Throughout Aqua’s quest for revenge, he took great pains to insulate Ruby (and others) from his seething rage expressed by the stars in his eyes turning black and sinister. To borrow an image from the ED, Ruby was sealed in a glass jar, safe from all those bad vibes. No longer. The moment she found the keychain she gave to Amamiya-sensei when she was Sarina, that jar shattered.
Miyako, Kana, and even Aqua himself might think she and Akane simply had a horrible experience finding a corpse. They don’t know her connection to him, and how devastating it is to discover the sensei she loved isn’t out there somewhere, hidden from her but alive. Ruby also doesn’t know her sensei is now her brother. She thinks he’s simply gone, and there’s no repairing the shattered jar.
Aqua, meanwhile, is apologetic to Akane. She may insist he’s not to blame for her finding the corpse, but he admits he’d been leaving her clues, knowing the detective in her might find it. Without telling her that the corpse was of his former self, Aqua is truthful in telling her he’s been using her all this time. But Akane knew this already, and she’s always been fine with it. She only wants to be useful to Aqua, whom she loves, even if he doesn’t love her back.
She can’t bear to see him shouldering the responsibility for failing to protect anyone and everyone; she doesn’t think anyone should without help. But fulfilling Taiki’s insistence that he hurry up and make a choice, Aqua tells Akane he’s done with his revenge, and done with using Akane. Now he wants to protect her. So just when Akane thinks they’re about to break up and part ways forever for his own good, he dries her tears, draws near, and kisses her. Aqua has chosen her.
Because by the laws of this show both Aqua and Ruby cannot be at peace at the same time, Ruby begins the same kind of obsessive descent that Aqua did before. She revisits the rooftop of the hospital where she and Amamiya once spent time, and encounters the ghosts of Amamiya, along with her still-pregnant mother Ai.
And then there’s the mysterious silver-haired girl I’ll call Crow Girl for now. Apparently a kind of apparition herself, she knows Ruby took the keychain from sensei’s corpse. She also knows that the same day Amamiya vanished was the day Ai gave birth to Ruby and Aqua. And that that very same night, there were two suspicious people present: Ai’s stalker and murderer, and a younger man, high school aged, with hair similar to Ruby and Aqua’s.
The ghost tells Ruby its her job to figure out who the other one is, because he’s still out there alive and walking free. It’s in the middle of an outdoor shoot for their music video, and Monemone is describing to us how while Ruby is the prettiest of the group, she’s the least interesting to film due to the feeling she’s imitating the textbook ideal of an idol (which is true, as she’s emulating Ai).
But just as she’s saying this, Ruby sinks into the frigid water with bear legs and feet. Monemone can sense something has changed within Ruby. Just as the first episode of Oshi no Ko ended with Aqua’s eye stars turning black and him resolving to find and kill their mother’s murderer, Ruby commits to the very same goal here, her own eye stars turning black and sinister. She’s not after closure. She wants to slaughter the killer.
With the music video shoot concluded, an exhausted Kana hits the hot springs, and mistakes Akane’s redness for being in the bath too long. In reality, Akane is still grappling with the reality that she and Aqua are no longer a fake couple, but actually dating. Sure, that might be her romantic inexperience talking, but Aqua sure seemed to want to communicate that he wanted to stay with her.
Kana talks about how Akane is starring in a new film, and that regardless of how widely distributed it is, that’s a huge accomplishment of which she’s envious. She also wonders whether it’s time to end her “reality-dating romance” with Aqua so she can “ride the wave” of fame that’s coming, at which point Akane mutters that it’s no longer that. Without elaborating she hops out of the bath, but Kana heard what she said, and it’s a shock to her heart.
Ruby’s eye stars continue to burn black as she tries to wrest info about why Aqua got into show business. Akane remains vague in her answers, saying Aqua must be trying to find and meet someone in show business, but not elaborating further.
She knows the last thing Aqua wants is for Ruby to get involved in such investigations. But again, the jar has been shattered. Ruby is in this, she’s gotten key information from a ghost, and like Aqua was before she’s now cursed with an unceasing thirst for revenge. Even when Akane falls asleep, Ruby’s black-starred eyes remain open and focused well into the night.
With no more grelling shooting to do, the group pays a visit to the Aratate Shrine for performers, and everyone wishes for different things. Ruby’s wish is for her brother to quickly find Mom and Sensei’s deaths, unaware that he’s gotten the closure he needed by seeing his corpse, and has now more or less moved on.
We’re finally treated to the fruit of B Komachi’s labors in the form of a visually-striking bop of a music video that quickly puts the revived idol group on the map and garners them praise and popularity both online and off. As Ruby and Aqua enter their second year of high school and Kana and Akane enter their third, Aqua reports through narration that everyone’s endeavors are now making great strides.
Cut to the deep dark woods of Miyazaki, where a silver-haired girl with stars in her eyes lies dying, her head split open from the rocks beneath. With her last breath, she calls a young man a murderer, and that man, the blonde, black starry-eyed father of Aqua and Ruby, undoes his tied-back hair, looking every bit like everything has gone according to plan.
Judging from her hair color and the crows witnessing this murder, I suspect the dead girl to be Crow Girl, though why she de-aged is one of countless questions I’m left with at the end of this episode. Some others? Whether Ruby drags Aqua back into the search for their father (probably), whether Aqua and Akane make significant strides in their romance, how Kana will react to losing Aqua to Akane.
Will Aqua and Ruby ever find that evil ol’ dad of theirs? Will they follow through in killing him? Will they ever learn why he did what he did, which from what scraps of info we have suggests he was manipulating deaths in order to bring about the resurrections that occurred?
Perhaps most intriguing, will Ruby and Aqua discover that they were Sarina and Amamiya-sensei? I’m sure we’ll get some answers in Oshi no Ko’s third season, but probably not all. Until then, we can only stew in all the mysteries and await its arrival, which will be appointment viewing.
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