hi! this is a sideblog for oshi no ko and will contain manga spoilers (i use the tag: oshi no ko manga spoilers, so block it if you don't want any). i will go feral over the hoshino family and first gen bkomachi at any given opportunity

This point has been made several times over the course of Oshi no Ko's run but now with the full manga here I keep thinking about Ruby's arc and how the lack of letting her confront the dark realities of the industry she is a willing participant in ends up stagnating both her arc and the story's critique of the entertainment industry as a whole.

Ruby is introduced into the story as a bright eyed young girl wishing to be an idol due to her admiration of them and how Ai- her mother in this life and her oshi in her past life as Sarina got her through her time at hospital up until Sarina died. She wants to be an idol because it is a two lifetimes long dream of hers, a dream she desperately wants to fulfill. Even though she is somewhat aware of the less than rosy reality of being an idol, she wants to be one anyway. And she does! With the help of her family, she ends up forming an idol group in a safe environment and as a result ends up with a very different start to being an idol than Ai- safe and protected.

This is not a bad thing of course! Its good that she has a safety net that she knows will catch her to fall back on and it is definitely good that she was not subjected to how terribly another agency may have treated her. But what this does is also set up the fact that Ruby's arc SHOULD have been her reckoning with her own participation in this environment and system, tearing off the rose tinted glasses completely and then choosing to better herself and the environment around her along with finally seeing the person Hoshino Ai was in her entirety.

The toxicity and parasocialism of idol culture is in a direct clash with Ruby's naivete and enjoyment of idols as a method for her escapism. She is a "fan" but she is also an "idol" and she needs to be able to reconcile and grow past those two identities, as a fan who buys into the idol propaganda, projecting her own desires and fears onto them and as an idol who has to participate in this system of being a product for the masses.

Ruby and Ai are the main focus for discussing the toxicity and corruption in the idol industry because the two of them are major idols here. Ruby is paralleling Ai of B-Komachi's steady upward rise in the industry- we've known since the beginning her end goal would have been a concert at the Dome, the story is partly about her journey getting there.

And because Ruby is the main viewpoint through which we see the idol industry, that's why Ruby has to have meaningful interaction with the darker side of things because if she doesn't, then the whole commentary falls flat. Its been discussed before but because of her following in Ai's footsteps so to speak, that the differences between her and Ai in how they become idols, the way Ruby is a nepobaby who has everything from her group members to her first gig handed to her and Ai who received none of the protections Ruby did provides an implicitly victim blaming narrative on Ai as the story transforms more and more into "Ruby is the purest and most honest of all and thus is the superior idol" when the circumstances for Ruby and Ai's careers are completely utterly different in a way that makes a comparison like this impossible without placing inadvertent blame on Ai for not being a honest pure idol like Ruby.

Ruby has to discuss and interrogate the toxic and negative side of the industry as she experiences it! It can't brushed off with her because SHE is the one following in Ais footsteps as an idol and whose journey revolves around her dream of being one. Making Ruby brush off all of that and refusing to let her meaningfully interact with critique on the industry in order to perpetuate the narrative that she's the "best and purest and most specialest idol who will definitely surpass Ai because she just can okay?" accidentally invalidates OnK's critique on idol culture with Ai. Then the topic of discussion is not "how the misogyny and toxicity perpetuated by the idol industry and rampant entitlement over idols causes deaths and suffering for idols because humans are not meant to be pedestalled as a pure ideal" but instead becomes "Ai wasn't a good enough liar or idol and wasnt pure enough thats why she was attacked but Ruby is pure and good and perfect and she won't follow in Ais footsteps because shes just naturally that good." which is uh. Bad!

And because the story takes a swift turn into making Ruby the central focus of everything, that means her dream to be an idol also becomes the centre focus which means any sort of critique of that position becomes stagnant because the story is unable to reconcile that dirty reality with the rosy future it wants Ruby to achieve. Ruby won't have to deal with misogyny and toxicity because she's perfect and pure. Ruby's negative feelings towards fans that she explicitly says she sometimes sees as Ryousuke (c.123) are brushed away because she's a loving idol who never has any less than loving thoughts about her fans. Ruby's manipulations and horrible treatment of people during her BH mode are never resolved and the RBKN fight ends in Ruby graciously forgiving Kana for her outburst and jealousy and never allowing Kana or Mem to opportunity to properly air out their grievances with Ruby discarding them like leftover vegetable scraps in BH arc because can't you see? She's the story's specialest princess who has never done anything wrong in her life ever.

Refusing to let Ruby confront her own biases and participation in the toxic culture of the idol industry and the way she perpetuates that cycle of harm in BH arc as an idol and how she places Aqua and Ai on a pedestal that she never fully takes them off from as a fan, places a dam of any meaningful commentary and critique on the toxic reality of the industry that the story began with, thus stagnating both Ruby as a character and diminishes the lessons the story taught to begin with, as all those criticisms become retroactively invalidated in the eyes of the narrative.

chapter 166 review

continued cw for discussion of canon suicide