too out of character for Ai to contact Hikaru quickly with little information but I’m not sure why she would. Like if she did, it would again be on a whim and not thought out most likely. In the hospital, the only time she really thought of him, again as far as we know, is when she told Ichigo that the father is a secret, so it wouldn’t make sense for her to call him to the birth of her kids where Ichigo could be present (and is present in the anime) if she wants to keep him a secret. Also, Goro was surprised someone else knew her last name and her being in the hospital, not that she would say to Goro that someone else would come, but it could be something she mentioned.
Nino and Ryosuke went there and Goro died accidentally if you look at the panel of him and Nino, they both seems quite shocked to find Goro in such a state. When Ryosuke pushed Goro off a cliff in the anime he also seemed to have an “oh shit” moment.
Ryosuke and Nino being there is contradicted by Tsukiyomi in chapter 79 and the anime, where we see Ryosuke and Hikaru at the hospital. That was almost 80 chapters ago, so it could be that the author forgot or Hikaru is lying, but I think it’s most likely that Hikaru is lying because the anime wouldn’t portray that flashback so explicitly if the author said it wasn’t important.
It’s possible that Nino was also there together with Hikaru and Ryosuke, but it would be quite weird if Hikaru wouldn’t have been there at all. So maybe all three of them were there and things went south when Ryosuke pushed Goro off the cliff. It’s confirmed in chapter 165 that both Nino and Ryosuke were involved in Goro’s death so they were there and I would say Hikaru was there too for the beforementioned reasons. I still wonder why exactly they were there though. I’m crossing my fingers that the anime will give us some crumbs.
Oh boy, it’s always this part, which motivations to kill Ai are lies? Seeing that Hikaru seemed to have been lying the entire time according to chapter 160, it’s weird to see the whole of chapters 153 and 154 as a lie because there are definitely some truths in it and if it all was a lie it would erase what little characterisation we actually have of him. At the same time if a lot of it was truthful why backtrack and start lying in these last chapters now? Did seeing Ai’s DVD trigger this? Did the author just want to do a 180? We barely have an idea what exactly happened between Hikaru and Ryosuke.
He gives us 3 reasons why he wanted Ai to die:
153: I miserably clung to the woman who dumped me and foolishly killed her out of spite. That’s all.
154: I was the one who gave her address to Ryosuke-kun, the guy who stabbed Ai. I didn’t mean to dodge responsibility at all, but I never imagined that he’d actually kill her. I just wanted to scare her a little, so she’d understand my despair. The despair I felt when the girl I loved so much, that I was willing to sacrifice my life for, told me she couldn’t love me.
160: I still didn’t have the courage to meet Ai, so I just had him deliver her the bouquet for me. I never intended to hurt anyone.
The problem is which one is the truth? Or are all 3 of them lies?
153: we don’t have anything confirming or denying this statement. Hikaru smiles and looks at the ground when he says this. It feels a bit to me like he expresses some regret by calling the killing foolish and calls the clinging to her miserable, yet the spite part makes me question that regret. I think he also wouldn’t want to feel her weight anymore if it made him just miserable. He says this in a monologue after Aqua asks why the movie is an ordinary piece of fiction. Aqua doesn’t really acknowledge this reason for killing Ai. He just lets Hikaru yap and stops him when he leaves, leading him towards showing the DVD.
154: we don’t have anything confirming or denying this statement. Hikaru says this after Aqua stops him and says the work is not fiction. Hikaru doesn’t smile and we can’t see his eyes. Thereafter, Aqua asks if he believes Ai’s words, ignoring Hikaru’s confession. A big problem is: where were Hikaru and Ryosuke?
I’m not sure what that place is supposed to represent. I assume the manga depicts a bar in that panel. A bar doesn’t make sense as Hikaru was still under the legal drinking age. At the same time, I wouldn’t be surprised that he can get inside a bar or place with alcohol as someone underage, but still, how did these two meet and plan Ai’s scaring?
It’s also weird that Ryosuke had a knife with him if it was just to scare Ai. Did Hikaru give the knife or did Ryosuke choose to bring a knife himself? It’s wild that we never got an answer to this honestly. It could be that Ryosuke brought the knife as Hikaru says himself that he never imagined that Ryosuke would kill her. It could also be that Hikaru gave Ryosuke the knife as Akane says in chapter 96 that Hikaru prepared the stage for murder (実行可能な舞台を整えた人物) and chapter 165 frames Hikaru as the instigator of Ai’s death, but I would rather have more evidence than that honestly.
Like I mentioned in 153, Aqua also completely dismisses it and leads Hikaru towards the DVD.
