In fact, every koyaku had an agent — even an invisible nobody within the agency like Minami Yuji.
But for the vast majority of koyaku, even getting to meet their agent in person was extremely difficult.
To put it plainly, the root cause was simple — the koyaku market was just too warped!
According to surveys, present-day Japan had a full six hundred-plus koyaku agencies of all sizes, and the koyaku themselves numbered more than forty thousand.
And out of those forty-thousand-plus people, the koyaku who actually managed to become famous outside the industry and become household names to the public were the kind you could count on two hands.
As a result, most koyaku only had agents in name.
In reality, plenty of koyaku without acting ability or talent went from entering the industry to the end of their koyaku careers without ever once even meeting their agent.
Minami Yuji had been just like that before.
On ordinary days, going to the agency basically meant cramming into a single car with a huge pile of other koyaku.
Fortunately, drawing on a grown-up’s eye and a grasp of how people worked, on one film set he’d had a chat with a certain producer who took an interest in him and recommended him for the auditions for White Coastline and She and He.
Otherwise, Minami Yuji right now would still be the kind of koyaku who ‘crams into a shared car and never sees his agent.’
Still…
while the situation had improved, it hadn’t improved by all that much.
Closing the She and He script, Minami Yuji expressionlessly turned his head to one side.
On his left was a girl koyaku, bawling from stage fright, clutching at her mother’s sleeve and refusing to let go.
On his right was a boy koyaku, completely stunned silent by the audition’s solemn atmosphere.
Uh…
by the smell of things…
it looked like he’d even gotten so scared he’d peed his pants.
What torture…
Minami Yuji remained expressionless.
Lots of people had some inexplicable fantasy about koyaku — that they were mature, capable, that even at such a young age they could do an adult’s work and not get stage fright in front of the camera.
But in reality — that!
Was!
Not!
How!
It!
Worked!
At!
All!
Stage fright and fear, emotions melting down on set at the drop of a hat, needing a parent on hand for moral support, completely unable to memorize long lines at five or six years old — that was the real portrait of most koyaku.
Which made sense, of course — after all, the kind of koyaku who could perform themselves perfectly in front of a camera were basically all prodigies whose names had already spread outside the industry.
Yet even so, most koyaku still needed a parent at their side, and for a small subset, the parent was the agent themselves — Arima Kana, whom Minami Yuji had run into yesterday, was a case in point: her own mother served as her agent, and yesterday she’d been on set putting on the flattering smiles for the director.
Ah…
no, no.
Minami Yuji shook his head.
Hadn’t he already said he didn’t want to get involved with any anime heroines?
So why was he thinking about them again?
Right — better to just behave and read the script.
Minami Yuji expressionlessly began leafing through the script again.
“Hey—”
A clear, familiar voice — carrying that distinct ‘I am supreme’ aura — suddenly rang out beside him.
Minami Yuji didn’t react.
That couldn’t possibly be addressed to him — generally speaking, no one was willing to strike up a conversation with a minor koyaku like him.
“Hey!
I’m talking to you!
You jerk!
Why aren’t you answering me?!”
The tone of the shout seemed to have a thread of anger laced into it.
Yes, yes — hurry up, find whoever it is you’re looking for, and then go.
That was what Minami Yuji was thinking.
“Mi!
Na!
Mi!
Yu!
Ji!
I am talking to you!”
A set of plump-pink, tender pale fingers suddenly thrust out from in front of him and pushed the script down.
“…” Minami Yuji let out a helpless sigh and lifted his head.
Standing in front of him was none other than the wine-red-haired Arima Kana.
At this moment, she was holding her script clenched in her right hand, her other arm braced on her hip, glaring at him with very obvious displeasure.
By the look of it, in Miss Arima Kana’s worldview, the option of ‘someone is ignoring me on purpose’ simply didn’t exist.
And what’s more…
Minami Yuji could clearly sense that every curious gaze around them had now turned and locked onto the pair of them.
Accompanied by whispered murmurs.
“Is that Arima Kana?”
“The ‘genius child star who can cry on cue in ten seconds’?”
“She really is so cute in person.”
“And that little boy in front of her is really good-looking too — could he also be some famous koyaku from a big agency?”
“…” Minami Yuji.
