Stars Align

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The Fun Before The Fall

This definitely feels like a penultimate episode rather than a final one. While the tournament comes to a spectacular close for the Maki/Toma duo the final minutes of this episode will crush any feel-good and warm or fuzzy sense you may have been left with. As the series as a whole has been, this final episode uses whip-lash changes in tone to really drive its emotional notes in like a dagger to the heart and then twists. It works despite the contrived nature, but it isn’t the best way for a final episode to go out when there’s no certainty of a continuation.

As has been the trend throughout the whole series as well, the opponents in the game remain a fairly weak link. Like pretty much every other pair the boys have faced off against, these two start strong, get a little bit thrown by unconventional tactics (or in some cases just tactics) and their game disintegrates. The only difference in this case is these two have sufficient experience and ability to pull out of the funk and return to their style of game before the end. However it isn’t even vaguely good characterisation and with every opponent feeling identical but in a different uniform it takes a lot of the fun out of the games, which if this anime was relying on the sport aspect to be the draw would be a killer.

Fortunately the team we’ve been following all along are quite decent characters despite the limited development time given the number of them and the short episode count. While they’ve certainly taken some short cuts in fleshing these characters out by this final episode we have a pretty good understanding of what is making each of them tick and we’ve seen them work together to overcome a lot.

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But then the match ends and for three of our characters we see their home life dramas continue and escalate before the episode comes to a dramatic and unfulfilling close. Of course it is another cheap ploy to make us want a sequel and it works. Even knowing exactly what they were doing I still felt a real desire for the sequel to get green lit and for these characters to return.

While there’s a myriad of issues in the presentation of Stars Align, this is an anime that I feel was worth watching this season. Certainly aspects could have been more nuanced but really the moments of gold within it were definitely worth watching for. I’ll get to a full series review soon but for now I’m just happy that I picked this one up at the start of the season.

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Karandi James

Reviewing all the drama in Stars Align.

Images from: Hoshiai no Sora. Dir. K Akane. 8Bit. 2019.

Will They Be Disbanded?

It seems appropriate and yet a bit jarring that they remind us now that the student council are trying to disband the club. While that was certainly a catalyst for action it kind of slipped out of sight behind all the other problems the boys have and so the blatant visit by the student council to the boy’s training right before the tournament makes perfect narrative sense but also seems to come out of nowhere as the student council had all but been forgotten and if it wasn’t for their dancing efforts in the ED each week I might have even forgotten who the student council president was.

The boys are already one pair down with the broken arm situation, which seems to be dealt with way too neatly given how he got said broken arm, but before we get to the tournament there are plenty of other examples of terrible parenting and emotionally draining home lives for the boys to deal with. As always, each moment would be fine and actually pretty interesting except that this anime is constantly trying to one up each scene and emotionally testing moment with the next one and the end result is largely that I’m starting to feel indifferent even to moments that really should have an impact.

However, all that aside, the boys are finally at the tournament where they just need to win one match. Stars Align once again takes the interesting approach of rapidly moving through the games and while those who watch sport anime for the sports might be displeased with the still images and rapid way we get from the beginning to the end of a game, for me they give us enough tennis to show us the improvements the boys have made and their current style without actually making me feel like someone made me watch a tennis match and I kind of appreciate the approach.

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The opponents remain undeveloped and largely uninteresting with one or two getting introduced by name and playing style before we fly through the match and everyone moves on which really doesn’t help get invested in the games. However, watching the boys play and seeing their genuine effort and will power here and seeing how far they’ve come from the team who didn’t care at all just ten episodes ago was actually pretty satisfying. The outcomes are all pretty inevitable so there’s not a lot of surprise in the conclusions, but the journey to get there has been entertaining enough.

By and large, the biggest obstacle now is that there is only one episode left. Even if the tournament is wrapped up and maybe one or two other plot points, there’s just no chance of this story resolving everything it has dumped onto the table. I definitely feel this anime needed a second cour with just the sheer amount of content it has tried to tackle and then maybe it could have slowed things down and really addressed some of the ideas it wanted to explore. Still, I guess I’ll see what the final episode of the season brings us.

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Karandi James

Reviewing all the drama in Stars Align.

Images from: Hoshiai no Sora. Dir. K Akane. 8Bit. 2019.

Abuse, Gender Identity, Overprotective Parents, Step-Parents, Missing Siblings, Pursuing Dreams, oh, and Tennis

It is a shame that Stars Align isn’t good enough to actually solidly recommend to people. It has a lot to say on a lot of issues and each one, by itself, is actually dealt with in a respectful, is slightly heavy-handed, manner. Episode 8’s conversation between two boys about one of them having issues with his gender identity while they got ready to dress up as girls to spy on the competition was very nicely done and a scene that could inherently be taken as a joke and played for laughs, or miss the mark of how confusing it can be for someone undecided about their gender, actually came together nicely.