160: Aqua says that that sentence is a lie too (not directly shown to us why unfortunately), but the author seems to frame Aqua as in the right. Hikaru also smiles and looks at the ground when he says those lines. There are panels later of Hikaru manipulating Ryosuke and Nino, or at least I think that is what the author wants to show, so it would be weird that he had no intent to hurt at all.
If one is true, I think 154 is most likely as he acts differently when he tells those words compared to 153 and 160 where he smiles and looks at the ground.
He also says that he wanted Ai to feel his despair, so I think the statement in chapter 154 seems the most likely option (Tsukiyomi also mentions Hikaru’s love to be “desire, disappointment, despair”), but even that has its fault like the bar panel. Same with bringing the knife along, like why go so far, if he just wanted to scare her. He also didn’t seem surprised by Ryosuke hanging himself. The only explanation can be that he didn’t expect Ryosuke to bring a knife and kill her, like he says in the same statement.
However, it's also a really weird choice that we get lie, truth, lie. It makes me wonder why the author backtracked and decided to revise the topic of Hikaru’s involvement in Ai’s death. It also doesn’t make sense why Hikaru himself would say it in such a way. Why lie first that he fully did the sh*t, than decide ey I kind of did the sh*t and then be like well actually I didn’t do sh*t. Your first reaction was to completely take the blame, why backtrack in the opposite direction? If you were in court and did this kind of confession, you’d be f*cked. The self-blame tendencies are a pretty consistent trait of his, so why suddenly not make him blame himself anymore?
Maybe all 3 options are lies? Hikaru isn’t exactly framed as innocently asking Ryosuke just to scare her, nor is it something foolish or without malicious intent. I don’t get innocent vibes from the last chapters at all. It’s a possibility that he regretted it afterwards, but there’s not really a panel were that’s expressed properly before the DVD (even there it’s questionable if what he shows really is regret and not something else). Aqua also believed there was still something going on and had dismissive responses to the two motivations for killing Ai in chapters 153 and 154. He also said his revenge wasn’t over yet in chapter 155 and in chapter 160 he straight up calls Hikaru a liar. Maybe Hikaru wanted to test which persona Aqua was convinced of the most and started with what he assumed Aqua wanted (because he knows that Aqua made the movie to avenge Ai’s death) which is a murderer. Then, when that did not generate a response, he resorted to a less violent reason, which similarly did not give results, until he gives up and almost taunts Aqua by saying he didn’t do anything.
Him giving the bouquet to Ryosuke is also a widely different depiction than the one in chapter 154 with the bar scene. Did these events happen at a different time or is one of them fake? Are both fake? I already said that the bar scene doesn’t make sense considering his age, but it’s never explicitly denied that it’s an impossibility. Him innocently giving the bouquet to Ryosuke could be a red herring or could be what actually happened but we, the audience, do not get the context surrounding that event where he could have been riling up Ryosuke for all we know. We so desperately need actual full flashbacks with dialogue to these events, but we’ll never get them in the manga, because it’s over, oh my god. This drives me crazy sometimes. It also annoys me when people take only one of these options as his “fully true” intentions, when nothing is confirmed and we only have a gradation of most likely.
For me personally, I think all 3 of them are lies and like he said in chapter 162: “I felt like I was only alive when I was with Ai. But I wanted to feel your presence, which became weaker as I got older. Even if it was the weight of my sin, I wanted to feel it forever.”
He couldn’t handle Ai breaking up with him and resorted to what he knows due to the Himekawa’s deaths: death is a weight that stays with him and doesn’t leave. That is until it eventually does fade, which spurs him to instigate murder similarly to Ai’s death.
I also prefer that interpretation because I personally see Hikaru as an exploiter of the system with Ai being the victim of it and Ryosuke buying into the gachikoi-system. The gachikoi system can bring happiness as seen for the twins (also their previous lives as Sarina and Goro) but can also lead to destruction like seen in Ryosuke and Nino. Hikaru exploited the bad sides of the system for his own gain. His gain is unfortunately not really directly related to the system itself but he still used the system to get it. So, for me, Hikaru wanting Ai dead and exploiting the system by fuelling its worst tendencies like misogyny, obsession and idolization (almost deification) feels more natural to me for thematic coherence.
Still, we never got anything concrete of what was going on regarding Hikaru and Ryosuke, so how the author thought it exactly played out is still a mystery. Because of that, it also doesn’t feel thematically very filling. I’m very interested in seeing how the anime will handle Hikaru in season 4. Maybe it will be like the live action where Hikaru and Ryosuke interacted twice. I’m excited!
(*ˊᗜˋ*)/Thank you for reading!
