Oshi no Ko opens like a fairy tale and turns into a mystery. A small-town doctor who adores a teenage idol is murdered on the night she gives birth in secret, then wakes up as one of her newborn twins. His fellow reincarnated fan is the other twin. They grow up behind the scenes of their mother's career, and when that career is cut short, the boy spends the rest of the story working inside the Japanese entertainment industry to find the man responsible.
The title means roughly "my favourite" or "the one I support," the word fans use for the idol they follow. Most of the cast are performers at different stages of their careers: child actors who peaked too early, reality-show contestants, YouTubers, stage actors and idols. The adults around them are managers, directors, producers and writers. This guide sorts the cast by where they work, because in Oshi no Ko that's usually what decides how they get hurt.
- Story
- Aka Akasaka
- Art
- Mengo Yokoyari
- Manga
- Weekly Young Jump, 2020–2024 (16 volumes)
- Anime studio
- Doga Kobo (from 2023)
- Opening
- "Idol" by YOASOBI
- Genre
- Drama, mystery, showbiz satire
Ai Hoshino and the twins
Everything starts with Ai. She is the centre of B-Komachi, an idol group run by a small agency called Strawberry Productions, and she hides a pregnancy at sixteen because an idol with children would be finished. Her twins grow up as the children of her manager's household, and both carry memories of an earlier life.
Ai Hoshino
Idol · Centre of B-Komachi
Ai is the brightest star in her agency, a girl who grew up in care and learned to perform love long before she could feel sure of it. She describes her lies as a kind of gift to her fans, and the story keeps asking whether that's true. She appears for only part of the anime, but every other character is defined by how they remember her, which makes her the true centre of the series.
- Voice
- Rie Takahashi (JP)
Aquamarine "Aqua" Hoshino
Protagonist · Actor
Aqua is Ai's son and the reincarnation of Goro Amamiya, the doctor who was supposed to deliver her children. He grows into a cold, calculating teenager who takes acting jobs, reality shows and stage roles mainly to get close to people who knew his mother. Underneath the detective plot he's a grieving fan who never let himself be a child, and the series is honest about how much his revenge costs him.
- Voice
- Takeo Otsuka (JP)
Ruby Hoshino
Deuteragonist · Idol
Ruby is Aqua's twin sister and the reincarnation of Sarina Tendoji, a girl who spent her short first life in a hospital bed watching Ai on screen. In her second life she has a healthy body and one clear dream: to become an idol like her mother. She's sunny and impulsive at first, and her arc follows what happens when she learns how much of her family's history has been kept from her.
- Voice
- Yurie Igoma (JP)
Ichigo Saitou
President of Strawberry Productions
Ichigo founded the agency that managed Ai and B-Komachi. He is brash and money-minded but genuinely fond of Ai, and he's one of the few adults who knew about her pregnancy. What happens to Ai hits him hard, and his absence and return shape the agency's later years.
Miyako Saitou
Ichigo's wife · Agency president
Miyako married Ichigo hoping to meet handsome actors, and instead got stuck babysitting an idol's secret twins. She ends up raising them as her own and running Strawberry Productions herself. She's the quiet adult anchor of the series: tired, practical and fiercely protective of both children.
Goro Amamiya
Aqua's past life · Gynaecologist
Goro was a doctor at a rural hospital in Miyazaki who became an Ai fan because of a patient. When Ai arrives to give birth in secret, he becomes her doctor, and he's killed on the night of the delivery. His life is told in flashbacks, and the question of what happened to his body becomes a plot thread of its own.
Sarina Tendoji
Ruby's past life · Goro's patient
Sarina was a twelve-year-old with a terminal illness whom Goro looked after. She introduced him to Ai's music and had a sweet, one-sided crush on him. Her loneliness in hospital explains a lot about Ruby, including her hunger to be seen and her attachment to the doctor she called "Sensei."
The new B-Komachi
Years after Ai, Ruby revives B-Komachi under Strawberry Productions. The new line-up is small and starts from nothing, playing tiny stages and building an audience online. It's where the series is most openly about the economics of being an idol.
Kana Arima
Former child star · B-Komachi
Kana was a famous child actor whose career collapsed as she aged out of cute roles. She's sharp-tongued, insecure and extremely good at reading a set, and she joins B-Komachi partly because Aqua talks her into it. Her crush on Aqua, and her fear of being forgotten, make her one of the most popular characters in the series.
