This review extensively spoils the reviewed material. Familiarity is advised before reading further. I AM REBORN For about twelve minutes of its first episode it seems like Revue Starlight will be a perhaps interesting but fairly runofthemill high school dramedy about the classes in a boarding theatre school. A somewhat novel premise to be sure but not anything groundbreaking. Then at the episodes halfway mark protagonist Karen presses the down button on an elevator shes never seen before and nothing is the same ever again. What follows is an incredibly exciting and more than a bit surreal sequence involving a massive secret stage underneath the academy where a pair of Karens classmates duke it out as part of an audition process with what appear to be very real weapons while singing in a scene that will likely remind newcomers of Symphogear as much as anything else. Karen alone in the audience for this performance is lectured by a giraffe who pops out of nowhere and begins talking about the necessary sacrifices one makes to achieve stardom and seemingly taunts our protagonist who then climbs onto the giraffes neck and launches herself into the fray below into what can only be described as an industrialized version of a magical girl transformation sequence as her costume is built prop by prop piece by piece button by button. Then we get this in what became in mere hours the opening episodes defining shot. 880https://i.ur.com/vcO3BdI.png Its breathtaking. You do not get that kind of knockyouonyourass punch very often not from anime and not from anything. Its a pretty bold display of directoral prowess and what is perhaps most amazing is that its director Tomohiro Furukawas first series at the helm. What is less surprising is that Furukawa has an impressive nondirectorial resume spanning everything from the whackedout Mawaru Penguindrum to standard shonen fare like Bleach and YuGiOh ZeXal. Even as its impacted is ever so slightly lessened by its repetition in later episodes is it really a magical girl transformation sequence if its not later used to save time? it remains a striking image. You could be forgiving for assuming that something like this simply must have sprung fullyformed from nowhere as a work of auteurship that kind of narrative is still common but the truth is that Revue Starlight the anime is only one facet of a surprisingly large franchise with roots in in something likely quite foreign to western anime audiences the countrys thriving liveaction musical theatre scene. Its sort of impossible then to talk about Revue Starlight the anime without at least mentioning Revue Starlight the stage show which it is an adaption of. To understand Revue and developments over the rest of the series you have to understand that first. Its an intimidating proposition Japanese theatre specifically the Takarazuka Revue whose academy the setting of Starlight is based on and an alumnus of which is responsible for the Starlight stage play has its own entirely separate fan culture and the scene itself dates back over a century its a cultural wellspring that Utena director Kunihiko Ikuhara has drawn from and given the aforementioned pedigree of this series directorTomohiro Furukawait shouldnt come as a surprise that its a heavy influence here too. Revue Starlight the anime revolves in part itself around the annual school production of an inseries play called simply Starlight. Theres a lot of theatre in here for many viewers it is going to be their first window into this world. Take this as an admission then that youre not going to get the full story hereyou simply cant. Its perhaps unusual to break a review in this manner but to get the full breadth of the Takarazukainspired thematics behind Revue Starlight I strongly recommend Swedish r Andrea Ritsus videos on the subjecthttps://www..com/watch?v=CZee8szQG8. Do be aware some of the episodes delve into rather heavy subject matter. The Women Merely Players So thats the cultural background but what about the actual plot? Revue takes what is always a pretty big risk for singlecour shows and is slow to reveal its hand. The first six episodes are primarily focused on single characters and explore the dynamics between them every member of the primary cast gets a focus episode though some split their episode with another the show is not shy about pairing characters up and for the most part the central question of just what exactly is going on with the underground stage is danced around or just flatout ignored in favor of getting us to care about the cast. These characters include in brief: 220https://i.ur.com/lDs1zCp.png Aijo Karen the aforementioned protagonist. Plucky childhood friends with Hikari who she made a promise to become a stage star with. Karen falls loosely within the storied idiot hero archetype though shes not nearly as dumb as youd at first think. Utterly obsessed with the inuniverse Starlight play. 220https://i.ur.com/yh5Z9Uq.png Kagura Hikari Karens childhood friend. Transfer student very mysterious and for the first half of the series the character elaborated upon the least. 