Review of [Oshi No Ko]

I was never interested in idol culture, so I was skeptical about starting watching this show. What convinced me to start it was a very high mean score and, I'm not going to lie, very nice looking cover image of this show. With that kind of aesthetics catching my eye, I decided to give it a try. I don't regret that. It's a solid show, albeit with many flaws I will mention later on in this spoiler free review. Visually, this show is great. Fine animation accompanied with detailed art makes "Oshi no Ko" pleasant to watch, but what I find as the best element ofthis anime's visual side is vivid, rich colour palette. It is not only improving the overall experience, but also fits well into the atmosphere of a story about idols and entertainment industry. Another thing worth of mentioning is definitely dancing choreography. An anime about idols without scenes showing flashy performances with good looking dancing sequences would be incomplete. Creators of this show really put a lot of care to make dancing scenes look good and realistic.

Music elements represent high quality as well. Opening and ending songs are absolute bangers. Apart from them, other themes fit well into the scenes they appear in. I greatly enjoyed hearing songs performed by the characters present in this anime.

I had mixed feelings about the characters. Starting from positives, they have really cool looking designs that feel unique. However, what shines the most about their designs are eyes. They look simply gorgeous in how detailed and expressive they have been portrayed. It is hard to not think about an old saying that "eyes are the window to the soul", indeed. On the other hand, the characters in "Oshi no Ko" are pretty basic. They have rather simple personalities and follow certain tropes that you could see in a lot of other shows released in the past. Overly melodramatic moments or scenes with characters reacting unrealistically did not make those characters feel less flat. I am aware that for some viewers it wasn't a problem at all, but as someone who is not fond of that kind of cliche writing, I didn't find it as amusing when I was watching the show.

The plot in general is also quite messy. At some point I couldn't point out which was the main topic of this show. To avoid spoilers, I will say - watch few first episodes and ask yourself a question about what is the very driving force of this anime. Keep in mind that I'm not against works of art having complex plots, not limited to only one main element carrying everything else. The thing is, "Oshi no Ko" has few main elements that are presented in a rather chaotic way. It doesn't make this anime significantly less entertaining to watch, but if you think about it after finishing the whole show, you might see how it's writing was messy, depending on an episode.
Same goes with shoving down the viewers' throats stuff about how the entertainment industry is bad, how it is founded on lies, etc. etc. "Show, not tell" is not always possible, but here I felt this principle was almost non-existent.

As for the direction, no complaints here. It was stellar, to put it simply. Whether we are talking about static or dynamic scenes, all of them were treated with care, resulting in 11 episodes feeling consistent and well planned out. Speaking of episodes, the first episode's length is over 1 hour. It was an unconventional way to start an anime, but the studio succeeded in delivering great starting episode which didn't affect the quality of the remaining 10 episodes.

With all pros and cons, I had a good time with this anime. It wasn't my cup of tea in many ways, but high production quality managed to compensate elements I considered as underwhelming or flaws. Doga Kobo really did a wonderful job. You could feel that people from this studio put their hearts into making this series.