 Hello everyone, welcome back to another Lumilani video essay. I got a new mic, so the audio flare you heard in the last video, gone, hoof, reduced to ashes. Today's topic is something I've been holding off on talking about for a long time, mainly because it's such a beloved show within the anime community, and I don't really like to rag on things that people love, but I decided to just suck it up and put my thoughts out there, the bad, but also the good ones too, since there's actually a lot I do like about this anime, and I'm sure you guessed which anime it is by the title, obligatory recap of the beginning. So Oshinoko is an anime about a gynecologist named Goro, who you know a previous cancer patient he grew close with, has an uncomfortable obsession with an idol named I. This right here is where most of my issues with the show stem from, his relationship and attitude to Serena, the girl with terminal cancer, and I, but I'll get more into these later. During a normal day in the hospital he works at, this idol comes in pregnant with twins. Goro grows somewhat close to I, and promises to be the one to deliver her babies when it's time for her to give birth. Unfortunately, and spoiler warning here, if you've never finished the first chapter of the manga, or the first hour and a half long episode from the anime, Goro does not make it to this appointment. He ends up getting murdered by what seems to be a crazed fan of I's, and he dies a peaceful death, never to come on to another vulnerable teenage girl ever again. The end. Just kidding! The imminent patient are reborn as the idol's twin babies! Right about here is where I began to question the love this show was getting from, what seemed like literally every person on the internet, but I figured since everyone loved it so much that there had to be much more to this anime, and so I persisted and sat through the rest of the 80 minute long episode waiting for the grand payoff everyone promised, and it just never came for me. The Goro we were given at the beginning ended up really souring the rest of the manga. Like I said though, my opinion on the sunny manga isn't entirely negative, there's a lot of good things about this manga that kept me reading to the end instead of just giving up and dropping it, and this is something I'll get into more as we go. Unfortunately due to the nature of this video, it's gonna get pretty spoiler heavy for chapters 1 through 125, so if you want to catch up before watching this so you can form your own opinion before I state mine, please feel free to do so, but yeah anyways, let's begin. One thing I will say about the manga is this, it really improved my opinion on the overall story. That's not to say I love or even like Oshinoko, but there's a lot of good things that it did pretty damn well. Like that OP little fucking banger. One specific topic that I actually got asked about a ton in a previous video was the way it writes women, and I'm happy to say it actually does a pretty good job at that. There's one big plot point further in the manga that I know we all know about that kind of changes things negatively, I'll get into that later, but for the most part, the female characters in this manga are pretty interesting and well written. Arima and Akane have become my favorite characters in the manga, and I think their motives and how they act upon them are a big reason why. We get a lot of looks into both of their heads, and we get to see a lot of the turmoil they're going through while in this industry. Seeing Akane struggle with being interesting on my love, so much of the point that she accidentally negatively impacts public perception of her was really sad to see and also really fascinating. While she quarrels with Arima, it doesn't come off as petty girl drama because of the underlying deep respect for each other. Instead, they're both fighting from this place of admiration, ruthlessly attempting to win the competition with each other that was born from the cutthroat nature of the industry they work in. Her relationship with her co-stars was also fantastic too since they all loved and supported her. And again, even when the manga had the chance to write petty drama, it instead opted to give a very loving side of female friendships in the industry. When Yuki comforts her after Akane slapped her because she understands Akane's circumstances are stressing her out, or when all of the cast come to comfort Akane after she almost commits s**t from online hate. That wasn't funny, sorry I laughed out of panic. It's all very touching outside of the sadness of the whole situation. Arima, the classic Sundare, has some good reasons for acting the way she does. She's always been hot-headed and blunt, sure, but it's more than obviously a coping mechanism for how terrified she is that she'll lose the only dream she ever had, acting. It's the intensely deep feelings like this that had me loving every time one of the female characters came on screen and made me enjoy the manga even when I thought I wouldn't. Now, Ruby is a bit of a complicated character for me. I thought her backstory as Serena was fantastic, and her getting a second lease on life when she suffered so much in her previous one was really touching. She seemed a little bit one-dimensional the first time we see her as a teen though, since she showed no signs of trauma of losing her mom and kinda only just wanted to join an idol group, but then she picked up in the second half of the manga as she became blood-listed just like Aqua. She became more calculating, though I do have a couple of indifferent thoughts on this. She only did this because she found out the 30-year-old man she loved was dead, and some of her calculatedness was immediately discredited as something she could never possibly do, which ended up being true since she was going to I's old manager for advice. However, these aren't things I necessarily take issue with since they're at the very least true to Ruby's character. Not everyone could beat the girl fail allegations. But I would be remiss if I didn't mention how these things seem to kinda take away from