There are a couple stories where a character who is the real driving force in the plot is behind the scenes for most or all of the series.
Yui Ikari, right? She gets about ten seconds of air time in Neon Genesis Evangelion, but a lot of what happens happens because she’s gone and Gendo wants her back.
Another is Momoka Oginome from Penguindrum. Most of the story revolves in various ways around her death, but she’s in the show for about twenty seconds.
More recently there’s Oshi No Ko. It’s a story about show business, and specifically the idol group business and at its heart, propelling the story forward, is the murdered idol Ai Hoshino.
Right? Look at it: There are basically two plot lines, based around Ai’s twin children. Ruby Hoshino wants to be an idol star just like her mom; Aquamarine Hoshino wants to find the scumbag behind his mother’s death. These two stories drive the series forward.
Unlike the other two shows, though, in Oshi No Ko we get to meet the driver and get to know her.
This can be good and can be bad. Y’see, the trick is that if we get to see that person, they have to have the weight, the gravitas, to be convincing as the driver. Right? They have to show us WHY Ruby and Aqua are motivated to do what they do. They have to have the narrative staying power to drive the story forward. If they don’t carry the weight, no one can buy it.
But if they do … woo hoo! Bring it on!
For these purposes Ai Hoshino is a really well constructed character. Someone thought really hard about who she is, her strengths and weaknesses, in order to make it understandable why Aqua and Ruby would devote their lives to her instead of living their own lives.
I’m going to start with the usual stuff, mind, body, and soul, but I’m keeping a card up my sleeve. Okay? Three … two … one … Let’s jam.
I’m holding off on mind for a bit.
Body: Well it’s not like she’s Sophia Vergara, but that’s not the point. Ai is really, seriously cute. She’s a fine actor, singer, and dancer, good enough to stand out not just in her group, B Komachi, but in the wider idol world at large.
And she has literal stars in her eyes. Striking, aren’t they?
Soul: Ai has a big heart that’s full of love, doesn’t she? She’s warm, cheerful, friendly, has a good sense of humor. Think about it: After she’s been fatally stabbed she tells her own killer how much she loved having him as a fan … and she means it. He kills himself in despair.
I wanted to describe her as a Soul Woman, although her physical abilities make that impossible. But when what her common sense tells her to do and what her heart wants are in conflict, she goes with her heart every time.
If that was it she’d be totally Mary Sue, too superficial to be convincing as the plot driver. So she has a couple characteristics that create strong conflicts within her that make her INTERESTING. Nope, not interesting. INTERESTING.
I told you I was holding off on mind, right?
Mind: She’s dumber than three bricks.
Seriously, Ai is a total air head. Look, she’s pregnant at sixteen. What does that tell you she was doing at fifteen. Fifteen. And birth control? What’s that?
And she KNOWS that as an idol she can’t do that, that she has to be pure and chaste. OOPS!
Plus she manages to blurt out in an interview that she has kids. OOPS! Of course, she retcons “kids” to “kittens,” but seriously, how hard is it to remember that?
The fatal moment is, of course, when her soul overrules her mind One Last Time, and she calls the father of her children, revealing her location. Not long after that she’s tracked down by the stalker who murders her. Coincidence? Aqua thinks not, and neither does anyone in the audience. And all she needed to do was have the brains to keep her mouth shut. But nope … the heart speaks.
All this makes sense. To have some tension in a character, if they’re strong in two elements, they need to have a weakness on the third. Sure, like Haruhi Suzumiya, right? Brainy, great physical skills … and a spoiled brat. So Ai, talented and soulful, is dumb. It creates tension. When will she blurt out the truth?
But where Ai gets her real depth is here: Her emotional (soul) strengths are largely faked.
This comes out as that first episode goes on, right? Ai’s father died and her mother went to prison, so she was raised in an orphanage. And when mom got out of prison, she left Ai in the orphanage.
Ai has been looking for love since, and like a lot of people in her position – Asuka Langley Soryu is another example – she doesn’t know what she’s looking for.
That’s why she was sexually active at fifteen. She doesn’t know the difference between sex and love.
That’s why she’s not quite sure what to do with Ruby and Aqua. She was never parented. How can she know how to parent?
She has to be coached into loving her fans.
This undermines her identity as a Soul Woman. We look into the soul of the Soul Woman and see a scared little girl not knowing what she’s doing.
Now THAT’s depth!
And then she’s murdered while she’s trying to figure it out. She’s murdered BECAUSE she’s trying to figure it out.
You know what it does? It makes Ai TRAGIC.
The main characters are Ruby and Aqua, and to be frank they’re a couple of monomaniacs: Ruby wants to be an idol like her mom; Aqua wants to find the person behind her killer.
And they are driven by Ai because she’s a great, powerful character, a woman who loved them in the best way she knew how even though she didn’t know how.
They love her because she TRIED, and that’s the last level of Ai’s tragedy: The kids didn’t get to see her figure it out.
Poor Ai. Poor kids.
I always look at comments and feedback, and I’m sure I’m not the first to see what I’ve seen, so have at it. Just keep it clean and keep it on target…no personal attacks, okay? Thanks.
