ONK Gripes

I am basing it on this specific panel from chapter 161. Unlike pretty much every other shipping moment in the series, this is unambiguous* and from an unimpeachable source (the manga itself, since this is the illustration chosen to illustrate the words "falling In love").

I don't think Aqua/Kana is a good romance and would have preferred an approach along the lines of this fan theory, but I can't argue with the actual manga. And this entire blog is dedicated to complaining about Oshi No Ko anyways.

(Note: I watched Rebuild several years ago, and I am absolutely not rewatching it just for this. So apologies for anything I misremember.)

Here is my collection of disordered thoughts on the Rebuilds: 1) The Rebuilds somehow look worse than Neon Genesis Evangelion. This despite NGE having infamously bad budget/production issues and the Rebuilds having infinite time and money. Almost every scene with direct analogues, which is most of the first two movies, looks better in NGE. Downstream of bad CGI, which does not age anywhere near as well as good 2D animation. The only exception is the Ramiel-equivalent, which is also the one part of the Rebuilds that surpasses the original.

2) One good thing about the Rebuilds is it made me appreciate the structure of the original more. The middle segment of NGE (from roughly Ramiel to Leliel, non-inclusive) is usually considered the worst or at least most forgettable part, compared to the eldritch psychodrama of the first six episodes or from Leliel through End of Evangelion. During these 9 episodes (7-15), NGE is pretty close to a paint-by-numbers monster of the week generic mecha anime, albeit an unusually high quality one, and my opinion on this segment was pretty much "neat" until I saw the Rebuilds.

What the Rebuilds made me realize is that NGE is structured like a parabola; at the start of the story Shinji is miserable and alone, NERV is a dysfunctional mess (NERV's plan for dealing with Sachiel comes very close to failing for an easily-fixable reason: Shinji is not physically present until the last moment), and the Evangelions are not so much mechs as eldritch monstrosities (remember Unit-01's eye or Unit-00 going berserk in the tests?).

Over the course of the story, he makes friends with Toji, Kensuke, Rei, and Asuka, and grows closer to Misato and even (apparently) Gendo. Shinji becomes more confident and happy, and NERV gets better at operating. The Evangelions cease to be mysterious monstrosities that go berserk on a whim and instead are simply giant robots, while the Angels are generic monster-of-the-week Kaiju. This peaks in roughly the Sahaquiel episode, where NERV is able to beat a seemingly unstoppable Angel without Gendo's presence, Gendo congratulates Shinji personally, and Asuka even picks the ramen shop out of consideration for Misato and Rei (both of whom she dislikes, Misato over jealousy wrt Kaji and Rei for being "a doll"). By Episode 12, Shinji, NERV, and the cast are clearly better off than they are at the start, though there are constant hints that things are not what they appear in the background.

Then, beginning with Leliel, things get worse. Shinji's newfound confidence is turned against him, his relationships with Asuka (failed kiss, jealousy over his superior piloting), Misato (Kaji's death), Rei (Rei II's death), Gendo (dummy plug), Toji (crippling him in the Bardiel fight), and even Kensuke (jealousy over him and Toji being able to pilot, leaving town) all fall part. The Evas are once again revealed to be horrifying bio-divine-monstrosities with their own will and agenda rather than simple robots. NERV itself falls apart, with conflicts between Misato, Ritsuko, and Gendo, the three most important leaders. By the end of the TV series, Shinji is actually worse off than he was at the start (and this is key to the story's themes of the Hedgehog's dilemma and the pain of being). All of this culminates in End of Evangelion and Third Impact.

Anyways, the point of all this is that the Rebuilds, specifically Movie II, skip almost the entire middle part, abbreviating it to just Sahaquiel. In order for the downfall of Shinji and NERV to be satisfying, they have to be built up. It's hard to care about Shinji's mental breakdown or NERV falling apart when they were only in good shape for like ten minutes. Everything just randomly collapses. Removing this segment also kills Asuka, Misato, and Kaji's character arcs, and badly hurts Shinji's.

3) In NGE, the Evangelions are a Big Deal. All three of the main ones are incredibly important (both to the plot and to the characters and themes), borderline invincible eldritch superweapons with their own wills and enormous resources and supporting infrastructure dedicated to them. Which they should be; they are clones of a god implanted with the souls of the pilot's mothers (which is a phenomenally cool premise).

In the Rebuilds, they're just giant robots. Mari self-destructs her own Eva casually just to defeat a random angel (of no plot or character significance) in her introduction, and has no issue getting another one. Asuka does something similar with Unit-02 later (impossible to imagine for NGE Asuka). This is turned up to a comical degree in movies 3 and 4, where the post-apocalyptic remnants of NERV can literally field thousands of Evangelions… who are disposable CGI mooks gunned down like chumps by the quipping heroes in completely weightless action scenes.

