Make Believe Bonus: Oshi No Ko Season 2

The Joy Of Creation

The “dark side” of the idol industry fascinates everyone. It has enticed Japanese tabloids for decades, prompting the legitimate ones to seek out whatever gossip on them they could and the scummier pubs to literally dig through their trash. In the West, the perceived skeeviness of J-pop idols and the presumed crushing working conditions of K-pop idols have spawned cycles of media-powered outrage and rebuttal.

It’s this shadier side that also attracted many to Oshi No Ko, the anime based off a manga series of the same name which premiered in the summer of 2023. The debut hour-long episode offers the entire J-pop idol experience in miniature, and subsequent episodes in the first season orbit this niche of Japanese entertainment. So much of the discourse around the show initially centered on this “expose” of idol culture, media outlets and assorted viewers with an X account parroting this idea that at the heart of this super popular program was a dissection of bubbly pop groups.

The second season of Oshi No Ko wrapped up earlier this week, and managed something impressive, at least to me — being superior to the first season, and by a pretty significant margin. How did it do so?

By barely focusing on idols at all.