When I first saw the description for Revue Starlight, I really did not have any thoughts about it. The whole idol-plus-light-yuri setup had already been run into the ground by who knows how many works. In an age when anyone and their horse can be an idol and idolization has become the prevailing trend, another multimedia project still trying to sell itself on idols and yuri did not, if you will pardon my saying so, inspire much confidence in me on that basis alone.
But after I finished Revue Starlight, I came away with an entirely new understanding of the work. Its soul lies in one revue after another—but what does the revue represent? In the early episodes, apart from Karen-bro vs. Junna, there was not much in the revues that especially caught my attention. I think the revues begin in earnest with Karen-bro vs. Lady Tsuyu.
Lady Tsuyu—Mahiru Tsuyuzaki—came to love theater under the influence of her grandmother and earned admission to Seisho Music Academy. But once she entered this new environment and found herself facing people who shone more brightly, such as Maya Tendō and Claudine Saijō, she stopped believing in her own radiance and made Karen-bro her sole emotional anchor. After Hikari appeared, Lady Tsuyu was affected more than anyone except Karen-bro herself. Her friendship with Karen-bro gradually turned into possessiveness, a wish to secure her place in Karen-bro’s heart. The Karen-bro vs. Lady Tsuyu revue takes “jealousy” as its theme: Lady Tsuyu is jealous of Hikari and wants, like Hikari, to remain in Karen-bro’s heart. But under Karen-bro’s invincible non-non sword technique, Lady Tsuyu realizes that her own radiance exists too, thereby achieving the “reproduction” of radiance. We can also see that before this revue, Lady Tsuyu treats Hikari as an enemy and Karen-bro with possessiveness. After it, her friendship with Karen-bro becomes normal again, and a friendship with Hikari emerges as well.
Among the 99th class, everyone other than Maya and Claudine has her own inner problem, and those problems gradually make their original radiance disappear. The revue, then, is the reproduction of radiance through which these once-radiant stage girls break free of their inner knots. Take the despair duo, Kaoruko and Futaba. My wife Kaoruko’s knot is her resentment and decline after going from a STAR to an ordinary person: from the heir of a prestigious school to someone initially excluded by Class B from the cast of the 100th Seisho Festival, until Futaba—whom Kaoruko had always regarded as her audience—becomes someone who shines even more brightly than she does, bringing her feelings to a breaking point. Futaba’s knot, meanwhile, is that she does not know what she herself wants. She has always thought of herself as Kaoruko’s foil and spectator. She came to Seisho Music Academy partly because she believed Kaoruko could not even manage to get to school on her own, and partly because she wanted to see Kaoruko at her most dazzling. But after meeting the rest of the 99th class, Futaba gradually begins to think that she too could become a STAR. That feeling conflicts with another feeling: her wish to exist simply as Kaoruko’s number-one spectator, there to see Kaoruko shine brightest of all. The conflict leaves Futaba unsure of what she truly wants. Through Kaoruko and Futaba’s revue of “promise,” Kaoruko understands that her own radiance exists for Futaba, and thus reproduces that radiance.
BANANA, by contrast, is imprisoned in the past. In the old days, her theater club never had enough members to put on a performance, so the 99th Seisho Festival was, for BANANA, arguably both her first stage and her most radiant one. BANANA’s knot is that no number of loops can reproduce that first performance of the 99th Seisho Festival. Just as no one can step into the same river twice, each of BANANA’s loops only deepens her fixation on recreating that 99th Seisho Festival Starlight once again.
For BANANA, even after the giraffe exploits human nature to lure her onto a stage of unpredictable fate, her goal remains another repetition. After BANANA vs. Hikari, BANANA begins to doubt her past self. Then comes BANANA vs. Karen-bro in the next episode. The non-non sword technique is invincible: BANANA finally understands that stage girls are constantly evolving. The stage of unpredictable fate makes Karen-bro, who had been slacking off all this time, begin to shine, and that radiance in turn drives the reproduction of BANANA’s own radiance onstage. BANANA stops clinging to the past and begins looking toward the future.
Claudine and Maya are a pair who already shine; for them, the revue is a process of growth. Maya goes from “I can be a STAR all by myself” to, after losing to the combination of Karen-bro and Hikari, telling Claudine, “With you by my side, I know I can fly even higher.” Claudine, meanwhile, becomes still more certain of her own feelings.
