Shoujo☆Kageki Revue Starlight Episode 7 Discussion

TYxTxYT said:
Now that we know Nana is behind the loop, what did Hikari sacrifice to interrupt Nana's script?

Is Hikari even real?

Chocodog212 said:
1) The 99th class puts on their first revue, Starlight.
2) They have the reception
3) Most of the girls go home before the start of the new semester
4) The girls are now second years
5) Maya talks to (confronts) Nana, and then she talks with Karen Junna and Mahiru
6) Nana gets a call from the giraffe
Now this is where it gets confusing. Now ether the episodes play out and then Nana becomes top star, or she becomes top star right off the bat, and whoever is top star at the moment can pick a stage. I say this because she doesn't know who Hikari is , so all of these fights must occur before that.
7) Time loop back to event 1-6
8) This time Hikari challenges Nana at the auditions (or appears)
9) Flow of events from episode 1-6
Overall, this whole episode takes place before Hikari arrives, putting all of it at the beginning of the timeline.

TYxTxYT said:
Now that we know Nana is behind the loop, what did Hikari sacrifice to interrupt Nana's script?

Is Hikari even real?

Achaman said:
meh couldve skipped this ep and wouldnt have noticed..

cyber-brain said:
Do you guys understand Nana's motivation for repeating the 99th festival Starlight? In a time loop situation characters usually try to break out of it. And the story shows how those characters grow through retrying the same events.
However, in this story a character creates the time loop herself! And she doesn't seem to chage at all. And there's no clear reason for her to repeat the same performance again and again. She mentioned something about fear of growing up but it seem like a weak reason.

ProofByColor said:
Man I'm not sure where I was expecting this show to go, but this certainty wasn't it. That was honestly cool as shit. First off I was kinda confused as to where Hikari was at the start of the episode during the celebration and such. Then them showing dates for the first time in the series was giving me some Steins;Gate vibes. Who would have thought this would turn into a time loop plot line.

So if I understand this correctly. The first time Nana encountered Hikari was when she threw her dagger down at position zero, but at that point it was too late and the time leap was already set to go. I think this is the case as Nana didn't seem to recognize her, and was surprised when Hikari appeared in the next loop. I'm guessing the giraffe somehow altered reality so Hikari would transfer schools.

So then Nana and the viewers still haven't experienced a starlight performance with Hikari around. I'm guessing this will change starlight in a pretty significant way and either change Nana's mind about a time loop or forcefully stop her via a pretty epic fight. The question is will they take the rest of the series to do so.

Either way I was already pretty high on this show, and it only got way cooler.

Also the stage is literally alive and reacts to how much the girls shine so that's pretty cool and explains how some of the earlier fights happened.

Jacob194 said:

Also Hikari never performs starlight because she comes at 2nd year and the loop ends before that when Nana becomes Top star so they never did the 2nd year starlight..

ProofByColor said:


Ah you are correct. After this ep I was assuming that ep 1-6 took place in their first year, but after checking I see they were in class 2-A. So then I'm not sure if ep 1-6 is actually the first time Hikari has showed up. Especially with what you said about ep 4 with Hikari asking Karen about their starlight. But at the end of the ep Nana made an ominous statement about Hikari conforming to the time loop may imply it's the first time. Though it could also Imply that Hikari has been fighting to stop Nana but has repeatedly failed, and Nana is trying to make her give up.

cyber-brain said:
Do you guys understand Nana's motivation for repeating the 99th festival Starlight? In a time loop situation characters usually try to break out of it. And the story shows how those characters grow through retrying the same events.
However, in this story a character creates the time loop herself! And she doesn't seem to chage at all. And there's no clear reason for her to repeat the same performance again and again. She mentioned something about fear of growing up but it seem like a weak reason.

TYxTxYT said:
Now that we know Nana is behind the loop, what did Hikari sacrifice to interrupt Nana's script?

Is Hikari even real?

Jacob194 said:


Wait, what do you mean by that? did they ever hint at there being a loop in previous episodes?

cyber-brain said:
Do you guys understand Nana's motivation for repeating the 99th festival Starlight? In a time loop situation characters usually try to break out of it. And the story shows how those characters grow through retrying the same events.
However, in this story a character creates the time loop herself! And she doesn't seem to chage at all. And there's no clear reason for her to repeat the same performance again and again. She mentioned something about fear of growing up but it seem like a weak reason.

sXeblues said:
This whole ‘Groundhog Day’ time loop thing seems like such unnecessary nonsense, to me... And, I say that as a lifelong time travel genre fan!

Add to that, they took a character I really liked from the beginning, Nana, for her semi-maternal, pseudo den mother-esque wanting to help the other girls behind the scenes, in turn earning her the adorable ‘Banana-chan’ nickname, and effectively turned her into Satou from ‘Happy Sugar Life’, by the end.

This whole episode was just plain confusing, to me. And not in a ‘boy it’s so clever, I can’t quite follow it’ sort of way. But a, ‘let’s just dump a whole bunch of malarky in, and see if anyone can follow it’, way. Just unnecessary.

