"Love in AI is a Lie?" Anime: Oshi no Ko

2023 推しの子

Spoiler Warning

Hoshino Ai is an idol named 愛 — pronounced “Ai” in both Chinese and Japanese, a word that means “love” — yet she has no true understanding of what love really is. However, because she’s so naturally talented at lying, her idol group members, even if they privately see through her hypocrisy, still have to maintain a friendly façade with her and rely on her popularity to make a living.

The protagonist is the illegitimate child of Hoshino Ai. Because Ai is unmarried and underage, he 'naturally' has no known father. Publicly, Ai keeps his existence a secret, projecting the image of an attractive and innocent young girl. Behind the scenes, however, the truth is that the protagonist himself is undeniable evidence that she has engaged in morally questionable sexual behavior and has deceived her fans on a massive and disturbing scale. Yet to those who know the truth, she boldly declares: “My love is a lie. And lying is all my love.”

This statement sounds extremely infuriating. Yet, the protagonist has been her fan since a previous life, so he accepts it and continues to fully support her career. Because in reality, adults understand that an idol’s image is selling a “beautiful fantasy.” As long as Hoshino Ai gives her all in performing and presents fans with a “cute, dreamy” ideal, even if it’s fake, it should becomes real in the fans’ eyes.

Isn’t this just how the entertainment industry works? Everyone’s life is hard. So why bother taking everything so seriously and destroying someone’s livelihood?

So on the day, Ai is killed by one of her crazed fan who breaks into their home in fornt of his eyes, the protagonist turns dark. His mind obsessively calculates: Who leaked the information? Who can reveal their home address? Who knows she had a child? Who had the motive to commit such a cruel act… The entire anime revolves around this motive of revenge, gradually exposing how the Japanese entertainment industry rewards hypocrisy, exploits minors, and is full of filth and cruelty.

It is only at the moment of Ai’s death that she realizes she is in fact truly knew how to love. Even if she never experienced familial warmth from her mother, in the way she loving her own child, she never lied — she was a good mother. She also remembers the fan who killed her: which concert he attended, what gifts he gave her… everything about her interactions with her fans.

Sometimes, through a screen, it’s easy to forget that an idol is a living, breathing human being too. But on a literary platform like here in Vocus, where mutual following happens — sometimes you follow me, sometimes I follow you — it’s hard to say who is whose fan and who is whose idol anymore.

I’m writing this today（2026-01-26） because someone I once mutually followed — and whom I have now blocked — 'liked' one of my posts, which I honestly don’t know how she managed that. Here is the link of the post: 想做的事情太多了 ( Title: 'I want to do too many things' )

And I do not believe that this “idol” holds any goodwill toward me, because in the comment section of the following post, I once expressed my thoughts about her:

這是一篇統計文，統計一下『黎星羽』的留言屬於良性互動還是騷擾行為？

And here is the translation of what I have said in Chinese:

Title: This is a statistical article to asking whether the comments left by Miss "Li Xingyu" constitute positive interaction or harassment to you.

And I replied to all 3 questions in the article accordingly in its comment section:

Q1. Have you been harassed by Li Xingyu?

From my personal perspective, her comments on my articles, although friendly in tone, felt very strange in content. For a period of time, she commented under every one of my posts extremely quickly, and her words sounded overly polite and distance each and every time. It made me feel that she was being insincere. And therefore I felt so uncomfortable that I blocked her and personally consider that I was “harassed” by her.

Q2. Do you think Li Xingyu’s comments were off-topic?

Yes. I was simply translating some of my articles into English and reposting them. Yet she still left comments in Chinese under my posts, complimenting them as if she had never read the original Chinese versions before. Some of her remarks were also quite strange—almost as if she did not know what she was talking about, or was simply making random comments to grab my or my reader's attention. Because of that, I struggled internally for quite a long time before deciding to block her. I felt that my creative work was being used as a kind of billboard for her to gain exposure.

