The Losing Heroine「負けヒロイン, Make Hiroin?」 is the forty-third chapter of the Oshi no Ko manga series. It is written by Aka Akasaka and illustrated by Mengo Yokoyari. It was released in Weekly Young Jump on May 13, 2021.[1]
Summary[]
While stage plays usually have a month of rehearsals in advance and since not every actor can be involved all the time as a result of their busy schedules, they do try to attend as much as possible because they are passionate about acting. On this particular day, Taiki has arrived late due to his other commitments but as soon as he arrives, he goes straight to Kana and asks her about the pronunciation of a particular word in Kanji. Kana is able to answer immediately and Melt is impressed and calls her smart. However she brushes it off and wonders out loud why so many theater people cannot read Kanji and encourage them read a bit more.
By now it is the third day of rehearsals for the Tokyo Blade stage play and Akane notices that groups have started to form among the actors. The main cast, Kana, Melt and Taiki have formed their own group. There is also the Lala Lai group as well as the walk-ons but then there is Aqua, who is mostly by himself and often gives off a negative aura. She approaches him to start a conversation but notices that he is observing Kana. Feeling a little jealous, she asks why he is paying attention on Kana instead of her. Aqua explains that Kana's acting matches those around her as a way to survive the harsh reality of the entertainment industry. However she is partnered up With Taiki, Lala Lai's star actor. If her acting starts matching his, Kana's acting would likely outshine Akane's and Akane is going to lose massively. Akane immediately gets annoyed upon hearing his comments and Aqua tells her to get mad if she feels so rather than behaving like a child. She points out it will be the same for Aqua too but Aqua is aware of his limits and is not trying to compete with those with real talents.
Under the observation of director Kindaichi, Akane puts her efforts into the rehearsals. However Kindaichi asks her to bring more intensity for that scene and match the tempo of the other actors. After a brief moment to contemplate, she delivers a more intense performance as requested and Kindachi has Kana to start rehearsing another scene. Akane is left bewildered since the way she just performed her character, Princess Saya, deviated significantly from the source material. She concludes that it is because of the flawed script which in turn is due to her character is not being depicted much in the manga. Furthermore, her character being Touki's (Aqua) fiancé is dropped almost entirely as the story goes on with him being paired with Tsurugi (Kana). She tries to compensate for it by looking into the source material for inspiration but the character she constructed ends up radically different from the one depicted in the script.
Elsewhere, Yoriko meets up with Abiko for drinks. Yoriko congratulates Abiko for suppressing her and Abiko brings up the reason for the meeting, her work is getting adapted into a stage play and she want Yoriko to accompany her to the rehearsals.
Characters[]
