Oshi No Ko #1

History

The manga was conceived by writer Aka Akasaka — already running Kaguya-sama: Love Is War in the same Weekly Young Jump magazine — who sought a vehicle for exploring entertainment-industry themes he could not fit into a high-school rom-com framework. He immediately approached illustrator Mengo Yokoyari, whose prior one-shot Kawaii had dealt with show business and whose psychological line-work on Scum's Wish he felt matched the tonal demands of the new project; the two had been socially acquainted but had never collaborated professionally. Their working method divided labor clearly: Akasaka scripted all storyboards (nemu) while Yokoyari handled finished art, though both describe the partnership as more lateral than a traditional writer-artist hierarchy, with the credits rendered as 'Aka Akasaka × Mengo Yokoyari' to signal that equality. Yen Press announced the English license at Anime Expo in July 2022, and the first English volume shipped January 17, 2023 — translated by Taylor Engel — just as anticipation for the forthcoming anime adaptation was reaching a peak.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First English-language publication of the series: Yen Press Vol. 1, released January 17, 2023 (ISBN 9781975363178), translated by Taylor Engel, rated OT (Older Teen), 228 pages.
• First appearances of all core characters: Gorou Amamiya (the obstetrician protagonist), idol Ai Hoshino, twins Aquamarine 'Aqua' Hoshino and Ruby Hoshino (reincarnations of Gorou and his deceased patient Sarina Tendouji, respectively), and talent-agency head Ichigo Saitō.
• The entire first volume comprises a single arc — 'Prologue: Childhood' — which opens with Gorou's murder by Ai's stalker on the night of the twins' birth, his immediate reincarnation as Aqua, and the subsequent assassination of Ai four years later, establishing the revenge-thriller backbone of the full series.
• Written by Aka Akasaka (Kaguya-sama: Love Is War) and illustrated by Mengo Yokoyari (Scum's Wish); the original Japanese serialization began in Shueisha's Weekly Young Jump on April 23, 2020, running 166 chapters across 16 tankōbon volumes through November 14, 2024.
• Yen Press announced the English license at Anime Expo in July 2022; Shueisha had simultaneously begun a free English digital release on the Manga Plus platform in April 2022.
• The series won the Next Manga Award (print category) in 2021, was nominated for the 14th and 15th Manga Taisho Awards, and won the Best General Manga category at the 46th Kodansha Manga Awards.
• The Doga Kobo anime adaptation launched April 12, 2023 — just months after this volume's release — with an extraordinary 90-minute theatrical premiere episode ('Mother and Children'), which briefly ranked as the highest-rated anime of all time on MyAnimeList and set a single-premiere viewership record on streaming service HIDIVE.
• Oshi no Ko was Yen Press's overall best-selling franchise for 2023, the year this volume debuted, and the series had surpassed 25 million copies in circulation globally by December 2025.