I want to start off by saying that I’m glad Aka Akasaka and Mengo Yokoyari’s Oshi no Ko has blown up in popularity.
However, as I noted a year ago about this series, there’s a certain part of the story that’s eerily similar to an incident where a major Japanese celebrity killed themselves due to cyberbullying.
Here we are now and episode 6 of the anime finally showed it all. Spoilers after the jump.
A character named Akane Kurokawa, a young star trying to make it big in the Japanese entertainment industry, attempts suicide after being bullied online, but she is saved. The thing is that Akane’s situation mirrors the events of what happened to Hana Kimura, a former Japanese wrestler who killed herself due to online users bullying her over her behavior in an episode of a popular Japanese reality show.
Hana’s mother, Kyoko Kimura, saw episode 6 of Oshi no Ko and criticized the anime for being insensitive and the staff for using Hana’s death as free source material. Responses to the episode have been very mixed. Some praise the episode for being courageous in talking about suicide, while others have argued that the episode was traumatizing.
The worst thing about this was that there were two Japanese articles that covered Kyoko’s statements and they got deleted. I later heard that Japanese online commenters were harassing Kyoko over her words and saying things like “How dare you voice your opinion! What if this anime gets canceled because of you?”
What gets lost here and no one really talks about regarding suicide is the people who get left behind. They usually are the family members, like Kyoko in this case. Parents who have to deal with their children’s mental health/illness struggles go through so much crap. They have to deal with gaslighting from people who are supposed to help, but choose to blame any systemic failings on the parent. Statements like “You didn’t do a great job in raising/protecting your kid. That’s why they are the way they are.” are sometimes thrown around to parents of children with mental health problems. It’s awful.
I don’t blame Kyoko for saying something because her grief is still there. I know that the media focuses too much on the victims to the point where they put people who knew the victim to the side. Suicide bereavement is a thing that goes unnoticed. Bullying definitely has to be addressed, but as I realized over the years, no one gives a shit in talking about someone’s grief once the funeral is over.
I know that it’s hard to talk about issues like suicide (and all of its factors and ramifications) on mainstream media. Despite the power of anime and manga in providing needed commentary on important topics, I don’t expect this to change any time soon considering many youth will still think of suicide as an answer to circumstances that aren’t their fault.
But I do know is the best way forward is getting everyone involved in a healthy and compassionate discussion (NOT a debate and on social media), which includes media, professionals, activists, peers, and most importantly, people with lived experiences and the family members/friends that know them.
