By ⑨ Sefu
When I first read the description of Revue Starlight, honestly, I had no particular feelings about it. Countless shows had already done the idol-and-light-yuri setup to death. In an age when humans, horses—anything could be an idol, with the whole DSSQ bandwagon turning everything into idols, here was a multimedia project still selling itself on idols and yuri.1 Forgive my bluntness, but on that basis alone, I really wasn’t optimistic.
But by the time I finished Revue Starlight, I had come to see it in an entirely new light. Its soul lies in one revue after another—but what does revue represent? In the first few episodes, apart from the revue between Bro Karen (Karen Aijo) and Junna, there wasn’t much that particularly caught my attention. To my mind, revue in the true sense begins with Bro Karen versus Ms. Tsuyuzaki—Mahiru Tsuyuzaki.
Ms. Tsuyuzaki developed a love of musical theater under her grandmother’s influence and won a place at Seisho Music Academy. But in this new environment, faced with the likes of Maya Tendo and Claudine, who shone more brightly than she did, she stopped believing in her own radiance and made Bro Karen her sole emotional anchor. When Hikari appeared, no one but Bro Karen was affected more than Ms. Tsuyuzaki. Her friendship with Bro Karen gradually turned into possessiveness: she wanted to hold on to her place in Bro Karen’s heart. The theme of their revue, “Jealousy,” is precisely Ms. Tsuyuzaki’s jealousy of Hikari. She wants to remain in Bro Karen’s heart just as Hikari does. But faced with Bro Karen’s invincible non-non (“no, no”) sword style, Ms. Tsuyuzaki realizes that her own radiance does exist, and so achieves its “reproduction.” We can also see that before this revue, Ms. Tsuyuzaki is hostile toward Hikari and possessive toward Bro Karen. Afterward, her friendship with Bro Karen becomes normal, and she becomes friends with Hikari too.
Apart from Tendo and Claudine, each member of the 99th class has her own inner problems, and those problems gradually wear away the radiance she once had. Revue is the reproduction of radiance through which these once-shining stage girls free themselves of their inner knots. Take Kaoruko and Futaba, the despair duo. My waifu Kaoruko’s inner knot is her resentment and decline as she goes from STAR to ordinary person: the daughter of a distinguished family finds herself initially excluded by Class B from the cast of the 100th Seisho Festival. Her feelings finally erupt when Futaba, whom she has always regarded as her audience, becomes someone who shines more brightly than she does. Futaba’s inner knot, meanwhile, is that she doesn’t know what she wants. She has always thought of herself as Kaoruko’s supporting player, her audience. She applied to Seisho Music Academy because she thought Kaoruko couldn’t even get herself to school alone, and because she wanted to see Kaoruko at her very brightest. But after meeting the rest of the 99th class, Futaba gradually begins to think that she too could become a STAR. This feeling clashes with another: that she exists only as Kaoruko’s number-one audience member, there to watch her shine at her brightest. Futaba no longer knows what she really wants. Through their revue of “Promise,” Kaoruko understands that her radiance exists for Futaba, and thus brings about its reproduction.
BANANA (Nana Daiba), on the other hand, is imprisoned in the past. Her old drama club never had enough members to put on a show. For BANANA, the 99th Seisho Festival was, you could say, her first performance and the stage on which she shone most brightly. Her inner knot, we can see, is that no number of loops can recreate that first performance at the 99th Seisho Festival. Just as you cannot step twice into the same river, each loop actually deepens BANANA’s obsession with recreating STARLIGHT at the 99th Seisho Festival once more.
Even after the giraffe tricks BANANA by playing on human nature and she takes to the stage of unpredictable destiny, her aim is still to restage it all once more. After BANANA versus Hikari, she begins to doubt her past self. Then, in the next episode’s revue, BANANA versus Bro Karen, the non-non sword style proves invincible once again. BANANA finally understands that stage girls are constantly evolving. The stage of unpredictable destiny makes Bro Karen, who has been slacking off until now, begin to shine. Her radiance drives the reproduction of BANANA’s radiance onstage, so that BANANA no longer clings to the past but looks to the future.
Claudine and Tendo are already shining, but revue is a process of growth for them both. Tendo goes from “I’m a STAR even on my own” to telling Claudine, after losing to the team of Bro Karen and Hikari, “With you by my side, I can certainly fly higher.” Claudine, meanwhile, becomes still more certain of her feelings.