The problem comes from the fact that this scenes comes on the back of seeing another child being micro-managed and manipulated by his mother to the point where it is most definitely emotional abuse and is followed up with a scene of another character wanting to pursue their passion for art despite a disagreeing parent. All of this careens into episode 9 where we have a boy clearly not accepted by his step-mum, a missing younger sister, a lie from a member of the club and another abusive parent who after striking his kid actually causes him to fall down the stairs and break his arm.

Not one of the above scenes is badly done. Each one feels like someone really wanted to highlight an issue that someone in this age range might be facing. However, it is a lot and it is incredibly cluttered with no time for the weight of one emotional moment to settle before we’re seeing the next crisis. The overall problem then is that by episode 9, when you enter any of the kid’s houses you are literally just waiting to find out what shitty situation they are in that they can’t escape from. The end result is emotional fatigue and an unwillingness to really invest in the next situation because the last one still hasn’t been dealt with (or even had time to be digested), nor was the one before that and so on.

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The team are certainly in a dire position after these two episodes though. The players are coming unwound emotionally as all of them have their home situations more or less imploding around them and it isn’t just the student council willing their club to cease to exist at this point. There’s plenty bubbling away here and the interactions between the club members themselves remains a highlight but it just feels like they’ve seriously over-reached here.

I still think Stars Align has been an interesting viewing experience and it is one I’m glad I picked up. The back and forth between the sporting aspects and the emotional drama aspects have ensured that you haven’t had time to be bored even if the transitions haven’t been handled the best. Overall, this one could have been better but I’m still keen to see how it ends.

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Karandi James

Reviewing all the drama in Stars Align.

Images from: Hoshiai no Sora. Dir. K Akane. 8Bit. 2019.

Is Losing Fun?

The stars very nearly did align as Maki and Toma gave the obnoxious champion from the other school a run for his money. Fortunately they didn’t try to pretend that this make-shift team with one months experience could actually take the victory, but they certainly made the other team work for it. That might actually bite them later because I’m pretty sure they just made the other guy a stronger player.

However, where an episode like this, where half the run time is given to the end of the match, what is critical is that it is actually fun or meaningful to watch and not just a ball bouncing around a screen. Here is where the episode actually succeeded quite admirably. Maki’s observations and the way he and Toma acted on it to claw back points and hold the other team in check for as long as they did, as well as the frustration and then realisation from the other guys all played out pretty well. Good enough at the very least.

Where it gets a little less admirable is the follow up after the match. The boys have a barbecue and all things considered that’s actually pretty cool even if it is a glorified outdoor cooking sequence. And then the guy from the other school shows up because he’s walking his dog and they are suddenly all happy friends after one or two comments are exchanged.

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The guy trashed talked them before they even started and was given no personality other than being petty and nasty during all the lead up to his match and during his match was revealed to have a short fuse temper. Why are they suddenly all friends? The transition here was rocky at best and even if the near loss made him a little more cordial, the rapid alteration of his attitude toward the boys is ridiculous.

The odd thing though is that the lack of character logic doesn’t actually take away from what is in essence a fun enough episode to watch. I did however hear some alarm bells when they did the post credit sequence because it looks like the threat of the student council cutting their club due to a lack of victories isn’t enough petty drama to keep things moving. We now have another challenge thrown at the club and given the story is already struggling to balance the whole domestic violence side of its story with the tennis club side it seems adding more complications is exactly what this story doesn’t need.

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Karandi James

Reviewing all the drama in Stars Align.

Images from: Hoshiai no Sora. Dir. K Akane. 8Bit. 2019.

Let’s See What They’ve Got

I was not really looking forward to this episode given last week’s introduction of the champion school kind of didn’t do much to make me excited for it (dread it maybe). In fairness to my own opinion from episode 5, the competitor’s students were as awful as I expected in terms of characterisation. What I didn’t anticipate was how nice it would be seeing the team we’ve been following come together and even though they aren’t triumphing they are at least putting on a decent show.

There’s something about the way the various pairs bounce off of one another and it is a nice follow up from Maki reorganising the pairs to allow each of the players to maximise their potential. it feels like there’s some meaningful development for these boys rather than just trying hard. Also, while they are a team, there’s more focus on the pairs within the team rather than the team as a whole which makes it feel a bit different from a lot of other sports anime where everyone has to pull together.

The other aspect that was great about this episode was the pace. We moved through three and a half matches in the space of twenty minutes but it never felt rushed. We got a feel for the game and the players as well as their strategy and weakness before getting the highlights of the match and then the next one started. No one overstayed their welcome and it didn’t feel like someone was asking me to actually sit through a whole tennis tournament which is something I dislike about a lot of sports anime when they linger too long on a single game.

