#goro amamiya

There are a lot of dropped plot threads in Oshi No Ko, but maybe the biggest is that no one ever learns about the reincarnation in the story proper.

Akane in particular definitely had the knowledge to figure it out, mostly from the Private arc, where she learns, in quick succession, that:

(1) Aqua knows a lot about Goro Amamiya's personal life and childhood, and of course that he died and his body was somewhere in the woods (I wonder if Akane thought that Aqua murdered him?). Note that Aqua really wanted her to know about both of these things; I think he hoped her uncanny insight would figure out his last secret so he wouldn't have to tell her.

(2) Ruby was very, very closely attached to Goro Amamiya, to the point of wanting to marry him. She sees that Ruby doesn't break down on seeing a body, only on realizing who he was.

(3) Aqua believes in the supernatural.

Of course, Goro died long before Aqua and Ruby could possibly have known him or grown attached to him, which Akane would have known as soon as the police report was filed. And it looks like she comes very close to putting all together before getting distracted by the kiss.

You could make the argument that she wouldn't be able to figure out the reincarnation for Bayesian reasons (the prior on supernatural intervention is so low that even with Aqua and Ruby's inexplicable knowledge, the probability is negligible), except that she figures out that Crow Girl is a god within a few weeks of Aqua's death just by investigating her background. So it's not like she refuses to think in terms of supernatural explanations, she just doesn't in this case. The reincarnation is the one thing about Aqua that Akane didn't either figure out herself or get told, and the story should have let her do this, if not in the Private arc (see: kissing distraction), then during the Movie arc when she learns for sure that Goro died the day Aqua/Ruby were born.

Not only would discovering the reincarnation recontextualize Akane/Aqua's relationship (he has 30 years of additional memories!) but it has the potential to do the same for most of Aqua's other relationships. How does Miyako, who thinks of him as her son, react to this? Kana, who thinks he's basically a normal, if unusually good-looking and talented, high-schooler? What about Director Gotanda, who first got to know him because of how impressive he was as a toddler? His half-brother, Taiki? You could easily write several chapters of just Akane coming to grips with the reincarnation, or an entire arc of the rest of Aqua and Ruby's circle doing so.

The finale of Season 2 will be aired on Sunday, October 6 instead of its usual Wednesday time slot. I think it’s because of the influx of Fall anime airings that one premiere probably took its time slot. Anyways, just a heads up on this just in case if you’re gonna wonder why the finale review is gonna be late next week.

I find it interesting that this is where Aqua drew the line. He put up with Ruby's BS until here. He's inhumanly tolerant with Ruby being...Ruby, which makes it all the more remarkable when he objects to Ruby being Sarina.

I'm not the first to note that the twins reacted very differently to being reincarnated. Ruby thinks of Sarina the same way she thinks of baby-Ruby: As herself, the person she was almost twenty years ago. But Aqua sees Dr. Goro as a different person whose memories he happens to know.

So far, this difference in perspective hasn't lead to any conflict, or even conversation; the twins barely talked about their past lives. Even when Ruby started getting clingy with "Dr. Goro," she didn't say or do anything that might distinguish between how she feels about Aqua and how she feels about the doctor. Why would she? They're the same person! And Aqua just hasn't effectively communicated with his sister.

He's communicated more with her in chapter 143, but mostly about his present-tense, personal insecurities.

It's good for Aqua to open up to someone—anyone—about this kind of thought; his sister is a pretty good choice for this kind of confession. I'm glad Aqua is getting less emotionally constipated.

But that monologue obscures the "I'm not Dr. Goro any more." It leaves room for Ruby to interpret it as "I'm depressed, so I can't act like I did when I was a doctor". It leaves room for Ruby to assume that if Aqua gets un-depressed, Dr. Goro can fulfill his very serious promise to marry Sarina when she grew up.

And that seems to be what happened! Ruby's response monologue addresses the narrow concerns of "I feel guilty about how many people I've hurt" by talking about how he's made her life better, about how he's her idol, about how she loves him, and by the way we're kissing now.

We don't see Aqua's response; the chapter cuts to the film set, the scene where Hikaru and Ai (played by Aqua and Ruby) smooch. We don't see Aqua's response, but the way we don't see it suggests that he continued to not effectively communicate with Ruby.

hey, don't cry. onk 150, okay?

bonus:

(wasn't sure how to tag this for blacklists but there's mention of death in childbirth in this answer)

From what little we know of it, it seems strained! Awkward and a little distance and with a lot of baggage - Gorou is specifically stated to have felt a ton of guilt over the circumstances of his birth which is part of what pushed him into his chosen field of medicine. It also seems to have enforced some distance between himself and his grandparents - as he puts it, his relationship with his grandmother wasn't bad, but it's implied that he and his grandfather didn't get along at all.

Actually I sometimes see people talk about his grandfather being abusive towards him, even physically so, but I don't remember that being in the manga...? So I'm not quite sure where it comes from. It's definitely possible it just slipped my mind or that I'm looking at the wrong chapters to recap myself on that info tho.