4) Mari Makinami Illustrious is an egregiously bad fanfic Mary Sue, who exists purely for merchandising and pointless fanservice. Zero reason to exist, extremely generic personality and design. I was not even a little bit surprised to learn she was based on Anno's wife and got together with Anno's self-insert, Shinji.

5) The magic reset button. The core message of NGE is "live in reality." It is inherently painful, but it is still better than the alternative. Shinji chooses, of his own volition, to return to the ruined post-Third Impact world he chose to create and abandon his fantasies. The conclusion of Rebuild of Evangelion is the exact opposite; Shinji gets to press the magic universe reset button to create a world in which his choices, failures, and problems never existed in the first place, and is rewarded for it. This is awful, especially because I don't think it's even intentional (I think the intended message of the Rebuilds is something like "touch grass/boobs, nerd!", which is also stupid but doesn't completely destroy the original and is actually actionable advice), and alone would suffice to damn the Rebuilds.

6) Logistics. Related to (3). In NGE, NERV is basically the Manhattan Project, a secretive government program (for the UN, which is a world government post-Second Impact) concentrating a significant fraction of humanity's talent and resources on a cutting-edge scientific/industrial project. It is important to making the setting and story feel real that repairing damage to Evangelions costs "the budget of a small country" (as SEELE complains) and that manpower, money, and time are constant constraints. Each Evangelion is a superweapon and a huge deal, and there is an enormous, mostly-off-screen-but-present, NERV support staff devoted to building them, maintaining them, and keeping them operational, even with futuristic automation (MAGI system).

In movies 3 and 4 of the Rebuilds, on the other hand, not only are Evangelions not very important, but the post-apocalyptic remnants of NERV, which are basically two people in a cave with none of the massive infrastructure and staff NERV had, can build, construct, and program LITERALLY THOUSANDS of Evangelions, launch space missions, and build giant flying battleships.

This doesn't just apply to post-3rd impact NERV, it also applies to WILL-E, which is also composed of NERV remnants with none of the UN's resources and supporting infrastructure, and yet can also field more Evangelions, more firepower, and giant flying battleships that pre-3rd impact NERV never could. Pre-3rd impact Japan is a modern industrial society and can therefore provide support for NERV, post-3rd impact humanity is literally farming rice by hand, and NERV and WILL-E are pulling vastly greater resources than OG NERV ever had straight out of their asses. All of this kills suspension of disbelief.

7) NGE is not a very action-dense series; most of the fights are short, brutal, and to the point. Every single one of them, even the silly ones like the Israfel fight, is important to the characters and themes of the story. Many of these fights are iconic and some of the best action sequences in anime (Shinji vs Zeruel and Asuka vs Mass Production Evangelions come to mind). The Rebuilds are like six times as action-dense, with several scenes (like the Zeruel fight) with NGE analogous expanded and many, many original long fights in the second, third and fourth movies, and yet there is not a single good original fight. The action scenes lack weight or seriousness; characters stand around posing and quipping like they're in the MCU (notably, the two times anyone tries this in NGE, Asuka with Israfel and Shinji with Leliel, they are immediately punished). In NGE, this action is good, intentional and serves the story; in the Rebuilds the action is bad and just kind of tossed everywhere like a monkey throwing shit.

8) Painfully, painfully obvious merchandising. Mari is the most egregious example, but "BEAST MODE" Evangelions, which serve zero plot, character, or thematic purpose and don't even look good, are another example. Took me straight out of the story when it first showed up.

9) Every character except for Shinji is flattened into 2D caricatures. Asuka and Misato, who are the deuteragonists of NGE and End of Evangelion, are replaced with generic cardboard cutout versions, as are characters like Kaji, Ritsuko, Rei, even Toji and Kensuke. Now, there's no rule saying the Rebuild versions of characters have to be as important or developed as their NGE equivalents… but the Rebuilds constantly lean on the reputations and relationships built up by the original versions for emotional payoff. Can't have it both ways; either Misato and Asuka are important, and so need to be developed like in the original, or they are two-bit extras, in which case they can't be the center of major emotional moments.

10) The soundtrack is actually pretty good, but it's nowhere near as great as the original, and has no songs to equal Cruel Angel's Thesis or even KOMM, SUSSER TODD.

11) There's nothing wrong with fanservice, and NGE is full of it, but there is a time and a place. NGE fanservice is either in comedy scenes or scenes where it important to the characters. Rebuild is full of unintentionally hilariously bad fanservice, like ass shots of medical officers in supposedly serious scenes.

12) Many of the problems I mentioned, especially (2) and (9), could be blamed on lack of screentime… except we spend a huge fraction of the Rebuilds on pointless action scenes and literally an entire movie where nothing of consequence happens (Movie 3, which starts and ends in exactly the same place). Rebuild's character problems are not like, IDK, the Heaven's Feel movies, of trying to compress a much larger work into less time and thus being extremely fast-paced, Rebuild just wastes enormous amounts of time.