Ruby's character a little. Finally, though, we come to where Ruby's character's at at the recent two chapters in the manga. But since we're in the positives right now, I'll leave it at that. Other than that, though, most of the girls are pretty consistently interesting and full of depth. The tenderness that the girls have for each other, and the willingness to go out of their way to help each other, it's very, very refreshing. It also gives a pathway to really portray the inner workings of the show business, another great part about the manga. I can't speak to how accurate it is, since I'm obviously not a part of any of their lifestyles, but the writer of the manga seems, to me at least, a casual viewer, to know his stuff. Occasionally, I think it can get pretty wordy when it describes everything about show business in great detail, but it's not really a huge issue to me. It usually helps contextualize the story or add story beats. For example, when Arima was caught going into a married man's apartment alone, Miyako had to explain how this thing just kind of happens often, and how she can avoid bad publicity in the future. For example, sharing apartment buildings with your romantic partners, so the media can't say you went to each other's apartment complex. It's details like this that really shine. After all, the mangas of Oshinoko are part of this industry themselves, which I think is what makes the writing of these parts of the story's greatest strength. Lastly, on my list of positives is how awkward trauma and inner turmoil are written. I'll go more into depth on this when I get to the negatives, because there's something I want to touch on that involves his past life, but for the most part, the way these scenes are written are pretty compelling. He's terrified of emotional acting because his trauma hurts him so much, and the only way to make himself portray the emotions he's looking for is to recall a time that's extremely traumatic for him. Every time he tries to find happiness and just living in the industry and having fun with acting, subconscious punishes him for not focusing on his traumas. When he gets sucked back into a revenge plot after he finds out his father is actually alive, it feels tragic and almost heartbreaking since we saw him finally find peace just chapters before this. There's a lot of great stuff in this manga, which made it easy to continue reading, even when I did dislike something that happened in these panels. However, with all these positives I stated, I can't help but feel a sense of disappointment for what the story could have been if the other, more unfortunate details had never been added. I'm gonna be upfront here. Most of the issues I have with this show stems from Goro's behaviors in his past life. There's other details that I think could have been handled better, which I'll talk about in a second, but this man, this man right here, Jail. His relationship with Ruby in her past life as Serena hadn't started out bad, but it became much worse. Now with the more recent chapters, we're showing just how uncomfortable and how ethics-breaking this relationship really was. Serena's crush on Goro is fine. She's a child who has a crush on an older man. It happens. I can't say there was any shortage of classmates in middle school and high school that had a crush on any one of my teachers, but the key in these relationships is that the adult in the situation does not entertain the idea in the slightest. Kids are gonna be kids. They're gonna make dumb decisions, potentially including asking an adult to marry them. Adults, however, have fully formed brains. They have a ton more life experience under their belt and very little in common with children. So tell me, dear viewer, out of these here options, which one do you think is the best response to a child asking you to marry them? Thank you for participating, dear viewers. If you answered literally any other option except this one, congrats! You're not a fucking weirdo. Goro, on the other hand? I-I just- Sorry, that panel deals like a damage to me whenever I read it. This relationship he has with his patient isn't even the only strange affinity he has for literal kids. Because of Serena, Goro becomes obsessed with the idol group Ikumachi, which by itself isn't bad at all. In fact, if he hadn't accepted Serena's advances, I think it'd be really sweet that he remember Serena by her absolute favorite idol group. But of course, he did somewhat accept them, so here we are. And not only is Goro into the idol group as a whole, he's particularly interested in the head of the group, Ai Hoshino. Which, again, could be fine. If he said he just liked her because she was Serena's favorite. But no! The show just has to make it a point that he would date her if ever given the chance. And his co-worker even calls him a lolicon! AKA pedophile! Which he does not refute. And this is never really touched upon again. Never called out, never shown as a real problem, even later in the manga. I think if they literally just made Goro have a fatherly relationship to Ai, I wouldn't have nearly as many issues with the manga as I do. Then it could be a beautiful parallel about how he acted as Ai's father or caretaker, only to become the caretaker. It could have been so much more tragic as he watched Ai pass, being what is essentially his daughter figure lose her life right in front of his eyes. One seemingly simple change is all it could have taken. But instead, he has a weird, almost incestual infatuation with Ai. And as he watches her die, all I could think of was how he was essentially just a fan watching his waifu pass away. And it's not like this is even something I can ignore with Aqua through the chapters. Sure, we see less and less references to Goro's time passes, and Aqua himself is in a bad character. However, I would not go so hard on Goro's actions if his weirdness didn't come up again. I'm forced to relive the fact that this is a 30-year-old man inside of a teenager's body, kissing, falling in love, and talking about sexual proclivities with teen girls multiple times throughout the