Starmyu

Yuuta Hoshitani enrolls in the prestigious Ayanagi Academy in hopes of finding the high school student who inspired him. The academy is well-known for producing exceptional musical talent, but students must first compete for acceptance into the Musical Department. At the top of the department is the Kao Council—a group of third-year students who possess a great deal of influence over the school and admission into the department. The fastest route to entering the department for Hoshitani is to find a way into a Star Team, which would allow him to be taught by a member of the Kao Council.

After catching the eyes of Itsuki Ootori, Hoshitani finds himself under the tutelage of the Kao Council's most eccentric member. Alongside him on Team Ootori is his roommate, Tooru Nayuki, fledgling Kabuki actor Kakeru Tengenji, the quiet Shuu Kuga, and Kaito Tsukigami, the younger brother of famous Ayanagi alumni Haruto.

As Hoshitani struggles with his lack of talent, his teammates must also overcome their shortcomings. Facing opposition from other talented Star Teams, including the other four members of the Kao Council, Team Ootori must carve their own path as they aim to perform in the Ayanagi Festival.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Adaptation:	Starmyu, Starmyu: Stardust's Dream
Sequel:	Starmyu OVA

Matsuoka, Yoshitsugu
Japanese

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Staff

Sugimoto, Mika

Producer

Maru, Ryouji

Producer

Tada, Shunsuke

Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Aketagawa, Jin

Sound Director

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Opening Theme

"DREAMER" by Gero

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Ending Theme

	1: "Seishun COUNTDOWN (星瞬COUNTDOWN)" by team Ootori (eps 1-4,6-11)
	2: "Quintet (五重奏～クインテット～)" by team Ootori (eps 5)
	3: "☆☆Eien ★STAGE☆☆ (☆☆永遠★STAGE☆☆)" by team Ootori (eps 12)

Reviews

Oct 3, 2023

RESOLVING_POWER

Recommended

I watched all three seasons of Starmyu (including OVAs), also known as High School Star Musical. Here are my thoughts:

In some ways, Starmyu is a fairly typical male-idol show; the cast is almost entirely young men. It consists of musical scenes, with singing and dancing, interspersed by varying degrees of forced drama. It literally feels like a live-action musical, and in this regard is a unique show. It has a very large cast – some of the characters are likeable, most are forgettable.

The show takes place in a prestigious artistic school which focuses on theatrical acting and singing/dancing. If you want to self-insert into that ... kind of scenario, this anime is uniquely suited for that. Much of the plot revolves around the academic activities of the artistic students and related drama. There is a lot of emphasis on kouhai-senpai relationships during every season, as well as teamwork among the various students. Sometimes there is a mild shounen-ai vibe, but it's not that prominent and can be ignored if you're averse to that kind of thing.

To be honest, this has been a go-to 'drunk anime' for me. The combination of musical/dance scenes and forced nonsensical drama made it ideal for watching under the influence of alcohol. Frankly, the storyline is silly and the drama feels quite artificial. You should completely shut your brain off if you want to enjoy this anime. You're better off not even trying to follow the ridiculous storyline, which mostly consists of endless bitchy catfights among the drama-queen cast members.

Visually, this anime is nothing special. I will give credit to the fact that the character designs, although simplistic, are distinct and easy to discern among the very large cast. Some of the guys are pretty cute too. The dancing in the musical scenes is also quite captivating, which is great because each episode has at least one song-and-dance scene.

Musically, Starmyu is quite good. The songs are catchy and stick in your head. The VAs are distinctive and have decent singing ability. The background OST is good too and does an effective job of setting the mood for the incoherent bitchfight drama. I'm looking forward to exploring the musical content more in isolation; I might even buy some albums if I can't find high-fidelity downloads. The musical catalog is quite large as well, which is always a plus.

Among the three seasons, the third was the worst. Although they all lay on the forced drama heavily, Season 3 is by far the most egregious in this respect. The plot of Season 3 is filled to the brim with some of the most forced artificial drama I've ever seen, and the way they dragged it out for 12 episodes was exasperating. Season 3 made fight videos on Worldstar seem Shakespearean in comparison. Season 3 also brought nothing new to the table in terms of content, and didn't improve on anything already depicted in the prior two seasons.

My ratings are as follows:
Season 1: 7/10
Season 2: 7/10
Season 3: 5/10

The writing of Season 3 is truly dreadful and cranks up the forced drama to an unbearable level. Otherwise, I enjoyed this anime. Although the forced drama is excessive, the dancing scenes are captivating, and who can resist imagining oneself as an art-school student or faculty member? Moreover, this show delivers on its most important selling point: the musical content is consistently good.

If you like performance arts, you might enjoy this show – it's basically an animated musical. This anime will let you experience the theater-kid life.

