Houkago no Pleiades (TV) (Wish Upon the Pleiades)

The sky is the limit in Houkago no Pleiades. With telescope in hand, Subaru is set to go to the observation room of her school in order to get a view of that night's meteor shower. What she least expects is that behind the observatory door was not the starry skies, but a lavish garden, complete with a resplendent fountain and a mysterious young boy with long red hair.

But the garden soon disappeared, as if Subaru was only imagining things. All that remains of that brilliant sight is an odd, bouncing blob creature that leads her to another magical door, occupied by other girls in magical witch-like costumes. Revelations start hitting Subaru one after the other: one of the girls in the room is her childhood friend Aoi, the little blob is actually an alien of a species called the Pleiadians trying to return home, and Subaru has been selected by him to become the newest member of their group!

Now Subaru's dreams of the stars have come true in the wildest way, as she and her friends attempt to gather pieces of the Pleiadian spacecraft engine to return the being to his home. But they're not the only ones after the engine parts, and they have no idea why!

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Adaptation:	Houkago no Pleiades: Prism Palette
Alternative version:	Houkago no Pleiades
Other:	Stella-Rium

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Subaru

Main

Takamori, Natsumi
Japanese

Nanako

Main

Fujita, Saki
Japanese

Aoi

Main

Ohashi, Ayuru
Japanese

Itsuki

Main

Tateno, Kanako
Japanese

Hikaru

Main

Makino, Yui
Japanese

Minato

Supporting

Kuwashima, Houko
Japanese

Subaru's Father

Supporting

Katou, Masayuki
Japanese

Subaru's Mother

Supporting

Satou, Rina
Japanese

Rin

Supporting

Ozawa, Ari
Japanese

Elnath

Supporting

Horie, Yui
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Hara, Hirokazu

Producer

Yamazaki, Fumiki

Producer

Okada, Akihiko

Producer

Fukuda, Jun

Producer

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Opening Theme

"Stella-rium" by Kano (鹿乃) (eps 1-11)

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Ending Theme

"Koko kara, Kanata kara (ここから、かなたから)" by fragments (Natsumi Takamori, Ayuru Ohashi, Kanako Tateno, Yui Makino, Saki Fujita)

Reviews

Jun 28, 2015

McRib

Recommended

Fuji Heavy Industries is a well known Japanese conglomerate company in which they produce everything from planes down to their most notable product, automobiles. Their Subaru brand has created quirky vehicles for more than 60 years and has seen record breaking success in the last decade. Thanks to catchy advertising that caters to former yuppies with growing families and a portfolio of safe and reliable vehicles such as the Forester, Outback, and Impreza they have broken internal sales records for more than half a decade. With such success, experiments are soon to follow. Houkago no Pleiades is the perfect example of this. It was a ... magical girl show funded by Subaru and produced by the animation studio Gainax during the Spring 2015 anime season. There was a previous set of ONAs which aired online back in 2011 when this project first came to fruition as nothing more than an advertisement. Regardless, this was an unusual partnership considering the fact that Gainax has been largely irrelevant this decade and that Subaru funding a magical girl anime seems a bit out of place. However, the results are rather interesting considering the subject matter and the story that it portrays. What is the most striking thing about this show is that it was not a shameless advertisement like many would expect, it featured a cohesive story with likable characters and an overall goal and purpose. Something that is relatively rare in terms of directly sponsored anime.

In regards to the story, Houkago no Pleiades follows a rather typical magical girl theme with a rather unique backdrop. The plot revolves around a group of girls in an after school club who are trying to help an alien from the Pleiades star cluster go home. For those of you who are unaware, Subaru is the Japanese name for the Pleiades star cluster and is the logo for Subaru automobiles which obviously makes the alien's home a fitting choice. With this, the main cast travels through both space in time on their magical “drive shafts” which feature the typical throb and rumble of a boxer engine, the trademark engine type used by Subaru. The story itself makes you really question what is reality and brings in many hard science ideas such as theoretical physics, time travel, and multiple universes. If this story was not planned out years prior, one could argue that it was heavily influenced by Christopher Nolan's “Interstellar” which featured many of the same ideas. So “Bravo Gainax” for creating such an interesting story to back up your Subaru sponsored advertisement.