NeoAnkara said:
There are already some foreshadowing before though. Here is what I found on reddit.

https://twitter.com/359456/status/1032703428034588672

sXeblues said:
I’ve just spent a little time going over some of the reddit discussion about this particular episode — as well as going back over a couple of the previous episodes of the show — and y’know what? I still don’t get it.

No — it’s not what this episode lays down about Nana, and her choosing to keep this recycling of events, this ‘timeloop’, of her glory days in the top, number one spot, until Hikari debuts and throws a wrench in the works, that I don’t get. That’s all fine and well.

The thing that I don’t get is the way in which the folks on reddit — and here on MAL, as well — are all talking about this show, like it is actually THEY who just came back around from a timeloop, after having learned everything about the show, and are now talking about it in such heightened and excruciating detail, that it sounds more so akin to hindsight — and not so much as current, in the now, speculation.

They make all these references to the nods and hints slathered throughout the first six episodes, that all grandly lead up to this episode’s timeloop reveal; Which I, myself, must admit to not having experienced or similarly picked up on, at all. And which, having now gone back over some of those episodes, yes — it does seem that there were a few nods and hints as to Banana-chan’s having some greater hand in all of this. And, maybe it’s just that I’m a dolt — but none of this stuff stood out to me, and none of it would have, were it not for going back to look at it all now, after this episode’s revelation.

And all of these people are treating it like it’s the best, most cleverest thing ever, and pointing to all of these little hints and nods that they portend to have been following scrutinizingly close, from the word go. And, for my part, I just don’t get it. It HAS been a relatively decent show, thus far. But, to me, there are still a few series this season that rank much higher on my list. This episode, and the revelations contained within it, really do nothing to change that estimation.

Jacob194 said:
They did hint at Nana's time-loop multiple times in ep 1-6 but anybody would take that with a grain of salt as in no way anyone would've expected this, after all they were merely slight hints.

How Hikari interfered with the time-loop is prolly gonna be explained next episode since it'll be her episode.

sXeblues said:
I’ve just spent a little time going over some of the reddit discussion about this particular episode — as well as going back over a couple of the previous episodes of the show — and y’know what? I still don’t get it.

No — it’s not what this episode lays down about Nana, and her choosing to keep this recycling of events, this ‘timeloop’, of her glory days in the top, number one spot, until Hikari debuts and throws a wrench in the works, that I don’t get. That’s all fine and well.

The thing that I don’t get is the way in which the folks on reddit — and here on MAL, as well — are all talking about this show, like it is actually THEY who just came back around from a timeloop, after having learned everything about the show, and are now talking about it in such heightened and excruciating detail, that it sounds more so akin to hindsight — and not so much as current, in the now, speculation.

They make all these references to the nods and hints slathered throughout the first six episodes, that all grandly lead up to this episode’s timeloop reveal; Which I, myself, must admit to not having experienced or similarly picked up on, at all. And which, having now gone back over some of those episodes, yes — it does seem that there were a few nods and hints as to Banana-chan’s having some greater hand in all of this. And, maybe it’s just that I’m a dolt — but none of this stuff stood out to me, and none of it would have, were it not for going back to look at it all now, after this episode’s revelation.

And all of these people are treating it like it’s the best, most cleverest thing ever, and pointing to all of these little hints and nods that they portend to have been following scrutinizingly close, from the word go. And, for my part, I just don’t get it. It HAS been a relatively decent show, thus far. But, to me, there are still a few series this season that rank much higher on my list. This episode, and the revelations contained within it, really do nothing to change that estimation.

CHC said:
To me the show's strength is on its direction. It has a lot of details that indicates the directors are ceaselessly trying to maximise the effect of the visual and audio presentation. Like Revolutionary Girl Utena, it is one of those show where the way it presents its story is more important than the story presented. So I don't think it is like "time-travelling plot twist instantly makes the show a masterpiece". I take the timeloop thing as one of the ways the show dramatise the struggles of the girls in the world of performance art. The show isn't really about time-travelling, nor is it about apparently nonsensical stage fights. Although it clearly points to some of the problems of the highly competitive idol industry in real life, atheistically it is really just style and style all the way down. And that's why I love it.

I'm the kind of person who usually enjoy anime because of its visual rather than its story. Very often when an anime take its story too seriously it descend into babbling bullshit. It is better to have anime that's self-consciously about stylisation. (Compare Kill la Kill and Darling in the Franxx.) Not that I have anything against serious plot, it is just that in terms of story, perhaps only less than 5 TV anime shows out of >200 shows I have completed can really compete with the novels I have read, such as Tolstoy's and Dostoevsky's, or even with the films I have watched such as Bergman's or Kurosawa's. What is uniquely amazing about TV anime today is really its visual.

D1tchd1gger said:
Going back to episode 1 they're the 99th class, so the 99th performance of Starlight we see at the start is the same year, but not the same time frame as Hikari isn't there yet.

My question would be, why is Karen in the performance? I got the impression that she was a bit lazy and that the arrival of Hikari is what lit a fire under her and made her take it seriously and that would upset the status quo? Unless the breaking of the status quo is Karen reaching number one with Hikaris help?