Ways Oshi no Ko Was the Best Anime of the Summer Season (2025)

The Summer 2024 anime season has come to a close, and looking back, it's easy to see which titles were the best, most entertaining, and most memorable of them all. While My Hero Academia's 7th season was solid and My Deer Friend Nokotan was a bizarre yet welcome surprise, the seinen series Oshi no Ko was arguably the season's best anime with its second season. The first episode of Oshi no Ko hit the ground running with its brutally subversive elements and tense drama, and Season 2 lived up to those high standards.

Season 2 of Oshi no Ko packed plenty of what made the first season such a hit, while also pushing the story in bold new directions and exploring some fascinating new ideas as Aqua and Ruby Hoshino figure out their new lives. This season owes much of its success to what Season 1 established while also adding some wonderful new material that any fan may enjoy.

10 Oshi No Ko Features Colorful, Dazzling Visuals to Make the Characters Expressive

This is an Anime With Both Style and Substance

It's true that an anime needs more than pretty visuals to be an excellent work of fiction. Style can't make up for a lack of substance, but if the writing checks out, then an anime will only be stronger with glitzy and eye-popping visuals to keep viewers engaged. Such was the case for Oshi no Ko's second anime season as the 2.5-D stage play launched.

While the original manga looks good, the Oshi no Ko anime simply looks incredible with its crisp visuals, high production values, rich colors, and sparkly shojo-style effects to play up the theme of a glamorous industry with a hidden dark side. Visually, this anime even had My Hero Academia beat in the Summer season, and MHA is no slouch with production values.

9 Oshi no Ko Has Strong Edutainment Value in Season 2

Viewers Learn How to Translate Manga Into Other Mediums

Usually, anime fans will learn more about a fictional setting's own lore and rules, such as how Quirks work in My Hero Academia or the island names/history in One Piece. Meanwhile, Oshi no Ko is set in the real world, so it may explain some real-life topics to viewers that they probably don't already know. Season 2 did that even more than Season 1 did.

Season 2 had some solid edutainment value about the laborious process of turning manga into 2.5-D stage plays and how to revise a manga volume into a workable script. For once, the subversion and drama were both set aside so Oshi no Ko fans could get a behind-the-scenes look at how popular media is adapted into other mediums to reach more audiences.

8 Oshi no Ko Has an Exciting Yet Grim Cliffhanger About Dr. Gorou Amamiya's Body

Ruby and Akane Could Hardly Believe They Actually Found His Remains

The second season of Oshi no Ko had stronger cliffhangers than the first season, and it also had stronger cliffhangers than the other anime in the Summer season. One of those cliffhangers concerned the skeletal remains of Dr. Gorou Amamiya, who got stabbed to death in a forest before he was reborn as Aqua Hoshino.

This isn't just a hard-hitting, morbid reminder that Aqua Hoshino has already experienced death itself. It's also a tantalizing cliffhanger because if Aqua sees or is told about these old bones, then that may reignite his fury and indignation about being murdered, so that may prompt him to resume his revenge quest after all. Aqua is happier without revenge on his mind, but this discovery may change all that.

7 Oshi no Ko's Love Triangle Added Spice to Aqua's Daily Life

Even Dark, Subversive Anime Series Make Time For Matters of the Heart

Oshi no Ko juggles many genres at once, with romance being one of them. Season 1 ended with a love triangle brewing between Aqua Hoshino, Kana Arima, and Akane Kurokawa, and that helped add some charming spice to Season 2 and made for some of the best romance in the Summer anime season. This romance was only mildly subversive and was quite relatable for viewers.

In particular, Kana Arima made serious strides with Aqua, going on an evening date with him while being both excited and flustered about what was happening. It was also amusing for Kana to comment on how grown-up Aqua was acting, correctly guessing that Aqua felt like a 30-something man. Akane Kurokawa, meanwhile, is clinging ever more tightly to Aqua as he promises to help him on his revenge quest.

6 Oshi no Ko Pushed Kana and Akane Into a More Meaningful Rivalry

These Girls Are Competing to See Who's the #1 Performer of Their Generation

While Kana Arima and Akane Kurokawa competed with each other in Season 2 to see who could win Aqua's heart, that was not the only battle these two girls fought in Season 2. Most of all, Kana and Arima spent part of Season 2 locked in a battle of professionals, each seeking to outdo the other as a performer.

That allowed them to form a proper rivalry in a whole new way, and it flattered them both. Kana and Akane can't just be token love interests — they need their own careers and self-actualization to flesh out their arcs, and Season 2 delivered. This rivalry was also quite realistic and relatable, allowing it to outdo the rivialries in Summer's shonen action series.