- Voice
- Megumi Han (JP)
MEM-cho
YouTuber · B-Komachi
MEM-cho is a popular streamer who meets Aqua on a reality dating show. She once dreamed of being an idol but had to give it up to support her family, and she quietly fudges her age online. She becomes the group's most practical member, the one who understands algorithms and audience growth, and a steady friend to both twins.
Pieyon
Fitness YouTuber
Pieyon is a muscular online fitness star who wears a bird mask. He collaborates with B-Komachi early on, and his punishing workouts are played for comedy. He's a reminder that internet fame works on very different rules from television.
Actors, Lala Lai and the stage cast
Aqua's investigation takes him through drama sets, a reality show called Love Now, and a 2.5D stage adaptation of a manga called Tokyo Blade. The actors he meets there become the series' second family.
Akane Kurokawa
Stage actor · Lala Lai Theatre Company
Akane is a serious, studious actor who builds her roles from obsessive research. After an incident on Love Now leads to a wave of online abuse, Aqua helps her recover, and the two begin a relationship that is partly real and partly for the cameras. Her ability to analyse people makes her the only character who can follow Aqua's reasoning, which is both a gift and a danger to her.
Taiki Himekawa
Lead actor · Lala Lai
Himekawa is the star of Lala Lai and a gifted, self-destructive performer. He takes the lead in Tokyo Blade and comes to respect Aqua as an actor. His family background ties him much more closely to the Hoshino story than he first appears.
Melt Narushima
Model and actor
Melt is a pretty-faced model cast in Sweet Today, the drama where Kana and Aqua work together. He coasts at first and is embarrassed by Kana's skill. His decision to train properly afterwards gives him one of the series' quieter growth arcs.
Frill Shiranui
Multi-talented celebrity
Frill is a famous actor, model and singer whose career looks effortless. She's friendly with Ruby and appears at key points in the later story. She represents the kind of success the other girls are chasing, and how strange it looks from inside.
Minami Kotobuki
Gravure model
Minami is a cheerful model in Ruby's entertainment course at school and one of her first friends there. She's a small but warm presence. She's also a reminder of how many young performers work at the edges of the industry.
Directors, producers and writers
The adults in Oshi no Ko are rarely villains. Most are tired professionals making trade-offs, and the series uses them to show how a story gets bent between a writer's page and a broadcast.
Taishi Gotanda
Film director
Gotanda is a film director who knew Ai and takes young Aqua under his wing as an actor. He becomes Aqua's teacher in both acting and the business, and later helps him develop a film about Ai's life.
Masaya Kaburagi
Producer
Kaburagi is a TV producer who has worked with many of the people around Ai. Aqua sees him as a source of leads, and their meetings feel like a negotiation every time.
Abiko Samejima
Author of Tokyo Blade
Samejima is the manga artist whose work is adapted for the stage. Her clash with the production over the script is one of the series' sharpest scenes about adaptation and who owns a story.
GOA
Scriptwriter
GOA is the playwright hired to adapt Tokyo Blade. Caught between the author and the producers, he shows the writer's side of the same argument.
Yoriko Kichijouji
Manga artist
Kichijouji wrote the manga behind Sweet Today, and she's honest about how little say creators often have once their work is sold.
Tsukuyomi
Mysterious child
A strange girl surrounded by crows who appears to Ruby and seems to know about the reincarnations. She's the series' only openly supernatural figure.
The mystery behind the story
The main thread of Oshi no Ko is Aqua's search for whoever gave Ai's address to her killer. Because he needs access to people who move in the industry, his investigation pushes him into one job after another, and each arc introduces a new set of performers. It's a simple engine that lets the series move from a TV drama to a dating show to a stage play to a film, while keeping one question in the background.
Oshi no Ko voice cast
The Japanese cast is led by Takeo Otsuka and Yurie Igoma as the twins. An English dub exists, but we've kept the table to the Japanese roles we can confirm. For more on the people behind anime performances, see our voice actors guide.
| Character | Japanese voice | Also known for |
|---|---|---|
| Ai Hoshino | Rie Takahashi | Emilia (Re:Zero), Megumin (KonoSuba) |
| Aqua Hoshino | Takeo Otsuka | Lead roles in recent anime |
| Ruby Hoshino | Yurie Igoma | Idol and anime roles |
| Kana Arima | Megumi Han | Gon (Hunter x Hunter, 2011) |
Megumi Han voicing Kana is a small joke for long-time anime fans, since she also played Gon in the 2011 Hunter x Hunter, and Kana is a character built around having been a child star.