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Jun 18, 2017

yellowheartren

Mixed Feelings

After watching all twelve episodes, I find Starmyu highly overrated at its current average score of 7.09. The story and the setting being clichés I wouldn't mind, after all what can one expect from high school slice of life? Even if it is flavoured and we have a music academy instead of a regular school this time - that's really where its specialty starts and ends.

From the very start I've had the feeling that the anime suffers from a bit of an identity crisis: the main cast is supposed to be a bunch of musical students, but pretty much all we ever see them do ... is practice dance moves and sing. Last I checked, musicals are not operas, they include acting as well, something there's about one and a half attempts at bringing into the show. It's more of idols in training, and that in itself wouldn't be bad if it wasn't for the constant verbal reminders that they in fact want to be "musical stars". The singing itself, however, is a problem, as I don't think I can recall one single song that was entirely cringe-free in 12 episodes. Which is saying a lot as there is at least one "performance" in every episode: again, in the genre, one can't really expect much from the lyrics, but here the prompts (if there is one) and the "performances" themselves are both just cringe-worthy. And somehow out of place, weird, random: from all we see it's like it's in their heads, as opposed to within the scene with the other character(s) there with them; just diving into memories or musings, magically changed into some costume, in an imaginary world (much like an opening or ending) - but then the song ends and the interactions with whoever's there in the scene seem to prove that yes, that singing really did happen. On that note let's not forget that one song does not make a musical, either: practical limitations obviously prevent anything more full-fledged, but it's unfortunate that I can't recall even a single remark or hint or anything else about this "tiny" detail (save for the words "musical" and "actor" being constantly thrown around, which rather annoys than helps, all things considered).

But who even are "they", the main cast? As far as I'm concerned, it's five rather common boys, with the protagonist being the most unremarkable one of them all. They each have about one trope characteristic, and one "fatal" flaw that immediately nullifies their chance to get on a Star Team and that is all - the four of them also magically form a bond with the "leader" after just one personal incident. I don't think I could even call them bishounen: on one hand there really isn't a "control group" they could stand out from; on the other, I don't find them particularly pretty either. Not entirely unlikeable, but there's very little to like them for. And their superiors, the esteemed Kaou-kai? Two of them get quite the focus, while the other three barely get enough screen time for us to even remember their names.

Once more, all these wouldn't make such a bad overall impression, if only...
If only there was something to the story at least. One little twist, one moment of actual clarity and realisation, one instance of real comedy. Anything.
If only at least some of the characters were actually pretty or had a hint of depth to them. An actual overdone trait, a bit of actual drama that's not obvious at first glance, some confusion, some real issue. Anything. As it is, I found it hard to connect to them, and I'm not sure they really connected with each other.
If only at least the animation was farther away from average and a little closer to great, at least in the crucial performance scenes. Sadly, even those are quite often downright shoddy, with annoyingly choppy dance moves that really shouldn't exist here.
If only at least the songs were memorable: catchy tunes, great melody, nice rhythm, creative lyrics. Instead they're just forgettable.
If only the story did something, anything at all, but here it feels like the dots are either too random, too far from each other, or just simply don't get connected for whatever reason.
If only the fanservice, heck even the queerbaiting was done on a level that goes above the safety threshold. It's not that that one can only see and feel it being used as a tool - for the most part, it's even below that. A boys-only private school begs for certain obligatory elements, most of which are outright missing and the ones that are present, are mostly just present as hints, rather than anything full-blown.

I'm not sure what the creators wanted to achieve with this series, to be honest. Series like this, they usually either have great art/animation, or ample amount of fanservice, or some kind and amount of substance - none of those is present in Starmyu. Sure, there is such a thing as playing it safe, but what we get here is too safe. It's so safe it's just not enjoyable at all, as it fails to take full advantage of even the most overused tropes - tropes that are overused because they can still work if the dosage is right; here it isn't. And at the same time it also fails to deliver where it really should: music and songs. Some of the instrumental score in certain scenes was actually nice, but that's hardly gonna save an anime focused on musical students. You can watch it if you're absolutely deprived of BOYS in anime, I suppose, just don't expect anything of it. Then again, not being able to find an abundance of boys in anime is a pretty difficult spot to get to, isn't it?

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Aug 23, 2017

ohkeiji

Not Recommended

the only enjoyable thing about this show was making fun of it. my friend and i literally came up with a new backstory for the main character because he was so painfully boring and bland. he was like an unseasoned chicken breast-- he was that bad. he wasn't talented!! he sucked!! there was nothing about his character that i liked. he's probably the worst main character i've ever seen in an anime.
the four others in the main group were fine. they were really only defined by one or two things/traits, but they were better than the main character, who i hate with a fiery passion.
the ...

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Starmyu

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