Finally, Bro Karen and Hikari. Bro Karen is the only stage girl with a transformation sequence. We can see that what she throws into the furnace during her transformation is her hairpin, and we all know that the hairpin represents her radiance (her true form). As tangible forms of their promise to each other, Bro Karen’s and Hikari’s hairpins can be regarded as the two girls‘ radiance. Bro Karen throwing her own radiance into the furnace shows that revue is, in essence, a comparison of the stage girls’ radiance. And her wish is the same as Hikari’s: for the two of them to STARLIGHT together. Without Hikari, Bro Karen loses her radiance; the same goes for Hikari without her. So in the finale, we see Bro Karen, who shone together with Hikari, lose her radiance when she loses Hikari. Yet as she keeps searching for Hikari, her radiance undergoes reproduction. The final revue shows that Bro Karen does not produce her radiance independently: only together with Hikari can she shine. (We’re two-in-one Kamen—no, stage girls!)2 In the end, their radiance breaks through the heavens and destroys the entire stage, achieving the reproduction of both the stage and radiance in the true sense.
Jun-Jun… Actually, Junna’s storyline is one of Revue Starlight‘s few flaws. For an ensemble show, she appears too early and gets too little screen time; later on she even starts going into Akarin mode.3 Her characterization is just the standard class-president type, and the fact that she is a girl who has left home isn’t put to good use either. STAR is another of Revue Starlight’s major themes, and there is a great deal one could write connecting it to the name Junna Hoshimi. Unfortunately, with only so much running time, her storyline is hastily wrapped up, far too bland next to the other characters‘ later arcs.
To my mind, revue, as the soul of Revue Starlight, sets out to portray the reproduction of the stage girls‘ radiance. In duels brimming with passion—yuri passion—they turn their previous radiance into the capes they wear, and achieve the reproduction of radiance through combat. That is revue.
Twisted Mahiru Stan Wang Xiaoyi:
I disagree with some of the author’s views. Tsuyuzaki and Karen’s friendship has never been normal, and never will be. Everything begins to change with Hikari’s arrival. For Ms. Tsuyuzaki, Hikari’s arrival means that Karen, who occupies the position of the big Other, begins refusing to listen to what Ms. Tsuyuzaki has to say, making recollection impossible for her. Ms. Tsuyuzaki is compelled, inevitably, to act with intense “possessiveness” to convey her message. The revue of jealousy expresses precisely this. Ms. Tsuyuzaki goes so long without scoring not because she cannot, but because she does not want to. All she wants is to communicate her message to Karen, her big Other. It is Karen, and Karen alone, who puts Ms. Tsuyuzaki in this state of anxiety. And the outcome of this revue directly causes the castration of Ms. Tsuyuzaki’s desire. From this point on, she has failed to hold her ground on her own desire; nor has she avoided becoming absorbed in the desire of Karen, this Other. Instead, she has added one more object to the Other of her desire: Hikari.4
Sue:
As a 2.5D project, Revue Starlight ultimately brings its story to a smooth landing, with fine storyboarding and direction and a sprinkling of light yuri.5 That is enough to please a sizable proportion of otaku. Perhaps the only people dissatisfied are some of Zhanba’s “fake-medicine” enthusiasts.6 They expected a torrent of developments after episode 7, but what they got was non-non da and tried-and-true storytelling. (So fake medicine is bad for you, hahahahaha.)
As a brief assessment of an excellent new anime, that paragraph might be enough. But—the process Adorno lamented is at work here: as a product of the culture industry, Revue Starlight reinforces the ideology of late modernity. It caters to an established definition of “Anime” and is, in the end, yet another extension of the discipline imposed by the existing order: “radiance” is the diligence and “positivity” that capitalists value in workers; the obvious male gaze in “light yuri” goes without saying; core viewers put cultural and symbolic capital to work through discussions of “Ikuhara-esque” style, “storyboarding,” and so on, subtly constructing distinctions among groups; finally, in the director’s eyes, viewers are nothing but alienated “consumers” who can be fed their fill with certain stock formulas. For aestheticians such as Hans Robert Jauss, it is a mockery of art for a work to satisfy its audience’s expectations: art ought continually to go beyond people’s horizons, enabling the subject to transcend itself and bring the world into unconcealment.
The account above looks at Revue Starlight from a different, more elevated vantage point. As a general critique of the culture industry, it may already satisfy some readers who enjoy thinking. But—these uses of theory do no more than repeat academic babble at a low level. They are still nothing more than a way of using cultural symbols to construct distinctions among viewers. Theories that criticize late modernity have long since been co-opted by late modernity.
