The wildest anime of the year is built on entertainment horror stories

polygon.com:

“What would it like to be the child of someone famous?” an obstetrician wonders not too long before being pushed off a cliff and reincarnated as the child of his very own patient: his favorite idol, Ai Hoshino, pregnant with twins. Another of Ai’s fans also dies roughly around the same time and is reborn as the other child. Welcome to Oshi no Ko, an adaptation of a manga series by Aka Akasaka (known for the hysterically funny Kaguya-sama: Love Is War) and artist MengoYokoyari.

For the twins, now named Ruby and Aquamarine (shortened to Aqua), the reincarnation angle is like if the fan parlance about various celebs being “mother” quite literally came true. The result is surreally funny and even sweet as the two sink more into their new life, becoming fully convinced by their own performances of the roles they now play as the children of their idol. But then Ai dies too, murdered by a stalker. Aqua swears revenge, theorizing the real culprit is in the entertainment industry.

Oshi no Ko leverages the reincarnation premise for both the wild dramatic potential of its revenge plot line, but also as a way to have a pair of fans see behind the curtain, with different perspectives and impossible hindsight. Aqua and Ruby are reborn with the social connections that they never had before, and with the (spooky) intelligence to maneuver this world from an early age, mostly so we can quickly get into the real meat of the show: production logistics. Through its unpacking of those details, we can see both the joy of the craft and the amount of hard work and passion that goes into invisible elements. But there’s also the other hand: the emotional punishment of it.

For all its sensational bits, Oshi no Ko isn’t always a story you only