220https://i.ur.com/golwSqK.png Tsuyuzaki Mahiru Karens roommate. A rural girl with a warm personality and an absolutely massive crush on Karen. 220https://i.ur.com/yaXPeiI.png Daiba Banana Nana A motherly sort of girl who oversees the production of the Starlight play. She has an interesting secret too. 220https://i.ur.com/YZSCYgS.png the class president a studious sort who envies her more naturallygifted classmates. 220https://i.ur.com/rM9Fd4y.png Hanayagi Kaoruko A haughty rich girl who has trouble doing much for herself. Dating Futaba. 220https://i.ur.com/UJO5Zyx.png Isurugi Futaba A rather butch motorcyclist who Kaoruko relies on heavily. Dating Kaoruko also. 220https://i.ur.com/JOK3kUS.png Saijou Claudine HalfJapanese HalfFrench ojou type perpetually frustrated at always playing second fiddle to Maya. 220https://i.ur.com/X3gx8He.png Tendo Maya The ace of the 99th class. The Top Startobe by all reasonable metrics. 220https://i.ur.com/yPA3oIt.png Finally there is The Giraffe the mysterious arbiter of the underground revues about whom rather little is known. The first half of the show explores these characters in detail as mentioned. Then at the series halfway point Episode 7 is very different and it is here that the show begins to take a different turn. Unreachable Dazzling It does begin as a character episode as well focusing on Daiba Banana Nana a member of the cast who in what turns out to very much not be an accident has largely played a supporting role up to this point. Banana is for the casts first year at the academy the stage director. As such her primary job isnt to act herself but to set the play up. She is the character easily most distanced from the fight for the top star at the beginning of the series which makes her turn here all the more surprising. After the first part of the episodewhich finds the class performing their version of Starlight much to her delight and graduating from their first year at the academyBanana ends up at the underground stage where she is confronted by the Giraffe and talked into auditioning. 880https://i.ur.com/QS2hvKo.png Its also worth noting that this is easily the most heartless and sinister the underground revue looks up until this point. She winseasily in facteven trouncing Maya who until now has been framed as untouchably above everyone else in the auditions. As the top star of the auditions we learn that she is effectively though the series doesnt put it in these words entitled to a wish and it is the wish she makes that effectively turns the series on its head. Its the kind of shock moment that lent infamy to Madokas head chomp. Bananas only wish is for her class to perform the play at the end of last year again. Her wish is granted and she is sent back in time. Its almost too classic but the execution is too good to not give it the credit it deserves. Banana has spent the entire series being built up as a rather passive supporting character to learn that that was deliberate on her part is a wrench to the gut. Moreover we find out that the loop weve been watching is not the first and the final moments of the episode allude to the idea of Hikari as some kind of disrupting agent a girl Banana doesnt actually recognize from how many dozens of times shes locked herself in this circuit. Its really hard to pull off this kind of complete 180 reframing of a character to take Banana from being one of the shows most likable characters to the closest thing among the class to an actual villain no matter that this doesnt last thats honestly just not the point isnt just gutsy its risky the kind of twist that poorly pulledoff could completely tank the show. Here that it works so well is a testament to the strength of Revues writing. 880https://i.ur.com/mNINo7u.png But above all that it ties the shows thematics together nicely. The central strugglefor all of the girls at the academyis to be the top star but Revue seems to push us toward this idea being inherently flawed. The Giraffe speaks of an ultimate blindingly brilliant stage that defies all expectation and transcends into sublimeness. This is a struggle that ultimately pours out of Revue itself and indeed the entire medium altogether. All of that though is just part of Revues general critique of the Takarazuka system and competition in art in general. Something weve not mentioned thus far is that Revue treats stage glowradiance or glimmer as its variously rendered in subtitles star power as its probably more commonly knownas a literal supernatural force. So a central question is raised then if the Top Star