13) Kaworu deserves his own bullet point, because his ~10 minutes of NGE screentime are incredibly impactful and enough to make him a fan favorite. His death is both necessary and voluntary. He gets an entire movie (Movie 3) in the Rebuilds, and he is far less impactful, developed, and important. His death is literally pointless (he did not have to put the explosive collar on!). Turned from a real character into pure fujoshi fanservice. Exhibit A in "Rebuild's character issues are not from lack of screentime."

14) Rei II is also turned into more of a generic waifu in the Rebuilds. NGE's characters are so good that they are still wildly popular decades later and defined anime archetypes that are still in common use (and almost never as good as the original). Even the characters that get screentime and development in Rebuild, like Rei, are mediocre rehashes of Standard Anime Tropes.

15) Shinji himself is also flattened, into more of a generic shonen protagonist who causes Third Impact at the end of Movie II by getting really angry and going Super Saiyan. It is never even remotely hinted that this is possible until it happens, and he also doesn't choose to do it (unlike when he causes Third Impact in End of Evangelion) which makes other characters, who are clearly supposed to have a point, trying to guilt him about it (Misato, Asuka, and Kaworu all do this) in later movies seem ridiculously petty and unfair.

16) Another (I believe completely unintentional, because most of the changes to Shinji are supposed to make him more confident and heroic) change to Shinji comes from the fact that he learns that an Angel reaching NERV's basement will cause Third Impact almost immediately, in Movie I. This completely recontextualizes Shinji's actions in Movies I and II (which are almost beat-for-beat taken from NGE).

In NGE, Shinji does not know the stakes. As far as he knows, the Angels are just walking natural disasters who attack a hardened military base designed specifically to fight them, not threats to all humanity, and if he doesn't fight the worst that will happen is equivalent to, like, an earthquake or hurricane (and we don't think poorly of people who don't choose to become first responders; risking your life to deal with natural disasters is an exceptional, heroic thing, not expected). He pilots the Evangelion first to try to connect with people (initially his dad, later Toji, Kensuke, Rei, Asuka, and Misato). This makes his general reluctance to be in horrible pain fighting them and him immediately quitting after being forced to cripple Toji extremely sympathetic and reasonable. He only discovers they are a threat to all humanity when Kaji tells him in the fight against Zeruel, at which point he immediately returns to the fight despite everything and continues to be willing to deploy against the remaining Angels (Arael, Armisael, and Tabris), even the one person who unconditionally loves him, Kaworu.

NGE Shinji is not a conventionally heroic character (Anno described him as someone who only avoided suicide because he was too afraid to kill himself)… but he is still an altruistic and even heroic figure when the chips are down. He pilots against Sachiel to spare Rei, who he doesn't know, he jumps in a volcano without protective equipment to save Asuka (remember, the way synchronization works, that must have hurt like hell), and as soon as he learns that the Angels are not just random monsters but actually threatening all of mankind he rejoins the fight despite having already lost his main intrinsic motivation.

In Rebuilds I and II, on the other hand, when Shinji goes through the exact same character beats as his NGE counterpart, he does so knowing for a fact that he is the last thing standing against the apocalypse. This makes his general reluctance to pilot, and abandoning the fight after Bardiel, far less sympathetic, making him closer to the worthless coward people mistakenly project onto NGE Shinji, despite being more confident and assertive. It also makes his decision to rejoin the fight against Zeruel much less impactful; in NGE it's Kaji's (amazing) speech that does it; in Rebuilds it's a generic pep-talk from Mari.

17) In NGE, the worldbuilding is not exactly all that well-explained or straightforward, but it's understandable; you don't need to know the precise logistics of Third Impact to watch End of Evangelion. The many random terms and images, mostly borrowed from Christian and Jewish mysticism, don't actually matter, they're just an aesthetic for the character/themes/plot. In the Rebuilds, however, the worldbuilding is genuinely incomprehensible, with completely unexplained shit like "anti-Evangelion," which can reset the universe, and "The Key of Nebuchadnezzar," which can turn normal human Gendo into something that can fist-fight an Angel, popping out of nowhere and being absolutely critical to the plot. Rebuilds adds a ton of random crap to the world, and all of it is either irrelevant, terrible, or both. It's like Anno forgot that the aesthetic wasn't the important part.

The big lesson/emotional climax of the Movie Arc is summed up in this chapter 137 panel: "Ai Hoshino was a normal girl you could find anywhere." This is presented as a profound revelation.