5 Oshi no Ko Has Relatable Themes About Finding the Meaning of Life

Aqua and Ruby Must Decide For Themselves How to Live Their Second Lives

Even if Oshi no Ko is not a true isekai anime, it still has some broad isekai vibes, such as the core concept of someone starting their life over in an unexpected new way. Rather than visit a fantasy land of elves, Aqua and Ruby Hoshino are reborn in the real world as twins, and they must figure out what this new life means for them, because no isekai god is going to tell them.

This creates a sympathetic narrative where the Hoshino twins must decide what their new lives will mean and how to live them, with Aqua torn between the happiness of an ordinary life and getting revenge for Ai Hoshino's death. Ruby, meanwhile, is determined to follow in her mother's footsteps, and fans can only hope that this ambitious decision of hers doesn't end in disaster.

4 Oshi no Ko Has Relatable Underdog Character Arcs For Melt Narushima and Akane Kurokawa

This is Actually More Relatable Than What My Hero Academia Had in its 7th Season

For the most part, Oshi no Ko is a subversion of traditional narratives that show underdogs fighting hard to succeed despite the odds. In this industry, people get ahead with connections and unfair tricks, but there's still room for shonen-style underdog narratives, as Season 2 showed.

Best of all, those narratives were more realistic and sympathetic than what fans saw in Summer's shonen action anime, since the real world does not have Quirks and caped heroes. So, it falls to both Melt Narushima and Akane Kurokawa to excite and inspire anime viewers as scrappy heroes who push themselves to succeed despite the deck being stacked against them.

3 Oshi no Ko Finds New Ways to Subvert the Entertainment Industry

Even When Kana Benefits From Unfair Rules, She Doesn't Like It

This anime's second season found time to explore non-subversive ideas to mix things up, but in the end, this is a deconstruction of the idol genre, and Oshi no Ko delivered once again. That made Oshi no Ko a standout in the Summer season, in particular where Kana's and Akane's experiences in the entertainment industry were concerned.

As a child, Akane hoped that passion and hard work would let her catch up to Kana in that industry, only for a bitter, tense Kana to explain the truth. Performers got ahead through connections and secret deals, not hard work or chance, and many auditions were just a formality to hide what was really going on.

2 Oshi no Ko Has Serious Suspense About Whether Ruby Finds the Truth of Her Brother

Her Beloved Dr. Gorou is Standing Right Next to Her

The reveal of Dr. Gorou Amamiya's skeleton had serious implications for Ruby Hoshino's character arc. She once thought that Dr. Gorou had simply wandered off somewhere to continue his life were Ruby couldn't see him, and she hoped to reunite with him someday. Now Ruby knows the truth -- that her beloved doctor has been dead for years.

For now, Ruby is heartbroken that Dr. Gorou is gone, but there's a chance that she may put two and two together and realize that Dr. Gorou has been by her side for years as Aqua Hoshino. Ruby has enough clues to piece this together, but it's anyone's guess whether she will make the connection, and that tense suspense worked wonders for this anime's final episodes.

1 Oshi no Ko Ended With a Fantastic Cliffhanger About the Twins' Elusive Father

This is a Major Setup For Season 3

This anime's second season ended quite strongly in many ways, including the surprise arrival of Aqua and Ruby's estranged father. In Season 2, Aqua thought he found a lead on his missing father via his half-brother Taiki, but that soon turned out to be a red herring. Just as Ruby left her mother's family grave, a light-haired man arrived and made comments to the Hoshino family grave that outed him as the twins' father.

That impactful ending was stronger than anything else in the Summer anime season had to offer. It was an exciting cliffhanger that not only teased the truth of the father, but also posed a threat to Aqua's happiness. Aqua is happier without seeking revenge, and he thinks his new father is gone. Now the dad is back, and if Aqua learns that, his life may be lost to darkeness once again.

Oshi No Ko

TV-14

Animation

Mystery

Supernatural

A doctor and his recently-deceased patient are reborn as twins to a famous Japanese musical idol and navigate the highs and lows of the Japanese entertainment industry as they grow up together through their lives.

Release Date

April 12, 2023

Cast

Manaka Iwami , Jeremy Gee , Jack Stansbury , Alyssa Marek , Savanna Menzel , Natalie Rial

Seasons

1

Creator

Production Company

Story By

Aka Akasaka

Writers

Jin Tanaka

Number of Episodes

Streaming Service(s)

HIDIVE

Directors

Daisuke Hiramaki