system isnt valid what is? This struggle defines both Nanas character arc and later Hikaris. The ninth episode gives us something of an answer for Bananas character arc is resolved there. If theres no point in freezing a perfect peak in time forever then Revue postulates maybe there is one in the simple act of change. This isnt a new idea in animethe power of friendship is kind of a cliche in factbut the specific execution here and the heavy ties to the theme of the rest of the series make it stand out nonetheless. Revue Starlight The rest of the series follows suit on that same note. The 8th episode gives us Hikaris backstory. We learn that in her old school in London there was another underground revue which she lost causing her to lose her glimmer again the series treating star power as a literal force and contains some amazing visuals including a fight with Banana but its really the 10th and 11th that start to drive the series home. The 10th episode has a masterfully done twoontwo duel between the pairs of Karen and Hikari and Maya and Claudine and ends with an apparent betrayal as Karen and Hikari are forced to briefly fight each other and Hikari cuts off Karens button in a single strike. Things arent as they seem of course. The 11th episode sees Hikari finally breaking the system by refusing the Giraffes offer of a stage of destiny. Unfortunately what this seems to do is imprison her in the underground revue as we learn at the episodes end. As a side note after the credits were treated to the surreal image of Hikari naked and trembling in a pink desert with the Tokyo Tower toppled behind her. 880https://i.ur.com/4FgEfwt.png The final episode is hard to even talk about with objectivelyminded critical language. It is a poem it is a play it is a song it a story. Cursed Hikari constructs candy stars of pink sand stacking them to the sky they are toppled by the two bloodred prop stars that hang from the Underground Revues ceiling. She repeats chanting lines from Starlight itself over and over to see a character so strong rendered so weak by this Sisyphean task is heartrending. Then again like she did in the first episode Karen leaps in to save her. First failing then again and then. The Tokyo Tower itself rendered in miniature crashes through the stage an endless cycle broken the tragedy of Starlight straightened out fixed snapped by the sheer will and love of the redheaded stage girl. The Greek Chorus Giraffe screams in awe maybe you scream in awe. I told you it was hard to talk about. If Revue Starlight is not maybe the best anime of 2018 it is the one with the best finale. The ending drives a stake through the heart of cheap melodrama. No stage girl no girl no girl who loves another girl dies at the end of Revue Starlight. The Giraffe is shocked as minutes before this he actually breaks the fourth wall perhaps we can call this a stage whisper? to point out that we like him are the audience and all this reverie and tragedy is for our benefit. Leaving the show on that note wouldve been a very easy thing to do. Lesser series have done it and been praised for doing so. Here Karen destroys the very possibility demolishing the stage Hikari is trapped on with the Tokyo Tower and lying to bed the idea that a story built around something like this has to end in tragedy. The very very end promises a new beginning directly from the characters mouths. Sure enough to bring us back to reality there are many plans for Revue Starlight. It was conceived as a multimedia franchise after all a mobile phone game is on the way multiple manga are currently running more iterations of the live action show are in the works. Here is the secret though. Even if none of that was so. Revue Starlight forces you by the simple sheer brilliance it shines with that this is the new story now forever. The game has changed there is before Starlight and there is after Starlight. Tragedy for the sake of tragedy is dead. Is that actually true? Time will tell but for a few moments at the end of the series as the curtain literally drew closed on the 12episode odyssey I believed it. Those moments in of themselves are a testament to the fact that anime as a medium still has endless potential to awe dazzle and thrill. Does the show have flaws? Certainly nothing is perfectthere are some dips in animation quality in nonaction scenes some reused cuts its been poured over many times by the time this review will go up that the French in the series is pretty terrible and so on but these are not major issues. Certainly series that are not nearly this ambitious have been given a pass for much less. Let the stage bring you some joy its good for you. At the end of the day. We just like the Giraffe are the audience. The girls of Revue Starlight perform for us and we should all be so lucky to have a frontrow seat.