There is a simple problem with this statement: it is straightforwardly false. Ai reached the top of an absurdly competitive industry without connections and without even a top agency in just a few years; she was extraordinarily talented, albeit not literally unique (which no one except Aqua ever believed, and he changes his mind as soon as he sees Aikane in Love Now; Ruby herself plans to surpass Ai from the start of the story). She was extraordinarily attractive, so much so that she easily outshined other idols and actresses, who themselves were insanely attractive by normal people standards. Ai also had a very unusual backstory (child out of wedlock - in Japan, where this is 2% of births), horrifically abused by mother (broken glass in rice), herself became pregnant at 16 and had kids out of wedlock (again, very uncommon in Japan) while being an idol (!), and an abnormal personality on top of that (constantly lying, and became an idol not for money or attention or fame, but to learn how to love). She was very much not a normal girl you could find anywhere. The only ways this is true are that Ai was not literally supernatural and that she wanted friends, both of which are banal and obvious, not profound revelations you can hang an entire arc on. And setting aside the question of whether Ai was a "girl you could find anywhere," (she wasn't) there's also the problem of how Ruby discovered this. She did not learn more information about Ai. Ruby's conclusions about Ai come from introspecting about her own feelings (helped along with moderate OOC bullying from Kana). But Ruby and Ai are extremely different characters! Ai is a regular human, Ruby is a supernatural reincarnator. Ai had no real family; Ruby had two loving mothers (Ai and Miyako) and a brother (oh, and Taiki). Ai had no friends; Ruby is good friends with all her coworkers*. Ai lies literally all the time; Ruby only behaves like this for a single arc, Dig Deep. Ai is desperate to please and always tells people what they want to hear; Ruby is blunt and has no trouble insulting people or throwing tantrums. Ai became an idol to learn how to love; Ruby became an idol because she herself idolized Ai and wanted to imitate her, plus wanting to find Goro. Ai had sex at a young age while working as an idol; as far as we know Ruby is Gorosexual and a virgin at the end of the story. Ai had to work to survive starting at 12; Ruby does not. Ai is a mother; Ruby is not. In general, Ai had enormously more responsibilities with far less support than Ruby. Because they are so different, Ruby shouldn't be able to discover new things about Ai just by examining her own feelings. If anything, Ruby's arc in the Movie should have focused on the many deep differences between her and Ai, not the (frankly marginal and superficial) similarities, and lest I be accused of being unfair, they are brought up once.

But despite this singular page, Ruby's goals are still defined by Ai (Dome concert) and the visual language used to portray Ruby's idol success is identical to that used for Ai. Despite it not actually fitting her backstory or character, Ruby turns into Ai 2.0 for most of the Movie and Final arcs (when she's not incestbait). At one point, the story understood this; of the main heroine trio it was Kana who got the most parallels with Ai until the Movie Arc, when Aka jumped tracks to Ruby.

Every part of the finale (plot, characters, themes) except the art is godawful, but I think these pages from chapter 162 most epitomize why it is terrible on a character level. After killing himself for her career (directly hurting his goals of protecting her safety and happiness, both of which are harmed by this) Aqua concludes he was reborn to protect his own sister...

...and we get this page of past incidents of Aqua protecting and looking out for Ruby.

One problem: EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE PANELS IS COMPLETELY NEW, AND DID NOT APPEAR IN THE MANGA BEFORE THIS. If Aqua protecting Ruby were actually not only part of his character, but *the* core of his character, important enough to carry the emotional payload of the story, then the panel that's supposed to show this wouldn't have to be entirely original, it would just show all the times throughout the story Aqua looked after Ruby. But since Aqua does not spend the story regularly looking after and protecting Ruby, and they don't have a close protective sibling relationship, all of the panels have to be new. I will note that you *could* make a page of Aqua-protecting-Ruby panels from the actual story. These would be Aqua interviewing the idol from the underground group Ruby's considering joining, stopping her from interviewing with another idol group, recruiting Kana and Memcho to make New B-Komachi a success (and thereby keep Ruby with Miyako and Strawberry Productions where she could be kept safe), and training her and Kana as Pieyon (same reason). But you might notice that every single one of these comes from the first 40 chapters/season 1. After that, you have 120 chapters of Aqua interacting very little with Ruby at all, and certainly not going out of his way to protect her (whereas he does protect both Kana and Akane at various points).

And Aqua's realization that he was born to protect Ruby is clearly intended to be sincere and at least bittersweet, if not exactly happy. So "Aqua is a suicidal moron coping at his imminent death" is not an acceptable answer, not that that would be a good ending for a character who is never presented as suicidal or stupid anyways.

It was dogshit for all characters and the story itself. I don't think I could have a written an ending that bad if I'd tried.