Finally, Karen-bro and Hikari. Karen-bro is the only stage girl who gets a transformation sequence. In that sequence, what she throws into the furnace is her hairpin, and we all know that the hairpin represents Karen-bro’s radiance (her true body). Karen-bro’s and Hikari’s hairpins, as the concretization of their promise, can be seen as the radiance of the two of them. Karen-bro throwing her own radiance into the furnace shows that the revue is, in essence, a comparison of the stage girls‘ radiance. Karen-bro’s wish and Hikari’s are the same: the two of them want to perform STARLIGHT together. Separated from Hikari, Karen-bro loses her radiance; the same is true of Hikari. So in the finale, what we see is Karen-bro—who once shone together with Hikari—losing her radiance after losing Hikari, yet continuously pursuing the reproduction of Hikari’s radiance. The final revue shows that Karen-bro’s radiance is not generated independently: she can shine only when she is together with Hikari (we’re a two-in-one Kamen—no, stage girl). In the end, the radiance of the two shoots through the heavens, destroys the entire stage, and achieves, in the fullest sense, the reproduction of the stage and the reproduction of radiance.
Jun-Jun… The Junna line is actually one of the few weak points in Revue Starlight. For an ensemble drama, Junna appears too early and gets too little screen time; later on she practically enters Akarin mode. Her characterization is also little more than the standard class-representative type, and the runaway-girl setup is never put to good use. STAR is another major theme of Revue Starlight, and together with the name Junna Hoshimi it could have supported a long discussion. Unfortunately, the limited runtime leaves Junna’s line hastily wrapped up and far too flat compared with the other character arcs that follow.
In my view, the revue is the soul of Revue Starlight, and what it seeks to express is the reproduction of the stage girls‘ radiance. Through duels packed with passion and yuri passion, their previous radiance is transformed into the mantles on their bodies; through the form of combat, that radiance is reproduced. This is the revue.
Twisted Lady-Tsuyu Fan King Xiaoyi:
I partly disagree with the author’s view. The friendship between Mahiru Tsuyuzaki and Karen has never been normal, and it never will be. Every transformation begins with Hikari’s arrival. When Hikari arrives, for Lady Tsuyu, Karen—who occupies the position of the big Other—begins refusing to listen to Lady Tsuyu speak, making Lady Tsuyu’s recollection impossible. Lady Tsuyu is forced, and necessarily so, to act with intense “possessiveness” in order to express her message. The revue of jealousy makes this point even more clearly. Lady Tsuyu goes so long without scoring not because she cannot, but because she does not want to. Everything she wants is directed toward expressing her message to her big Other, Karen; it is Karen herself who produces Lady Tsuyu’s state of anxiety. The ending of that revue directly results in the castration of Lady Tsuyu’s desire. From this point on, far from refusing to give ground on her own desire or refusing to lose herself in Karen’s desire as the Other, she instead adds another object to the Other of desire: Hikari.
Sue:
As a 2.5D project, Revue Starlight ultimately lands its story steadily, matches it with some very good storyboarding and direction, and adds a dash of light yuri. That is enough to please a substantial share of otaku. The only ones who may be dissatisfied are some of the wild-theory “fake medicine” enthusiasts from the discussion boards: building on episode 7, they expected the plot to explode into a raging torrent, only to get “non non da” and a straight-down-the-middle story instead (so yes, fake medicine ruins lives, 2333333).
As a simple summary of an excellent new anime, perhaps the paragraph above would already be enough. But—as Adorno lamented, Revue Starlight, as a product of the culture industry, consolidates the ideology of late modernity. It caters to an already fixed definition of “Anime” and ultimately becomes yet another extension of discipline by the existing order: “radiance” is the diligence and “positivity” of workers so beloved by property owners; the obvious male gaze in “light yuri” hardly needs mentioning; core viewers complete operations of cultural and symbolic capital through discussions of “Ikuhara style,” “storyboarding,” and the like, while subtly constructing distinctions between groups; and finally, in the director’s eyes, viewers are nothing more than alienated “consumers” who can be satiated by following certain established formulas. In the eyes of aestheticians such as Jauss, for a work of art to satisfy its audience’s expectations is an irony for art—art ought instead to surpass the human horizon again and again, allowing the subject to surpass itself and unconceal the world.
Looking at Revue Starlight from a different, more overreaching angle, the account above, as a general critique of the culture industry, may already be enough to satisfy some readers who love to think. But—the use of these theories merely repeats academic ravings at a low level. It remains nothing more than another means of using cultural symbols to construct distinctions among audiences. Theories that criticize late modernity have long since been incorporated by late modernity itself.
