Five Star Stories

Every now and again, I take it upon myself to look through my list of "Plan to Watch" titles to see if anything looks good enough to finally get around to watching. Many of the entries on that list are films, and among them I recently found Five Star Stories. I said, "What the hey? It's only 65 minutes long, I have access to the Blu-ray rendition of it, and it was a landmark project for Nobuteru Yuuki, a character designer and animator whose work I generally enjoy, so it's bound to at the very least look amazing. Let's give it a shot." While I ... was dead-on about the film's art and animation quality, those are about the only things this film has going for it aside from its merciful brevity.

The story has all the tried and true beats of a by-the-numbers origin arc for a by-the-numbers epic in the vain of works like "The Odyssey", but it is also EXTREMELY boring. It is itself an achievement that this film makes 65 minutes feel far, far longer. Nothing of even remote interest happens in this film: minimal suspense/tension and only very weak emotional investment and connection with the characters who themselves are so inactive, so passive with zero explanation for why. Five Star Stories is also rife with dramatic flashbacks, exposition dumps, and uninteresting dialogue that do nothing to make the plot, characters, or world more interesting, all at the expense of ACTION SCENES, NO LESS. For a MAL entry that has the "Action" tag, it's surprisingly dull. Even when the giant robots finally show themselves (and only in the last 6 minutes, mind you), the actual fight shown is totally boring and devoid of tension because the hero is blatantly overpowered against enemies that pose absolutely no threat. Of course, the robots' design and movements all look great, but it's what they are actually doing that is totally lame. I've thought up more interesting action set pieces playing with 1/144 scale Gunpla and Transformers toys when I was seven. Don't try and say that the staff didn't have enough people, time, or money, either; if they could make the other 60 minutes look as good as they do, then they had the time to give us a better action sequence. On the other hand, the ending frame is this pretty spectacular still with super hopeful, triumphant music playing now that the male and female "leads" are reunited ... only to tell us in narration, WHILE THE MUSIC AND IMAGE ARE UNCHANGED, that their reunion, the entire goal of this film, will spell doom for the entire universe. I'm sorry, but... what? If that was the end goal, then, both literally and figuratively, paint it differently. I get that the manga is still ongoing even to this day, but just... come on. There was no excuse for this ending, even back during the initial release. It explicitly tells the audience that they are wrong to feel happy (or at least totally indifferent because I had completely checked out by that point) at the film's resolution in spite of the fact that the director literally could not have done more to bring about the furthest thing from negative emotions. This isn't just absolutely asinine; it's downright insulting.

Amazingly enough, however, the ending of this film isn't even close to its most insulting aspect. This is where I point out the overt racism and misogyny. Basically every antagonistic character in this film has dark skin, except for the antagonists' leader who is, of course in stories like this, light-skinned, you know, to point out that he's the leader and clearly superior to them. Additionally, the heroes of the story are the absolute whitest people you could imagine. I'm not going to hold this against the film's staff, either; I blame the manga's creator, Mamoru Nagano, for the blatant offense on display here. I can also blame him for the Middle Ages-level gender politics shown in Five Star Stories. Men are the only characters with any sense of agency, which is itself a generous concession considering how passive everyone is. Women may as well be body pillows for all the personality and effect they have. The only things women are good for in this film are 1) being put up for auction and sold to pilots of giant robots, 2) co-piloting giant robots, 3) being sexually assaulted (the intention was there, even if it didn't happen), 4) getting hitched, and 5) being a body double for a very effeminate-looking man, who, in a callback to item 3, is himself at one point nearly assaulted by a drunken man (who gets off scot-free and without even an apology, obviously).

As I said in the introduction, the only redeeming quality to this film is its visuals. While I don't find the character designs particularly interesting, the sheer polish, line work, and consistent detail across numerous, and I mean numerous frames, for both character models and backgrounds, is nothing at which to scoff and both demands and absolutely deserves respect. The animation is incredibly fluid, and stills are only very rarely used, the most notable instance being the ending shot. As you can guess I am about to say, it just sucks balls that such high production value and attention to detail was squandered on a story this insulting. Again, the plot may be boring, but that alone would have only garnered a mediocre score. What makes this film BAD is how purely offensive it is.

I didn't find the music nor the voice acting very impressive. If you really want to experience this film, the best way would be to search it up on sakugabooru and look for the prettiest, most fluid clips. You won't have to look for long, I imagine. I think the best light in which I can paint this film is that it proved to be a nice tech-demo for some animators, and you may want to check out those cuts. Other than that, stay away from this film if you value 65 minutes of your time and don't care for racist and sexist views.

Happy Watching!
- LC

If you're into sci-fi/mecha-related anime from the 80s chances are you are aware of the existence of Five Star Stories and you're probably wondering whether to watch it or not.

This will be a fairly short review wherewith I will try to answer this question. For those of you who don't have time nor patience to read the full review, here's a short answer: no, just don't. For the rest of you, here's why you should avoid this anime and save 1 hour of your life that can be spent in so many better ways.

There isn't much to say, actually. The story is a complete ... mess: a weak and rushed plot that explains almost nothing (and the few things that are explained are confused and not well developed) is a bad thing on its own, but if you add no character development at all... well, you have a bad anime. And that's what it is: not horrible, not trash, it's just a bad anime that isn't worh to be watched.

Interesting mecha and ship design and decent animation aren't enough to save it from a 4 out of 10, and the character design is weird. This anime offers no enjoyment so don't even bother and just ignore it.

Came here from
[1988] Maria Kawamura - The Five Star Stories (CD Mini Single) - MartyMcflies v2 • 1.6K views • 87 likes
Found none of that soundtrack in the movie.

Stunning imagery, yet utterly lazy composition. Kinda sad such animation effort has been wasted on this generic kind of story about ~true love overcoming your superiors' will and even the mind control~ which, if you think about it, also would make no sense, had characters been driven by at least a smidgen of rational thinking.
This is even more stupid a loss if this was initially intended to just promote manga/game/whatever is was based ... on; i.e. if they knew from the start it's bound to become an unfinished stub.

A bit of every 80s cliche in here. It's as though they have been randomly picking the pieces of papers with overused cool tropes of the era from a hat, then glued it all together into one big hotchpotch in a fancy big-shouldered cauldron.
Because of the douchey introduction, very painful to watch if you pay attention to the story. For starters, the universe is introduced through several minutes long spoken summary. Not only that, the said summary is overly convoluted, cumbersome and confusing. I think I had to rewind every line 3 times or so to make sure I'm up to the lore. The Byzantine-Engrish names, titles, concepts, etc. All that is ultimately redundant for the purposes of that simple a story and only serves to somehow tie together all those cool things the animators wanted to show off, without caring much for a consistent storyline.

The entire fatima idea though... I have no words for how blissfully stupid it is. It has no rational seed in it whatsoever and, again, only serves to put together the motley crew of characters who would be seen acting utterly weird otherwise.