Either no one or Kana, based on this panel from chapter 161 (which, unlike literally every other romance moment in the entire series, is pretty open-and-shut and unambiguous).

https://www.tumblr.com/onk-confessions/813850535393394688/i-was-perfectly-chill-while-writing-this-and-i?source=share

Descriptively, it's mostly directionally accurate, though I would use much weaker language. "What if your mother died" caused a panic attack, but that's not really something that can be reasonably predicted (brutal murders are extremely rare in Japan) and talking to Aqua about death in the early Movie Arc was hardly an issue (Ai died 13 years ago at that point, the general topic of death isn't taboo, even if Kana's just recently learning about it). Jealousy is a perfectly normal human emotion and Kana's jealousy of Aqua/Akane in Tokyo Blade is funny, not sinister. On the other hand, it's correct that Kana consistently struggles to remain professional despite her experience, that Kana tends to be rude, insensitive, and self-centered (not selfish), and especially (and most importantly, Kana being fictional) that Kana stagnates and then degenerates as a character over time and could have been a much better character than she was. In the Platonic Ideal version of Oshi No Ko, I think Kana's arc would focus around re-learning that she is capable of succeeding; we see in the Idol Arc that Kana has grown so accustomed to failure that she can't even imagine success, and pre-emptively shuts herself down to minimize the emotional damage of expected failure. This is a potentially compelling arc ("I cannot possibly succeed, so why try?" is a common enough mentality), and fits in well with New B-Komachi, with Kana realizing that she might be OK with sabotaging herself, but she can't do that to Memcho or Ruby and the positives of idols (which are asserted by the story, since Ruby's idol career is portrayed positively, but never actually shown) in general (the joy of seeing someone else succeed in a way that doesn't provoke jealousy).

It's mostly Akane associated with the Moon; I think it's just to contrast Kana who is repeatedly compared to and associated with the Sun.

This quantitative analysis of ONK panel counts for the ten most commonly-drawn characters confirms my naive impressions. Aqua has 2812 panels, Ruby 2354, Kana 2243, Akane 1409, Memcho 781, Miyako 489, Ai 469, Gotanda 372, Melt 291, and Shiranui Frill 278. Aqua has the most panels, Ruby and Kana are not far behind and practically tied, and both have ~50% more then Akane and ~3x more than Memcho.

Notably, this is not in-line with their actual importance to the broader plot or characters; Kana (who is not only nowhere near Ruby's importance but nowhere near Akane's) either should have been much more important or gotten much less page-time; this reflects her prominence in the plot-tumor Aquabowl and her displacement of Ruby until the Private Arc.

What I've come to realize writing the last few posts is that there are two major approaches to fixing the structure of Oshi No Ko while preserving most of what actually exists (ideas like keeping Ai alive or ditching the reincarnation are not really trying to fix ONK, they are creating an entirely new story from scratch with a few names and character designs shared).

1) Route one is to try to follow what I think the original intention was, based on the finale arc and roughly what became Season 1. That is, having the relationship between Aqua/Goro and Ruby/Sarina as the emotional core of the story, with the former generally protecting and watching out for the latter, and the latter's drive to become a better idol than Ai (and do so honestly) as the major focus aside from revenge.

This dynamic is set up at the very beginning of the story post-Introduction, with Aqua investigating underground scouts and faking rejections from major idol groups to keep Ruby safe, and more or less continues through the rest of Season 1, with Aqua scouting Kana and Memcho on Ruby's behalf to keep her safe and help her succeed as an idol. During this part of the anime/manga, Ruby's idol career is consistently in the background of the other arcs with things like the Pieyon colab. It is also the note the story chooses to go out on; Aqua kills himself for Ruby's idol career and she declares "it's an incredibly fun job" as the final, *happy* panel of the story.

But this dynamic is not what most of the story focuses on. After the end of season 1/chapter 40, Aqua and Ruby barely interact for the next two seasons/80 chapters, and Ruby's rise as an idol is mostly off-screened in the timeskip between seasons 2 & 3. Instead, the story focuses more on Kana, Akane, Aqua's acting separate from Ruby, and the Aquabowl. Even when the two start interacting again with 122/123, it's as Goro and Sarina, not Aqua and Ruby, and is basically just incest bait; there's very little of the affectionate/protective sibling relationship you see in the immediate post-Introduction chapters and in the Finale. And there's not even that much interaction then until chapter 157. This is hammered in by Aqua's "realization" montage where he realizes he was reborn to protect Ruby (blegh, one of the worst moments in a terrible arc)... and all of the panels of him protecting her are original ones, not things that we actually saw happen in the manga, because Aqua and Ruby do not have a close and protective sibling relationship outside of the very beginning and very end of the story in the manga we actually got (this panel, chapter 162).

Aqua also never shows interest in Ruby's idol career for its own sake (as opposed to her safety and happiness), not until he literally kills himself (thereby undermining both her safety and her happiness) to protect it. The character whose career he really shows interest in for its own sake for most of the story is Kana, which goes nowhere. So the problem is that Aqua/Ruby is supposed to be the emotional core of the series, and Ruby's idol rise the second most important plot line after the revenge, and they're just not. So what needs to change (besides execution) to make this work? As it turns out, a bunch of my previous ideas are suitable here. The Aquabowl needs to get less time because it's ultimately not that important, so end it definitively at chapter 98. Ruby is clearly the second most important character, she needs to have more arcs where she is the deuteragonist, so the first Idol arc should focus on her and not Kana. Whatever its virtues, Tokyo Blade is very long and Ruby's not there at all, so cut it down by removing superfluous backstories and the Akane/Kana acting climaxes. Do not timeskip after Private; show Ruby's rise as an idol. Aqua's views on Ruby's idol career and the two of them interacting need to be a regular theme even in arcs that don't focus on them, sort of like Kana crying and romance bait was in the actual manga*. This approach is starting with the finale and trying to write in such a way that (a better executed version of) it makes sense and is fitting, while grafting in as much of the good material from roughly Idol to Mainstay as can fit.