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However, it isn’t perfect and the lack of reasonable personalities from the opposition really does hurt. Every single player is cocky and rude to the other school rather than supportive. It would have been nice if they’d slowed down and only shown us two and a half matches and actually spent some time making these opponents more than just obstacles to learn from. That could have really elevated this episode from good to great.

Be that as it may, the other thing that was a bit different this week is we put the domestic situations for all the characters on hold. This episode focused entirely in on soft-tennis and did a pretty good job of it. It will be interesting to see the conclusion to the match they are currently playing and what happens next, next week.

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Karandi James

Reviewing all the drama in Stars Align.

Images from: Hoshiai no Sora. Dir. K Akane. 8Bit. 2019.

So Much Baggage

The first half of episode 5 of Stars Align was very nicely done. While it was playing Maki’s home-life tragedy a little thickly, the subject matter kind of warrants it and it didn’t feel like they were pandering but more trying to really create empathy for his character and what he was going through. The scene with Maki and Shinjo in the classroom gave us plenty of distant shots making the two seem very small and the slow way Maki spoke about what was happening using disconnected sentences really just worked.

Even the sequence where Maki’s father is getting closer to the apartment with its many fades to black disconnecting each action was pretty affective. Up to this point the episode was actually doing a really solid job with its tone as it wasn’t so over the top and in your face that it was eye-roll worthy and yet they weren’t letting you ignore what they were talking about.

However, it all kind of goes downhill once they confront the father as Shinjo’s un-thought out and fairly childish plans and declarations kind of break the tension of the moment. It is actually believable given his personality up to this point but it was still like seeing the glass shatter after it had been falling in slow motion. Where the first part of this episode was one where you held your breath and waited, now it was all kind of done and mentally as a viewer you just kind of moved on.

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Which would be fine if what we moved on to could hold a candle to those opening scenes but at the mid-point we get some of the homelife of the student council president and honestly I just didn’t care. She’s such a non-character and her desire to wipe out a club feels so shallow and nothing in this sequence made me want to take her any more seriously. Nor did the vice-president of the tennis-club’s woes when he had his freak out as we began closing in on the practice match. While I appreciate that all of these characters have stuff going on in their lives, if they are taking such a tokenistic approach, I’d rather they just didn’t tell us the details and let us focus in on the couple of characters that they are actually exploring properly.

But the worst of the episode came after the credits where they meet the school for the practice match. Honestly, there’s enough tension already in this set up. The boys are only just getting motivated and gaining some confidence and they are very likely about to get wiped out. There’s no reason to introduce a rival character, or any character really. The other school literally doesn’t matter in this instance other than that they are champions and better. However, here we have a character delivering a line so toxically bad it shot any of those feelings the first half of the episode had made me feel right in the leg and to be honest actually made me question whether I cared what happened next episode at all.

At this point I still think Stars Align has something to offer as a sports anime and character piece. I just don’t know that it is going to end up doing it well enough for anyone to remember it after it finishes airing.

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Karandi James

Reviewing all the drama in Stars Align.

Images from: Hoshiai no Sora. Dir. K Akane. 8Bit. 2019.

Does Effort Matter?

There’s some interesting messaging coming across this week in Stars Align. Whether it is the student council disparaging the last ditch efforts of the boys to not be disbanded summing them up as useless people or the adviser who gave up on winning as a goal, it all seems counter-intuitive to a sports anime. Weirder still when Maki changes the pairings and each pair gets better seemingly making the statement that they could have put all the effort in the world in before but they still weren’t going to win.

However, it is a nice change up from characters who are all effort and determination but no tactics or plan. The boys would never have noticed the difference changing partners made if they hadn’t been putting in some effort recently and so the combination of their effort and some strategic revisions gave them a boost which in turn inspired more effort and more improvement. Of course, how sustainable this current enthusiasm is could be called into question as their adviser, also inspired by their actions, organised a practice match against another school that is almost sure to throttle them.

We could also discuss Maki’s underhandedness in proving his point about the pairs when he didn’t go all out against the new groups allowing them to all narrowly win. Though that seemed like a fairly standard move from his character at this point as he seems to be the ‘whatever it takes’ kind of person and took the appropriate course of action.

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In contrast to all the tennis playing, team building, confidence boosting moments under clear blue skies, we have Maki’s home life. While his connections with the friends at school continue to grow and we see a mid-episode happy moment where the friends have joined Maki for dinner again and his mum arrives and everything is all smiles, the post credits scene brings the darkness lurking behind Maki and his mother’s current life back into focus.

