by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $9.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Kaito Sakurai, Nagisa Saito, Asuka Saito, Nanoka Hara, Mizuki Kayashima, Ano
Intro:
… too vacuous and manipulative to feel like it’s worth the time spent engaging with it.
Oshi no Ko is an… interesting franchise. Starting with an extreme version of a J-pop stan culture in-joke (two J-pop fans get reincarnated as the twin children of their favourite idol), the story (specifically as depicted in the 8-episode live-action series) then proceeds to put that on the backburner to get more into teenaged angst about trying to make it in the gnarled and tangled web of showbiz within Japan’s entertainment industries. Oh, and murky melodrama about living solely to exact vengeance on someone else. It is, to put it mildly, a lot to deal with, and with the cliffhanger that Episode 8 ended on, wrapping all of that up is a tall order. And to its credit, The Final Act does indeed wrap everything up… but does that make it ‘good’?
While its first act rewinds the narrative to the very start, where we see the past lives of said reincarnated starlet kiddies, the bulk of the film involves young actor Aqua (Kaito Sakurai) completing his long-term act of vengeance against the true murderer of his mother… by turning the whole story into a biopic that he will write and star in. The resulting layers of surreality enveloping the production-within-a-production, like a J-drama take on Hamlet’s ‘The Mousetrap’, result in interesting moments, but for something that’s seemingly been built up to over several segments of streamed serialisation, it somehow still feels like it’s just the subplot compared to the drama surrounding his sister Ruby (Nagisa Saito) and her idol group.
Much like its narrative focus, the thematic focus feels like it’s in a constant state of distraction from itself. With its reasonably in-depth look at the production of the in-universe biopic, bolstered by what the show had previously addressed with the realities of idol stardom and TV production, it aims for an admission of the pain and trials and lies that go on behind popular entertainment. However, it’s difficult to fully buy into its remarks about what these breads and circuses are made from, when it appears to be blind to how its more depressive form of entertainment mainly serves the same function of giving the audience something to help them get through their (comparatively) undramatic existence. It’s like Noah Baumbach’s White Noise, but without the understanding of just how depressing that existence truly is, or the absurdist clarity needed to make it viable as an existence. Swapping out excessive amounts of sugar with excessive amounts of salt doesn’t suddenly make the recipe healthier.
It’s a testament to the cast and crew here that they manage to make this at all compelling, because as bonkers as the plot specifics get, they’re clearly putting their all into selling it as genuine. But even with that effort, there’s still something that feels… empty. It’s like getting into a fist fight with someone who spends a good 5-10 minutes winding up their punch while you just stand there watching them, before they finally hit you. Yes, it makes an impact. Yes, it hurts. Yes, you’ll probably feel it in the morning. But you can’t help but wonder what the point of the encounter even was, aside from just something to feel bad about afterwards.
Oshi no Ko: The Final Act does what it sets out to achieve: conclude the overall story in a way that makes its wildly differing tones and genre fixations congeal into a unifying mass. But after the decently affecting moments of the preceding show, and the ‘live your life to the full’ messaging this bewilderingly tries to cap things off with (it sums up the tonal wonk of the story in the worst way possible), it’s just too vacuous and manipulative to feel like it’s worth the time spent engaging with it. If you watched the show and really got into it, by all means, check this out… but any recommendations beyond that aren’t worth the bad karma.