2) Route two is to try to develop the story more along the lines that it evolved into after what became Season 1, that is, with much more focus on the Aquabowl, Kana, and Akane. This means Ruby is not really the most important non-Aqua character, she's no more central than Kana or Akane. To make this work, you really have to change the ending so that the romance is relevant to the overarching plot and to Aqua's character (after chapter 98). There are many ways this could be done (just read some of the literally dozens of fan theories people were writing about how the romance would tie into everything else up until the moment Aqua's corpse was shown), but Ruby's idol career (mostly offscreened) and her protective sibling relationship with Aqua (which doesn't exist for most of the story) can't be the focus. Ideas like divine incest/modern Oedipus myth/tripartite love/Kana savior or turning ONK into a visual novel with three romance routes (Kana, Akane, Ruby, in that order) would fit in here. The biggest character change that needs to be made is Kana needs to be much more important, to justify her prominence in the first half, romantically, thematically, or plot-wise (or some combination of these three). This approach is closer to starting with the end of the well-written and promising part of ONK (IMO, chapter 80 for Kana and Ruby, chapter 98 for Aqua and Akane) and trying to come up with a satisfying conclusion.

Strictly speaking, these routes are not mutually exclusive. You could have both the Aquabowl/Kana/Akane and Goro/Aqua + Sarina/Ruby as core dynamics if the story were either much longer (say, 300 chapters) or much more quickly paced for the same length. But I think you have to pick one if you're keeping close to the original story's length and pacing. There's not enough space to do both (maybe if you deleted the Movie arc completely... ultimately the premise of the arc, tying together the entertainment and revenge stories along with Ai and Hikaru's backstory, is amazing but completely unfulfilled, so that might be the right route).

Note that even if the structure were fixed, the actual execution of the second half of ONK ranges from mediocre (Mainstay, Scandal) to bad (Movie), to dumpster-fire-trainwreck (Finale). To truly fix ONK you also need to improve the execution, meaning no off-screening critical developments, giving Hikaru the opportunity to meaningfully oppose Aqua (both thematically and practically - Hikaru's character is also so hollow that radically changing it, say so that the false face he puts on in 152-3 is correct, might be the way to go), and carefully thinking through motivations and logistics for character's actions (basic stuff like "how is creating a movie related to revenge," and "does Aqua know his dad is an active serial killer or not"). So none of this should be taken as sufficient by itself. None of this includes other ideas like how to incorporate Taiki Himekawa into the main cast or how to execute on the romance or actually make use of the many themes and images the manga alludes to but never delivers on. *If might seem like I have a grudge against Kana because all of these ideas reduce her page-time, but that's not the case. Some redditor helpfully made a chart of panel counts by character in Oshi No Ko.

did u hear the ost of season 3?

do u think on your side ost is aqua singing abt kana?

1) I think people who actually hate (strong word) Kana almost exclusively hate her for ship war reasons, that is, they prefer Aqua/Akane or Aqua/Ruby to Aqua/Kana. Kana is a fairly self-centered (which should be distinguished from selfish - I mean she thinks of Oshi No Ko as basically a shoujo with herself as the female lead and never really considers that other characters, especially Aqua, are dealing with their own, entirely separate problems that have nothing to do with her, not that she exclusively considers her own interests and desires) and insensitive character (see: funeral slap), but I've never seen someone hate Kana for her negative traits, just dislike her. I don't really like her either, but that's because I think she's not written all that well and doesn't fit into the story, and it doesn't make sense to hate a character for bad writing unless that character drives the bad writing (which sometimes happens with self-inserts and similar, but not the case with Kana).

2) I wrote up my thoughts on Kana here. Recommend reading that if you're interested. To sum things up: Kana herself is a very tropey, paint-by-numbers character (energetic red-headed tsunderes with parental problems are a dime-a-dozen), so I never felt strongly about her (my favorite character by far is Akane, followed at a distance by Aqua, and I'm pretty ambivalent towards most of the rest of the cast. Hikaru and Nino are terrible characters).

However, she is initially (roughly season 1) a funny, cute, and well-executed instantiation of this archetype, and I assumed she was a shoe-in for a first-girl romance, which was implied by many moments, including the last big one S1 ended on ("I'm going to be your star") and backed up by many explicit character statements. So, while not exactly adding much unique value to Oshi No Ko, she wasn't dragging the story down either; you can do a lot worse than replacement-level-character in a high-quality anime/manga.