While I’m enjoying the tennis side of this story enough, I think I’d really like to see the story of Maki’s home-life get some kind of resolution by the end of this season. Screen time on that side of the story is limited, but that’s all it needs to be. The sudden intrusions of Maki’s father (I guess) are short but violent and leave a huge impact. The fact that most of the scenes come at the ends of episodes means it is what the audience is left with as they walk away from the episode. So yeah, it would be nice to see the story progress and reach some kind of resolution throughout the season.

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Karandi James

Reviewing all the drama in Stars Align.

Images from: Hoshiai no Sora. Dir. K Akane. 8Bit. 2019.

No Quitting

This week Stars Align demonstrates solid handling of its characters and narrative as it continues to develop its cast, touches on sensitive issues of domestic violence (with one uncomfortable scene toward the end of the episode involving harm to an infant – visuals aren’t explicit but the thought hurts), and shows the underdog soft-tennis club continuing to teach its newest member and try to work out its new dynamic now that Maki is there. While there isn’t anything particularly new here the combination of elements and the smooth transitions between club antics and more serious drama are actually working really well and Hoshiai no Sora is a real surprise from the new line-up of anime.

Beginning the episode, we see Toma making good on his promise to help with the shopping with Maki and soon we have a group of friends (sort of) sharing a meal in Maki’s home. It is a nice touch and a fantastic contrast given the previous encounter when Maki went home alone and was confronted with violence. It also showed us that while Maki was reluctant to join the team now that he’s a part of it he is keen to learn.

Which pays off when Toma and Maki play against the other pairs in the club. Unsurprisingly the other pairs can’t compete (in any other anime a newbie beating experienced players might raise an eye-brow but here it made perfect sense given what we’ve seen of the cast so far). However, having a ‘star’ join the team doesn’t bring everyone together in this instance.

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Maki really could learn to moderate his tone a bit or maybe hold his tongue. I actually appreciate blunt and honest characters and Maki isn’t wrong in what he says, however there was possibly a better way to say it. Still, Toma taking a break is the least of the club’s worries as we learn about Itsuki’s past dramas after two would-be bullies try to start something with him leading to the rest of the team letting Maki in on a fairly horrible instance from Itsuki’s past.

It’s a solid episode in terms of where the characters are going and the set up is pretty good at this point. There’s also enough variation in the personalities of the club to keep it interesting without each character being zany for the sake of it. About the only real downside is that the animation isn’t that great. Even when playing a match it doesn’t really step things up and while it works well enough, there’s certainly other sports anime out there that are more fluid and dynamic to watch if that is the selling point for you.

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Karandi James

Reviewing all the drama in Stars Align.

Images from: Hoshiai no Sora. Dir. K Akane. 8Bit. 2019.

No Excuses –
Just Get Good

Maki isn’t exactly taking advice on how to win friends or influence people; then again he isn’t really trying. He’s been recruited to play soft tennis and apparently he’s a bit of a perfectionist. One episode later, and two training sessions, and the whole team seem to have had a fire lit under them, though whether this continues or not remains to be seen. Still, Stars Align has delivered a solid second episode.

I didn’t think I’d be all that interested in the team dynamics or the tennis part of this anime with my interest really only being engaged by Maki and his home-life in episode one. However, despite the cliche catalyst of club getting shut down, the characters and their interactions are plenty compelling in this episode. While not all of them seem to care overly much whether the club stays or goes, for their own reasons they are all sticking around until the end and at the very least they learned not to challenge the new kid to run twenty laps of the school.

That said, it seems like every man and his dog has a comment to make about the team. For an unremarkable team that is likely to soon disappear, people are paying it way too much attention when you would think they’d have their own things to get on with. It’s kind of surreal how much interest people take in them when they actually train. But it is here that Maki’s personality comes out in full as he wonders aloud just how little the other members had managed to accomplish in a full year and then pretty much calls them on their excuse making. He isn’t going to be winning any prizes for congeniality but his bluntness is more or less exactly what the other boys needed.

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I do have to give a shout out to the ED from Stars Align. The song is alright, but watching the characters dance (among other things) is pretty hilarious largely because of how awkward they all look. It is one of those fun ED’s that just kind of give a bit more as we can see each of the character’s personalities perfectly reflected and it is just fun.

Basically this was a very solid episode with my only criticism going to the petty bullying going on around the school with some fairly un-creative insults (then again, bullies usually aren’t all that creative). Somehow though these scenes felt more tacked on then actually part of the episode and maybe they’ll do something more with this theme later (much like Maki’s home situation) or maybe this will just kind of sit in its strange little place in this episode. But that is a minor complaint from an episode that actually made me genuinely interested to see if these boys can get better.

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Karandi James

Reviewing all the drama in Stars Align.

Images from: Hoshiai no Sora. Dir. K Akane. 8Bit. 2019.