Story arcs and where to start
The anime adapts the manga in order, so arcs are the easiest way to keep track of who matters when:
- Prologue Goro, Sarina, Ai and the twins' early childhood. The anime's first episode runs about 90 minutes.
- Entertainment industry Aqua and Kana act together in the drama Sweet Today.
- Reality dating show Aqua joins Love Now and meets Akane and MEM-cho.
- Idol Ruby, Kana and MEM-cho form the new B-Komachi.
- 2.5D stage play The Tokyo Blade production with Lala Lai, covered in the anime's second season.
- Later arcs A trip to Miyazaki, a tabloid scandal and the film about Ai bring the mystery to a head.
Start with the anime's first episode, ideally without knowing too much: it's built around one twist that the rest of the series depends on. If you want the full story, the manga is finished. Our manga vs anime guide covers the general trade-offs of reading ahead.
What the characters are about
Oshi no Ko is a story about lying for a living. Idols lie about their private lives, actors lie for a scene, reality shows lie about how real they are, and fans tell themselves comforting lies about the people they love from a distance. Each main character sits somewhere on that line:
- Ai believes that a lie told with enough care can become love. Her children test that idea from both sides.
- Aqua becomes an actor because it lets him lie to everyone, including himself, about how much he's hurting.
- Ruby wants the dream her mother sold her, and has to decide whether she still wants it once she knows the price.
- Kana and Akane are two kinds of performer: one who reads the room by instinct, and one who studies her way into a role. They're rivals on stage and in Aqua's life.
The series is also unusually direct about online harassment. Akane's storyline on the dating show draws on real cases in Japan where reality-show cast members were targeted online, and it's handled with care. If you're interested in how stories handle loss and grief, our guide to character deaths covers why some deaths shape an entire series, and female protagonists looks at leads like Ruby and Kana.
If you like a cast with secret identities and an industry backdrop, Spy x Family plays a similar premise for comedy, while Death Note shares the cat-and-mouse feel of Aqua's investigation.
How the manga ends
All Oshi no Ko character names A–Z
A
- Abiko Samejima — Tokyo Blade author
- Ai Hoshino — Idol
- Akane Kurokawa — Lala Lai
- Aquamarine Hoshino — Protagonist
F–G
- Frill Shiranui — Celebrity
- GOA — Scriptwriter
- Goro Amamiya — Aqua's past life
H–K
- Hikaru Kamiki — Actor (spoiler role)
- Ichigo Saitou — Strawberry Productions
- Kana Arima — B-Komachi
M
- Masaya Kaburagi — Producer
- Melt Narushima — Actor
- MEM-cho — B-Komachi
- Minami Kotobuki — Model
- Miyako Saitou — Strawberry Productions
P–R
- Pieyon — YouTuber
- Ruby Hoshino — B-Komachi
- Ryosuke — Stalker
S–Y
- Sarina Tendoji — Ruby's past life
- Taiki Himekawa — Lala Lai
- Taishi Gotanda — Director
- Tsukuyomi — Mysterious child
- Yoriko Kichijouji — Manga artist
Frequently asked questions
Who is the main character of Oshi no Ko?
Aquamarine "Aqua" Hoshino is the main protagonist, with his twin sister Ruby as the second lead. The first episode is told largely through Ai Hoshino, their mother, and the whole story grows out of what happens to her.
Who are Aqua and Ruby in their past lives?
Aqua was Goro Amamiya, a rural gynaecologist who was a devoted fan of the idol Ai Hoshino. Ruby was Sarina Tendoji, a seriously ill girl Goro looked after in hospital, who loved Ai too. Both die and are reborn as Ai's twins. This is the premise of the first episode rather than a late twist.
Who voices Ai Hoshino?
Rie Takahashi voices Ai in the Japanese anime. She's also known as Emilia in Re:Zero and Megumin in KonoSuba.
Is the Oshi no Ko manga finished?
Yes. The manga ran in Weekly Young Jump from 2020 and ended in November 2024 after 16 volumes. The anime by Doga Kobo is still adapting it, so anime-only viewers have story left to see.
What is the song in the Oshi no Ko opening?
The first opening is "Idol" by YOASOBI, written from Ai Hoshino's point of view. It became a huge hit in 2023, both in Japan and internationally, and is a large part of why the series reached viewers who don't usually watch anime.
Who does Aqua end up with?
Spoiler: nobody. Kana Arima and Akane Kurokawa both love Aqua, and he cares for both of them, but the manga ends with his death before either relationship can be resolved. It's one of the reasons the ending divided readers.