Kana gets an enormous amount of time and attention in the first half the story, more than anyone except Aqua himself. She's the female lead or a female lead in three of the six arcs (Sweet Today, Idol, and Tokyo Blade), and unlike Akane (who's not in the Introduction or Sweet Today) and Ruby (who's not really present in Sweet Today or Tokyo Blade), she's present and plays a significant role even in the arcs she doesn't lead (Introduction, Love Now, Private).

Throughout this first half, we are constantly told and shown that, despite her slump, Kana has top-tier star potential and is putting on strong performances. Then the chapter 80 timeskip hits and all of a sudden she's washed up again. This is jarring; I felt the whiplash as soon as I read it. Kana's personal entertainment career arc (and I specify arc; just because we're told again and again that she has what it takes to succeed doesn't mean she has to succeed, people with potential fail all the time, but it does mean there has to be some kind of payoff rather than just dropping everything, which is what happens) never recovers; she just hangs around for the second half before becoming a Hollywood star entirely offscreen in the ending slideshow.

Aside from her own career arc, which takes up a huge fraction of the first half and is discarded in the second half, Kana's other major contribution to the story is her relationship with Aqua, and there's just not much there beyond stock romance tropes ("like his old self," "light to his darkness"). There are many moments that hint there could be something there (eg Kana's parallels to Ai), but they never actually go anywhere, and neither does the Aqua/Kana relationship. Their chapter 150 date is an almost beat-for-beat repeat of the exact same date 120 chapters prior in Love Now.

Finally, Kana herself goes through the exact same mini-arc (Kana holding back for the sake of the performance, Aqua gives her the opportunity to shine, she does shine and shows she's still a star, she falls more deeply in love with him and he is awed by her) no less than three times, in Sweet Today, the Idol Arc, and Tokyo Blade. This is ridiculous and had me annoyed at her character/writing by the time I was done with Tokyo Blade, even before the story as a whole went off a cliff. Imagine if, in Tokyo Blade, Akane was again subject to online harassment due to misleading editing, tried to kill herself, was saved by Aqua, and rescued her reputation by imitating Ai. And then this happened a third time in Private or Mainstay! That would be absurd, silly, and a mark of bad writing, yet that's pretty much what happens with Kana (Akane's actual arcs in Tokyo Blade, Private, and Mainstay are all different from both Love Now and each other, and support both the broader plot and Aqua's own character development; by the time the bad writing comes for her it's already universal).

Ultimately Kana being irrelevant to the ending from a plot, character, and theme perspective sealed for me that she is in the wrong story; she's a romcom character stuck in a revenge/reincarnation/industry thriller. I, like many other readers/watchers, assumed the romcom elements, which are a huge part of the manga, would eventually be integrated into the broader story and character arcs, but I was wrong (it was all bait with no payoff, Aka is a hack). Since that never happened, and Kana's own unique arc was cut off by the chapter-80 timeskip, she winds up a huge waste of time and attention in retrospect.

You can classify each ONK arc by which girl it focuses on (Aqua, being the protagonist, MC, and main POV, is important in all of them), with said girl being important to the plot of that arc and getting the most development and major moments. Other girls are often present, but less important (eg Kana has her baseball date in Love Now, but she's not the focus). Introduction: Ai Sweet Today: Kana Love Now: Akane Idol: Kana Tokyo Blade: Akane and Kana (Tokyo Blade is a monster arc three times the size of the previous ones, so there's lots of material for both) Private: Ruby Mainstay: Ruby and Akane (Dig Deep and the discovery of Hikaru and the breakup both being parts of this arc) Scandal: Kana Movie: Ruby Final: Ruby (with the caveat that almost everything she does is offscreen) Final count: Ai 1, Kana 4, Akane 3, Ruby 4, though take with a grain of salt (you could code things differently and this doesn't account for differing levels of background importance in non-primary arcs; Kana and Ai are important in many arcs which don't focus on them, while Ruby and Akane tend to be either in the spotlight or not important). One thing writing this out makes obvious is how marginal Ruby was in the first part of the story. She's there in the background (not even that in Tokyo Blade), but no arc focuses on her. Her first true arc is Private, which is almost halfway through! It also makes obvious what I think is the first major structural flaw in ONK, which is that the Idol arc focuses on Kana. Becoming a great idol was, from the start of the story, Ruby's dream, not Kana's, and she's supposed to be (and is in the second half) the second most important character after Aqua (maybe third behind Ai as well). So why does the first new B-Komachi arc focus on Kana!? There's no payoff either, because both the Aqua/Kana romance and "I'm Going To Be Your Star" go nowhere, and it's the beginning of Kana's decline into a stagnant and repetitive character (she repeats her Sweet Today "capable but not performing as well as she could => Aqua inspires her => shows her starpower" arc, which is then repeated again in Tokyo Blade). The arc is fun to watch in the anime and the performance well-done*, but the story and Ruby's character (and relationship with Aqua, which based on the finale is supposed to be the core of ONK, but is ignored for most of the story) would have been better if all four major girls had gotten one of the first four roughly-equally-sized arcs (Intro/Ai, Sweet Today/Kana, Love Now/Akane, Idol/Ruby) rather than Kana getting two and Ruby having to wait until the sixth major arc for her first. Kana is also just not important enough to either Aqua or the plot to justify how much she dominates the story between the Intro and Private, so changing the focus of the idol arc would help with her over-exposure early on too.