story. It really sucks too, because I love Aqua as a character, but having Goro's soul can really sour his actions sometimes. And trust me, I'm trying to ignore it for the sake of enjoying the story, but this manga does not make it easy. The most egregious, and I think universally greed-upon way that this comes up, is Ruby and Aqua's very weird relationship in Chapter 124. Like I just mentioned, Serena had to crush on Goro, who unfortunately accepted her advances by telling her to wait until she was 16. What better way to bring this back than to have Ruby find out that her brother is Goro and then ask her brother to date her now that she's 16! I wrote screaming into the script right here, but I have neighbors. Now, it's worth mentioning that Aqua has neither accepted nor denied this particular request, at least not that we've seen on screen. But he's letting Ruby hang all over him when he knows that she's into him romantically. And Ruby girl, you're combined ages like at least in your late 20s now. You might be old enough that this isn't weird anymore, but that's your brother, and you're old enough to know better! The last thing I want to talk about isn't something that's objectively wrong with the anime, it's just kind of something I personally dislike. I just kind of feel like the things that work for this story go against each other. What I mean by that is the murder mystery and the dark side of the entertainment industry is a pretty cool storyline, and the celebrity life of Aqua and his friends is a pretty cool storyline too, but meshed together, they seem to kind of contradict each other and clash. For example, Aisteth and the murder mystery seem to illustrate a fundamental issue with being an idol. She was killed by a fan that was obsessed with her image and was mad when his parasocial relationship with her fell apart. She was never honest with the love she gave because she couldn't possibly be for every single one of her fans, it just isn't possible. Now, however, with Aqua and Ruby in the industry, things just kind of seem to work for them. All the girls are in the industry for the fun and enjoyment of it, and the parasocial relationships seem to be more of a background than anything. A good way I think this is portrayed is in Season 3 of a Gretzigo, with the crew having to protect Gretzigo from a stalker, and all the precautions she had to take to keep herself safe. It works in this story because it becomes a central focus of the season, but in Ocean O' Coe, it seems to only get used as a plot device when it's necessary. Fan relationships are only mentioned when a character needs to be sad or have conflict, or they're just entirely background. And sure, we've seen a lot of Akane and Adima's struggles with maintaining their position in their careers, and I think their parts are probably the most in line with the ethicalities of fame. However, when Aqua rolls in, he kinda just seems to fix all of these issues. Now, don't get me wrong. It isn't like these parts break immersion and have me saying, That's wishful, that's not possible. Actually, the way Aqua handles this situation is calculated, which is in character for him, so it makes sense. But it does kinda highlight the clash each story has with each other. Is the world supposed to be dark, or is it supposed to be a fun celebrity slice of life? Some people might enjoy this clash, which is fun. If this is something you like or don't mind, please feel free to let me know in the comments because I am genuinely curious. And this is why I'm not fully harping on this particular fact because I still somewhat enjoy reading each part. However, I will say that I felt this clash heavy on a very important story beat, and that being, Eye's Death. I think part of the reason the first episode didn't hit for me like it did for the enjoyers is that her death just wasn't that impactful to me, at least not to justify the absolutely bonkers shit happening just hours before this. And part of the reason for this is I just felt like Eye's monologue wasn't that believable. Sure, I really loved her parting words to Aqua and Ruby. That was heartbreaking and sad, but her whole spiel on how she wishes she could have loved her murder, no one talks like that. And sure, maybe it can be sweet. But it just highlights that tonal clash, where the story is trying to be gruesome and sad, it's still trying to keep its protagonist perfect and loving, and it ends up just kind of ruining the moment for me. It feels like the story is trying to say Eye's aren't what they seem, parasocial relationships are bad, and then makes the girls the most palatable girls in existence while also allowing the parasocial relationship that killed Eye to go under the rug. In fact, the dude just f***ing being relegated to an occasional brief mention, and now we're chasing a mystical dad who actually did have a relationship with Eye. I don't know, man, I really want to like this anime and manga like everyone else does. I really do. There's a lot of good parts about it, but there's just so many glaring issues that I can't ignore. A lot of the issues I take with Oshinoko is really that it just feels like mispotential to be a perfect story. And also that it passed up maybe on my anime list when it doesn't deserve that, but whatever. If it just cut the weird shit with Serena and I and made Goro like a father figure to all the girls, I think that would be fantastic. It'd be beautiful. It'd be meaningful. Instead, we got weirdo Goro and his gross interest in underage girls. Also, before anyone comes from me for Eye technically being the age of consent at 16, so she's not underage, let's keep in mind to not be weird. You know, damn well Goro was waiting for the girls to hit the age of consent just so he wouldn't go to jail. Anyways, I hope this didn't piss too many people off, but I do love talking about the things I have strong opinions on, and what do you guys think? If you guys love Oshinoko, what makes you love it? And if you hate it, what makes you hate it? But anyways, thank you guys for coming to this video, and I hope you guys have a great day. Bye!