3. Do you think Li Xingyu’s comments were overly templated or AI-generated?

Yes. I later noticed that one of the compliments she gave me appeared almost identically—about 80% the same—under another person’s article. That article was clearly very different from mine. When I saw that comment, the small sense of pride and happiness I had briefly felt from her compliments immediately disappeared. Instead, I felt foolish for ever believing that she genuinely meant what she said. Her behavior discouraged my motivation to interact with others on Vocus. Seeing her presence under so many different articles gradually became irritating. Therefore, I would like to ask this platform (Vocus) to review and remove such “marketing accounts” that exploit loopholes in its reader subscription alerts or article recommendation systems to indirectly and mechanically attract attention through large-scale, carefully designed, and intentionally deceptive commenting practices.

Under these circumstances, I feel deeply uncomfortable still receiving a “like” from Miss Li. I cannot help but wonder—why? Among the many people who also complained about you on that post and shared similar unhappy experiences of feeling harassed, why would you specifically remember to come and read my article now? And this time, when you liked my post, was it because you finally read my writing with genuine, human attention?

Now, since you once borrowed so much of my attention, it seems only fair that I borrow a little of your “popularity” now to promote myself, right?

Let me introduce myself to you once again, as I hope you are watching. Over the past year, I have repeatedly encountered people like you—hypocritical bullies on the internet pretending to be kind-hearted. Because of that, I sometimes feel that including the word “Soft” in my salon’s name may have been a huge mistake. If I had known better back then, I might have called it “Toxic” instead.

You see, once I held a grudge so strongly against someone who insulted me that, for two months—every single day—I used my articles in a creative contest to publicly give him “life lessons,” approaching the subject from different levels and angles on Penana. Through those pieces, I expressed how I saw him: a stupid, perfidious little imbecile who somehow still thought himself adorable. And that is how I eventually ended up—fallen, perhaps—wandering over here on Vocus.

If you’re interested, here is where the lessons began. (The rest of the “course” is still in the process of being translated.)

Hello, Little Pink (And thats why I moved out of HK Penana)

Then someone dared to mock me anonymously, so I anonymously mocked them back… let me see… hmm, because even now, I still slip a line or two of personal jabs into my posts to take a dig at them. So, it’s really hard to count. I might let you know once I’ve finished translating all of them. (That’s seriously a huge amount of work.)

Sigh. I admit it—I am a very petty, very grudging person. Most of the time, when I post, it’s just for a brief, short-lived thrill. Otherwise, I wouldn’t even bother talking about politics. Do you think I ever expected to get paid for promoting products while maintaining this public image? I can also say with confidence that if those “Wanwanese” or “Little Pinks” mentioned in my articles, who hate me with all their hearts, had anything to sue me for, they would have done it long ago. So, Li Xingyu, if you dare bother me again, I’ll probably write a few more articles and see if I can cobble together another volume of The AI Chronicles. After all, I’m picky even about who can be my fan—or who gets to “like” me.

Beware—my posting style has always been "casual." I say something and then it doesn’t count; I post something and then I retract it. Truth mixes with lies, hatred mixes with twisted love—repetitive, half-alive, constantly shifting, like a little pervert in your darkest nightmare.

As I once admitted in a private message that was leaked by “someone,” I have described myself as “a crazy bitch with borderline personality, and clueless about social boundaries.” I am always prepared for people to take revenge, mock me behind my back, or even smear me. I’m basically in the state of “a dead pig unafraid of boiling water”—one more hater or one less doesn’t matter to me anymore.

Still, I’ll say it again to all my enemy: “Life is already hard enough; why do we have to make it even harder for each other?” Today, I haven’t killed your parents; I’m just speaking my honest thoughts about you behind your back. You were the one who first deceived my feelings. And If you don’t want me to post comments or articles like this that might hurt your standing, maybe you shouldn’t have come here to pretending to be my friend/fan -- just to step over me insincerely in order to gain a higher position in the first place.

Do you know that I once carefully thought through every word and every sentence I wrote, trying my best to figure out the best way to “respond to you”? And yet, from the very beginning, Ms. Li, you came at me purely with your AI tools—without a single bit of your own original soul, feeling, or thought in any of our “interactions.”

So don’t blame me—I couldn’t help but clear everything out more publicly once again, just to practice my English.