There are two caveats here. First, the love triangle stuff is fun to read for much of the story, though it gets old eventually, and "fun to read" is a perfectly valid reason to keep something. Second, Aqua/Akane's developing relationship between chapter 40 and chapter 98 is very important and connected to both Aqua and Akane's character and the larger plot. Aqua/Akane going from fake to real represents Aqua giving up on his revenge and just living his life, which he desperately wants to do, and the breakup directly causes his stars to return and his progression to revenge. So we want to keep it. Fortunately, the nuclear Aqua/Akane breakup in chapter 98 is the perfect place to end the Aquabowl/romance/love triangle*. Specifically, this panel:

Aqua fully dedicates himself to revenge, abandons all thoughts of romance/happiness, that's it. All that needs to be done is to not have a bunch of ship tease/bait moments (with Akane and Kana) later in the story and to definitively end Aqua/Kana as a going concern. And fortunately, the next arc, Scandal, is the perfect place to do this***; Kana already recognizes that Aqua's been treating her like garbage during the timeskip/Mainstay and makes the conscious decision to stop relying on Aqua during Scandal. Just have her, when she realizes Aqua/Akane is done, shut down the idea of pursuing Aqua herself from her side (either internally, in her own mind, or out loud) rather than kicking herself for implying that she doesn't see Aqua romantically. After this point, no more ship tease, no more love triangle, the Aqua/Kana/Akane romance/Aquabowl has run its course with no winner (contrast with canon, where we are still getting unresolved ship tease as late as chapter 161 and there is no answer as to what the romance actually means) as the romance (representing Aqua's opportunity to let go of his past life) is ruled definitively not compatible with revenge/reincarnation by the narrative and Aqua chooses the latter. This would also make Kana's character and her relationship with Aqua less stagnant (as opposed to canon, where it is virtually identical in the Final arc as in Love Now 150 chapters earlier).

WRT Aqua/Ruby: there's potential there (divinity, modern myth), enough that I think the Platonic Ideal of Oshi No Ko would actually go down that route, and it's sufficiently disconnected from the love triangle that you could make it work even with the aforementioned changes, but the easiest and simplest way to handle it is to just remove the incest bait, which after all, is just bait that never went anywhere and wasn't even addressed. Maybe one comedy panel of Ruby, who is thrilled that Goro is alive, being disappointed that he's also her brother. It's not as though Ruby's sexual/romantic obsession with Goro is something that needs to exist; he's someone who she knew for less than a year when she was all alone 20 years ago (vs her much longer life as Ruby, where she's had support and a social network her whole life, as well Aqua as a brother). She can be devastated by his death and thrilled that he's alive without wanting to jump his bones.

*Just off the top of my head (not rereading the whole story): Aqua only tries (and fails) to honeytrap Akane because he thinks he can use her to find his father.

In Tokyo Blade, we learn just how much Aqua wants someone to understand him and unconditionally support him, and Akane does ("I'd help you kill him," "I'll always be your ally"); Aqua's big emotional climax in the arc is projecting Ai onto Akane/Sayahime in the play itself.

In Private, we discover that Aqua seems to want Akane to learn about Goro and uncover his last secret, which adds more depth to his character (ie, he's still strongly affected by his life as Goro and views it as a chapter that needs to be closed for him to move on). From Akane's side, we see the lengths she's willing to go to to keep Aqua happy (ie, consciously lying to him/misleading him about his father's status).

The one time in the story post-Introduction Aqua is truly happy ("saved") is explicitly during his timeskip relationship with Akane.

Ultimately, Aqua chooses not to involve Akane in his revenge, and rejects her for getting involved on her own, even though she can definitely help and entirely voluntarily wants to help, because Aqua at the end of the day is too nice to be a good avenger and does not want to risk anyone other than himself in the process (contrast with Dark Ruby, who has no trouble screwing people over).

All of this is important to Aqua's characterization (all of Aqua's major character moments, development, and revelations between chapters 40 and 98 are closely related to Akane), Akane's characterization, and the plot itself. This is very much unlike the Aquabowl post-98, which seems to hint at being relevant to the plot and characters but ultimately reveals nothing new and goes nowhere.