Minami Yuji didn’t dislike being noticed — but being noticed this way…
Honestly, by any measure, it gave him a bit of a headache.
Not to mention that he genuinely couldn’t fathom why Arima Kana — this notoriously difficult 2D heroine — would have set her sights on him, much less actively come over to start a conversation?
Hadn’t he just absolutely torpedoed a whole wave of her affinity points yesterday?
The disdainful face.
The lecturing.
The reproach.
He’d basically stopped just short of pointing right at Arima Kana’s nose and snapping at her — ‘Wasn’t this latest disaster a problem with your acting?’
Miss Arima Kana…
are you a masochist?
Uh…
actually, that was a real possibility.
As for the anime Oshi no Ko — the Minami Yuji of his previous life hadn’t actually sat down and watched it, but he had occasionally scrolled past plenty of explainer videos analyzing the character Arima Kana.
Back when he’d scrolled past those, Arima Kana had left him with a strange impression.
If you asked Minami Yuji to put it into words.
Then it would probably be a red-furred Shiba Inu — a Shiba Inu in the most literal sense.
After all, in the original work, it really wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the Arima Kana standing in front of him was played like a fiddle by the male lead, Aqua Hoshino.
What had impressed Minami Yuji the most was perhaps Arima Kana’s career switch from ‘actress’ to ‘idol.’
Many people who watched Japanese anime might have a skewed impression of the ‘idol’ profession — they might think it looked dazzling and glamorous on the surface.
But in reality, professions like ‘idol’ and ‘model’ sat near the bottom of the food chain in this enormous industry — to a degree that bordered on universal contempt.
After all, most idols were industrial assembly-line products: from makeup to dance training to vocal coaching, in Japan it was all turnkey production — once one batch went out of fashion and stopped making money, you just swapped them out for the next batch.
Therefore, unless the financial backers were bringing money into the production, most TV drama and film directors would much rather cast ordinary actors than idols.
After all, most idols could handle a bit of singing and dancing well enough, but when it came to actual acting…
Then it was a completely different story.
In the industry, most idols were assembly-line products — no acting skill to speak of, no command of dialogue to speak of — idols like Ai Hoshino really were few and far between.
So putting an idol into a production would only turn the film or TV work into a complete mess.
You could see this from the fact that most of Japan’s top-tier idols all wanted to cross over into careers as ‘singers’ or ‘actors’ — the standing of the idol profession in the industry really was that low.
And so, in Oshi no Ko, when Arima Kana made the career switch from ‘actress’ to ‘idol,’ she really had taken an enormous amount of resolve to do it.
And what came afterward?
Aqua Hoshino, his eyes clouded by hatred, scattered all manner of lies in his pursuit of revenge — and along the way, unwittingly hurt Arima Kana over and over again.
Granted, from Aqua Hoshino’s standpoint, avenging his mother was an entirely normal thing to do, and no one had the right to condemn him for it.
But what about thinking about it from Arima Kana’s standpoint?
For the sake of the person she loved, she’d demoted herself from actress to idol; yet after actually becoming an idol, she’d watched him suddenly appear on a variety show to publicly announce a romance, then been abruptly informed that the relationship was confirmed, then been pushed to the sidelines — and when they finally met again, Aqua Hoshino had already been reduced to a corpse.
Even with all of Aqua Hoshino’s various attempts to make amends along the way — in the moment Arima Kana saw Aqua Hoshino’s corpse, what was she supposed to feel?
Minami Yuji would put it this way.
In Oshi no Ko, Aqua Hoshino may have done right by everyone else, but he had unquestionably done wrong by Arima Kana, the one who had stayed by his side watching over him the entire time.
And yet, of all things, Arima Kana was utterly devoted to this blond male lead — practically the textbook example of an ‘iron-hearted Shiba Inu’ and a ‘simp.’
Even that director within the story, the one who’d nearly pulled the casting-couch routine on Arima Kana, had been so taken aback by her attitude that he’d found it both amusing and exasperating, finally remarking: “Hung up on a man who has a girlfriend for a full year, and you can still get this worked up over it…”
All of the above considered…
Minami Yuji couldn’t help glancing at the Arima Kana standing in front of him.
This…
Miss Arima Kana wouldn’t actually turn out to be a closet masochist, would she?
The more she got picked on, the more she liked the person doing the ‘picking on’?