I had the most mentally exhausting chemistry exam of my life today so seeing this post really made me feel better (╥﹏╥)
I really like your take! I love how well thought out and detailed it is. In all honesty, the thought of writing my own analysis on Hikaru always comes in the back of my mind at times and I probably would've been able to do it around in 2024 when the series concluded since I was consistently reading it but the only thing that really stops me from doing so is just my conflicting feelings on the author himself.
Every time I try to critique oshi no ko in general I just feel like it's a lost cause because, even with all the analysis and the detailed explainations I read like the one you came up with I'm always reminded that oshi no ko could've been so much more interesting if Akasaka himself cared enough. One of the main reasons I feel that Hikaru as a character fundamentally seems to not work no matter what route Akasaka tries to switch him to each chapter (?) is because Akasaka never really considered writing oshi no ko as a murder mystery first (?) and he doesn't treat the more serious topics in the manga with the care that they deserve (I believe I've casually talked about that before). The entire murder mystery plot as a whole is serious so when Akasaka tries to mash that up with a love triangle and with Aqua and Ruby trying to navigate the industry it feels almost too overwhelming to the point that the entire mystery plot ends up taking a back seat.
So, if I try to analyze Hikaru's character on my own— As someone who has written original fiction since the day they knew how to write, I can't help but think "What was the author thinking?" first and foremost and with each conclusion I come up with the more that I feel disappointed.
Sure, I agree that there a good amount of things about Hikaru's character which make him himself, but especially nearing the end it felt like atleast to me— that Akasaka was purposefully making Hikaru more convoluted than he intended him to be because he never thought about what Hikaru really is outside of the few things that were previously written or implied about him. Making Hikaru purposefully more "complex" at the end to me felt like an escape goat almost because then it would be fine to leave confusion and things unanswered since if the fans liked him then they'd figure something out and that conclusion would become the truth.
I don't think Akasaka is incompetent at all but I really wished he thought of making the murder plot more prevalent (in Aqua's life too because I felt like despite how motivated he seems, he gets nowhere) and include hikaru much more, on his own so that we'd be able to grasp him better.
I could ramble all day about that haha but really, thanks for your answer @wia-tia !! I really appreciate it! You made me look at Hikaru from a different lense today! ( ⸝⸝´ ᵕ `⸝⸝)
Good luck with your exams! I hope you score well! 🍀
Thank you! Making diegetic analyses like these is a fun past time for me!
I understand where you come from! "What was the author thinking?" is definitely a thought that came up a few times while writing this post. I think you have a valid exegetic explanation of the manga. To me, it feels like the author is good in writing stuff with an episodic nature. Whenever I read the manga all these characters have a lot of potential for exploration in isolation, but when you zoom out and look at the whole manga overall a lot of that potential is wasted, unthreaded or thrown away. Like you said, it feels like the author stopped caring.
I think trying to mash these vastly different worlds is what makes Oshi no Ko so special and interesting! I think the problem lies not in the mashing itself but the author failing at balancing these three genres well. Sometimes the love triangle gets too much attention upsetting the murder mystery fans. Same happens vice versa where the shippers are disappointed that their ships do not get any conclusion when the murder mystery gets hastily wrapped up with no focus on the entertainment industry or the love triangle. It’s a though balancing game but it would’ve been so cool to see being pulled off. It unfortunately did not end up that way upsetting fans of all three groups. The love triangle dies with Aqua, the entertainment industry exploration is null at the end and the murder mystery plot ends up unsatisfying.
I agree I would’ve loved for Hikaru to get more attention! I got interested in him from the start (like already in January 2024 when we barely got crumbs), the potential of exploration of a sexual abused kid turned into serial killer really intrigued me. The worst part is that this transformation straight up does not get explored lmao and that definitely feels disrespectful at times.
However, I have a different perspective on your view. For me personally I always liked incomplete stuff it gives room to create in a certain direction and use canon like a prompt for one’s own ideas. I think you can learn a lot about a person the way they interpret and interact with certain characters/media and that is something that interests me. A character with a complete canon leaves less wiggle room for individual expression and variety. I enjoy the incompleteness but I understand if that is not what you might want from a fictional work.
I usually lose interest the moment a work is completed. I barely rewatch things on my own so doing this out of my own volition for Hikaru surprises myself lol. His pathological beliefs, even more his pathological behaviour is something that intrigues me deeply and the author not making it something simple is the reason I still engage with his character. However, I definitely understand the frustration of having a clunky complex character that feels like it was made unintentional or out of disinterest. At this point, I like Hikaru so much that that does not impede my enjoyment of him, but I can understand that it does for others.
Thank you again for reading!