The art for Houkago no Pleiades is incredibly well done and thought out. There are incredible backdrops in the space scenes and the main and supporting cast has colorful and well designed outfits. The drive shafts which the characters fly on are also well designed since they feature grills from the previous generation Subaru vehicles that were sold back when the original designs were created back in 2010 – 2011. There are also some interesting cameos of new Subaru vehicles which pop up throughout the show which will entertain a car enthusiast who watches this show. The color palate is also well done and fits great with the theme of the show. For a magical girl show, everything should be vibrant which Gainax certainly delivers upon. The CG when used is also mostly okay, but CG itself has gotten significantly better over the years and it has become not as jarring when you see it mixed with 2D animation which Gainax does an acceptable job with. That being said, there are no glaring issues with the art overall.

As for the sound, it was unique to say the least. In terms of human characters, their voice acting was perfectly adequate. The voice actresses for the main cast are relatively unknown in the industry so it was refreshing in a sense to hear new voices while many of the supporting cast were easily recognizable veterans. Going into the cast itself, they were all well written and played their respective parts just fine. The show did go in a different direction than many fans may have wanted in the last episode, but they can put their goggles on for another show. Regardless, the characters were nothing truly outstanding and will most likely be largely forgotten as time goes on unlike some characters in magical girl anime. What did steal the show though were the sounds of the drive shafts which featured sounds from various Subaru engines. If you had a discerning ear you could pick out the rumble and burble of the unequal length headers of an EJ257 along with the smooth mechanical sounding FA20DIT. Both of which are engines that are used currently in the STI and WRX respectively. Once again, if you are an auto enthusiast you will certainly find it entertaining to hear the burble of a turbocharged flat four engine in your cute magical girl show.

When it comes down to my overall enjoyment, I must say that I am completely pleased with this show. It was one of the shows that I was looking forward to the most in 2015 due to the fact that I am a long time Subaru enthusiast and a flat brimmed hat and Ray Ban sunglasses wearing boy racer who drives a WRX. This show checked off all of the boxes for what entertains me, if you want to bring up pandering to a certain audience I would certainly be their ideal person. However, outside of car enthusiasts I really fail to see many of the aspects in this show really meaning much. If their goal was to paint the Subaru brand in a comfy and cozy light among otaku who watch late night anime, they certainly hit their mark. However, that may not be the best place to market things which leads us to the elephant in the room, the studio. This is most likely Gainax's swan song, it has been reported that they have not been working on any other new projects. For a studio that brought us such iconic anime like Neon Genesis Evangelion and Gurren Lagann it is depressing to see them go out like this. I hope that the relative success of Houkago no Pleiades may bring some life into their studio after they lost the majority of their talent to both studio Khara and TRIGGER. That being said , it is difficult to truly recommend this show to many people, mainly newer anime viewers. It goes between several different genres and brings up many ideas that are difficult to combine together. The story itself is cohesive, but it still feels quite odd considering the magical girl backdrop. It feels more like a hard sci-fi show that should be a bit more serious and feature characters other than a group of girls in an after-school club. In the end, it comes off as being an enjoyable, but still flawed show with some questionable choices with the story. If you are a fan magical girl shows, science fiction, and cars – this is the show for you, it will certainly not disappoint in that regard.

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Jan 11, 2016

Firechick12012

Mixed Feelings

When the four episode ONA of this came out in 2010, I thought it was cute and had potential to be a great TV series. The ONA itself wasn't bad, but it could have been better. My wish for a TV series was granted. Unfortunately...my expectations were too high, and the show is a mess, not just in its storytelling, but in the execution as well. Which is a darn shame, because there is potential for a genuinely good show in there. In a way, the show IS good. But there's just so many problems it has that hold it back from being truly great. ... I don't want to hate this, and I still don't. As much as there are things that I liked, I can't deny that it has major problems that seriously need to be addressed.

Four girls are recruited by a mysterious, jelly shaped alien to become magical girls and retrieve candy-shaped engine fragments so he can fix his crashed ship and return home. But the girls have to deal with their own problems as well, such as family problems, friendship issues, and their own conflicting desires. It doesn't help that there's a mysterious magical boy with red hair who wants the engine fragments for himself, for reasons he doesn't want the girls to know. But Subaru, the obligatory pink haired main character, becomes friends with a boy who happens to look and sound a lot like him, but she can only see him in some magic garden that only she has access to. Their fates are all intertwined, and the search for engine fragments turns out to be just one of their missions.

