English Dub Review: Oshi No Ko “Trigger”

Overview:

Their pasts shaped their acting. Kana wanted to shine as an actress but compromised to be useful. Meanwhile, Aqua’s childhood trauma led to a unique acting method.

Our Take:

If you didn’t think Kana had feelings for Aqua before, you definitely will now. There’s no way she could experience what she did during the play and not fall in love with him. Heck, I was watching the show, and I almost fell in love. There was a lot of ad-libbing on stage and Aqua decided to take advantage of it and let Kana’s acting shine. This episode gave us an interesting introspective into how Aqua views acting. Kana wanted to be useful but Aqua’s intentions aren’t even close to being as kind as that.

Aqua views his acting as trauma, if he starts to feel like he’s having fun he remembers what happened to Ai and a panic attack begins. He uses these feelings to make his acting mold to those around him. It’s somewhat similar to Kana but you could at least argue she has some healthy coping mechanisms but barely. Aqua is using his acting to get revenge and I don’t know why it took watching this episode to get animated but it made me realize this isn’t going to have a happy ending. Not for Aqua at least, I feel fairly certain of that. I can’t wait to see how Aqua “unlocking” this new ability will affect the rest of the play.