Oresuki is a show that is about subtext and layered narratives. Basically every character in the show lies about what motivates their actions at one point or another, and this is made extremely clear from the very beginning. In doing this, Oresuki is tasking the viewer to try to discern where their real intentions lay. Rather than the text itself, Oresuki prompts the audience to read the subtext.
However, treating subtext as text does not erase the original text. As a better show once said, “People have several faces… and they’re all real.” Oresuki adopts a Kantian philosophy where the morality of an action can only be judged based on the intention behind it, and in doing so, it ignores the action itself. At one point, Joro is chastised for doing a good deed, because his motivations are deemed to be selfish. If one is committed to the idea that subtext is the only thing that’s real, then everything else must be fake.
In training the audience to only read subtext, Oresuki demonstrates how dangerous this perspective can be. After the first few arcs, the viewer becomes unable to judge a good deed for itself. There was one character who ended up being completely benevolent in their actions, but I still was convinced that they couldn’t be trusted long after they were introduced. If all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.
With all of that said, I do think that the ideology of Oresuki is usually on the right track. Joro loses all of his friends as a result of his scheming in the first arc, and though he tries to scheme to regain them at first, he is only successful when he ultimately drops all façade and tells them directly that he wants to be friends again. There are no shortcuts or cheat codes when it comes to relationships, and if you want something real, then it has to start with you.
I get the sense that Rakuda said everything they wanted to say in the first volume of the series, and didn’t really know how to follow it up. To a certain extent, Joro keeps making the same mistakes over and over again, although I’ll charitably read that as understanding that it would be difficult for a misanthrope like him to so easily change their ways. Fittingly, this season ends with another of Joro’s schemes backfiring, and him being backed into a corner as a result. His immediate impulse may be to devise a new scheme to escape this situation, but if he wants to show that he’s learned anything over the course of this season, then he’ll need to finally be honest about how he feels. We can only wait and see.
So, is Oresuki good? No, absolutely not. It pretends to be a subversion of a genre, but ultimately doesn’t amount to more than just being the thing that it’s aping with a few more winks at the camera. But I had a lot of fun with it! There are a lot of ideas here that I thought were interesting to engage with, even if I disagreed them. Maybe my experience was mainly the product of my taking a philosophy class at the same time that this was airing, but if you like to play with your trash, then I think that Oresuki is worth a try.