I wish I was lying, but I'm not. Usually in magical girl anime, the fairy mascot recruits girls from the same area or even the same school so they can become magical girls. Here? They don't explain it in layman's terms, as the president, the jelly-like alien, speaks entirely in squeaks and star-related technobabble that non-science and non-astronomy buffs absolutely cannot understand. I had to go to TVTropes just to get clarification on how he recruited them: as it turns out, the girls were all yanked from different timelines into the present day, all from different universes. One: how does that even BEGIN to make sense? How does the president have that kind of power? They never explain it! Two: Why not just do it the easy way by recruiting all the girls in the current timeline? Yanking them out from different timelines just makes everything far more complicated than it should, and it makes for utterly pointless drama (evident in episode seven with Aoi and Subaru).

While the anime does make a valiant effort to give the characters personalities and backstories, in the end they're all still rather one-dimensional. They're not bad, but they don't change throughout the series, even though change is a very important theme in the anime. Any backstories they do have are still relatively forced and melodramatic, they still don't develop, and Subaru and Aoi in particular got into some kind of fight before the events of the series and the way the show tries to explain it makes it come off as extremely cryptic. Not only that, neither of them even did anything to even warrant still being at odds at each other despite the show telling us that they have, and what problems they do have aren't even remotely substantial. It just comes off as being a non-problem at worst, and the show really could have been so much better had they either cut this out or improved upon it. Heck, I could try doing it better! The only characters worth caring about are Nanako and the main villain, both of their backstories being good and believable, even if it's a bit contrived in the latter's case. The main villain of the series is great and isn't out to take over the world, nor does he want to steal fragments just to be evil. Just watch the show and you'll see. Also...apparently in Hikaru's focus episode, the girls end up going to the moon, yet for SOME unexplained reason, they suddenly go on and on about nothing but food! Not only did that feel completely forced in and out of place, but it completely detracted from the show's intentions and the fact that it was Hikaru's focus episode, so to have the girls suddenly gush about food while they're in the middle of an important mission just makes me think the creators were trying too hard to make them into ditzy food loving girls for no reason.

To the show's credit, there are things it does right. The animation is very good, especially in regards to space and the stars, and although there were some CGI renditions of the girls in early episodes, Gainax realized how stupid they looked and chucked them near the end. The soundtrack is very good as well, with a decent combination of piano pieces and orchestral melodies that really fit the atmosphere of the show. The voice acting is relatively decent, even if Subaru, Hikaru, and the president can come off as shrill sometimes. Also...apparently this anime was made in order to promote Subaru cars. But you wouldn't know that by watching the show, because unlike other marketing properties such as Pokemon, Pretty Cure, etc. there aren't any Subaru cars in the show, nor does it let any form of marketing interfere with the story. In fact, the creators focus solely on the story and the characters rather than just making a show to sell cars, which is the best way to go when making a form of media to sell products. That way, the show doesn't come off as a cheap, 30-minute commercial to sell cars. An anime called One Off tried to do the same, but it was just terrible in its execution and everything else, so Pleiades fares better here. It also helps that unlike most magical girl shows, the transforming items are pretty unique, their weapons are great, the girls actually have to work together in order to collect the fragments, the villain isn't a cliche take-over-the-world kinda guy, there's no cheesy catchphrases, no ridiculous hair or anything like that, and it isn't so sugary sweet that it makes you want to vomit. It knows what it wants and even though it slacks off a bit at times, it doesn't lose sight of its goal.

While it's not a perfect show, and it does have flaws that hold it back from being truly good, it's still a nice little magical girl anime that deserves a viewing.

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Sep 6, 2015

BanjoTheBear

Not Recommended

(This has been adapted from my blog/reddit thread. Spoilers ahead!)

As a kid in elementary school, I remember a special event that only happened about once a year. Our class would line up, head down the halls, and into the gymnasium where the “star globe” would be set up in all its glory. The star globe was a big, inflatable, silver dome that, once filled with air, could be crawled into (it was rather big). My fellow classmates and I, upon going inside, could see only darkness. That is, until the rotating fixture in the middle was turned on. Then, we were able to see, much ...

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Houkago no Pleiades (TV)

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Itsuki

Hikaru

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Houkago no Pleiades (TV)

Alternative Titles

Information

Statistics

Available At

Resources

Streaming Platforms

Synopsis

Background

Visit MALxJapan MALxJapan -More than just anime-

Related Anime

Characters & Voice Actors

Staff

Opening Theme

Ending Theme

Reviews

Interest Stacks

Recommendations

Recent News

Recent Forum Discussion

MoreTop Anime

MoreTop Airing Anime

MoreMost Popular Characters

Visit MALxJapan
MALxJapan -More than just anime-