Akane Kurokawa

"I gotta give it my all. Aqua did his best to make that video for me... And came to look for me in the middle of a storm. I was so happy. I need to show him my appreciation. I wonder if he'll be happy... If I play the part of his perfect girl?""

Akane Kurokawa (あかね) is a character in the Oshi no Ko manga series. She is an excellent actress capable of playing personalities to a fault and has connections with the Lalalie Theatrical Company. She was once a girl who was quiet and capable of easily fading into the background, but after a controversy surrounding her actions on the reality dating show LoveNow, she created a personality strikingly similar to Ai Hoshino. She used to play the active role of being Aqua Hoshino's girlfriend in a professional capacity, but after their trip to Miyazaki, they became a real couple. However, later on, she discovered that his feelings for her were a lie, realizing that she was not the girl he truly loved. Despite this, she decided to continue the relationship, hoping that the lie would one day be true.

Appearance
Akane is a beautiful girl sporting a purplish hair color with blue highlights. Before her controversy, she did not particularly stand out according to LoveNow's audience, giving the sense that neither her personality nor her looks were particularly remarkable. However, after overcoming her controversy, she began sporting a look akin to Ai Hoshino down to her facial expressions and eyes, including Ai's iconic stars in her eyes. She has since grown out her hair as a symbol of her new style and not allowing the past to drag her down.

Her previous hairstyle was reminiscent of the one she had as a child. In the past, she decided to cut and change her hairstyle to be similar to her past idol Kana. It was extremely effective as even Kana's staff and fans were duped by her strikingly similar looks.

Personality
Akane's true self is shy and quiet, which made her a poor fit for a reality dating show, something LoveNow's audience frequently noted. When people started lambasting her and sending her death threats, she became all the more reclusive and was even on the verge of committing suicide. After her decision to return to the show, Aqua suggested that she play a character to protect herself from any backlash from any potential future incidents. As a result, she took up Ai Hoshino's personality after hearing that she was Aqua's ideal woman as a way to thank him for saving both her life and reputation.

She is very diligent and was capable of studying and replicating Ai's demeanor fastidiously (from her mannerisms, speech patterns and even thought processes), so much so that she had effectively bewitched Aqua and was capable of triggering thoughts of Ai in others immediately after looking at her.

When asked by Yuki and Mem-Cho, Akane admitted that was open to the idea of dating Aqua for real if he was willing, as at that point, she believed that she harbored actual romantic feelings for Aqua. Later on, she began to question these feelings when she was not able to confidently answer Aqua's question if she indeed loved him, but blamed her inability to do so on a lack of experience in romance.

She is also an accomplished cook, capable of concocting a full-course savory dinner, for which Taishi Gotanda's Mother commented to Aqua that 'this one's [Akane's] a keeper'. She gained these skills after previously attending cooking courses with her mother and cooking at home. She also has both a serious side and a fun side to her, as shown after seeing a video of kid Aqua, she exclaimed that he was 'cute', yet to her trained eyes, she could tell that he was not putting his soul into his performance but just reciting the lines.

Due to the cyberbullying and harassment she received as a result of the LoveNow incident, she knows the pain associated with being alone and having no one to confide in. Thus, when Aqua was suffering from severe PTSD, she shed tears for him, embraced him, and promised to always be by his side no matter what happens, furthermore promising to share his pain with him.

Akane is very astute, as after just receiving minuscule details surrounding Aqua's past, she was capable of piecing together all the details accurately, and deducing his relationship with his late mother, immediately empathizing with his pain and loneliness. She also kept this secret and did not criticize nor sway him when he confided that his reason for getting into theatre and acting was because he wished to get close to and kill someone in the industry. She even said she would help kill that person, justifying this by voicing her belief that Aqua must have had a strong motive, that it was not about right or wrong and that she would accept Aqua for who he was even if he was a "really bad boy". Her wish to shoulder his guilt with him and her commitment to their relationship caused Aqua to comment that she was "out of her mind".

When interacting with Aqua, she displays an obviously caring attitude towards him, one that others easily pick up on. She was the only one who stayed by his side after he collapsed and, on multiple occasions, let herself loose in joy and sadness only in front of him. She is also prone to being convinced into doing something whenever someone invokes his name, an example being when Shiranui Frill was able to maintain her participation in the interpersonal audition by informing her that Aqua would be co-starring in the film for which they were auditioning for. On the other hand, whenever she interacts with Kana, they unfailingly have a fiery argument due to a number of reasons: their shared feelings for Aqua, Kana's jealousy of Akane's success as an actress at a time when she is yet to find any herself, Akane's disappointment that Kana (prior to the 2.5D live-action production of Tokyo Blade) had become someone happy to let others have the spotlight, and the simple fact that their personalities are polar opposites.

When they officially began dating, Akane became much more open in asking Aqua to spoil her after a busy day and appreciated him for all the small actions he made to show his feelings. For instance, Aqua would wait for her outside her workplace and reply to her texts as soon as possible, while also never failing to praise her for her hard work. They would also display public affection more easily as she would cling to his arm when walking. All these small actions made her feel grateful and satisfied, so much so that they helped to rid her of all her worries.

In addition to her cuter aspects, Akane possesses a dangerous, obsessive and borderline psychopathic side as well, as shown when she deduced the identity of the Hoshino twins' father and tried to take matters into her own hands by investigating him on her own, even finding his office so that she could make an attempt on his life by concealing a knife in a bouquet of white roses in similar fashion to Ai's murder. These actions stemmed from a desire to "save" Aqua by preventing contact between him and his father so that he would not have to concern himself with his revenge plot again and therefore allow him to spend more time with her. She also appeared to be more hurt by the fact that Aqua planted a tracking device without telling her, rather than the fact that he invaded her privacy by placing one on her at all, stating that she'd have given him hundreds of them and even followed him to hell if only he had asked.

Etymology

 * The name Akane is written in hiragana (あかね), which has no special meaning. However, when written in kanji (茜), it could possibly mean "deep red, dye from the Rubia plant".
 * Akane's surname Kurokawa means "black" (黒) (kuro) and "river, stream" (川) (kawa).

Trivia

 * Akane's story in the LoveNow arc resembles the circumstances surrounding the real-life death of Hana Kimura, a Japanese professional wrestler. Kimura committed suicide in May 2020 due to media pressure after getting embroiled in a controversy in the reality dating show Terrace House. While Akane's suicide was prevented at the last minute, Kimura's was not.
 * Akane is one of the few to know the Hoshino twins' relationship with Ai Hoshino before it is published in chapter 105.
 * With her prowess as an actor, Akane was able to mimic Ai's personality perfectly, so much so that both Ruby Hoshino and Aqua Hoshino were reminded of their late mother.
 * Toshirou Kindaichi mentioned that, when in front of the cameras, Akane shows the same star eyes that the twins and Ai have. He calls them "deceptive eyes that have the power to make lies look like truths".
 * Her instagram id is akanecco_2323; she uses this account to update statuses of her dating with Aqua.