The white lily (shirayuri/白百合) is the third image to appear in Yuri Kuma Arashi. First the anime opens with what we learn later is a bear alarm — resembling a tornado or earthquake siren — next, an outside shot of Arashigaoka Academy, complete with a title. Kunihiko Ikuhara loves stagecraft and with less time to work with, Yuri Kuma Arashi‘s episodes are packed with images, often accompanied by specific titles, to set the stage.

Then a white lily appears.

White lilies frame Kureha Tsubaki’s introduction and title card, which reads “ユリ” underneath in katakana. From these opening scenes through to the latest Exclusion Ceremony in Episode 12, lilies are everywhere.

A visual shortcut for the genre of yuri, white lilies are iconic. They’re frequently used in anime to represent lesbian or girls-love relationships and stories. This has been traced back to Bungaku Itou’s Barazoku/薔薇族 magazine for gay men, which used the term yurizoku/百合族 to refer to women who read a letter column yurizoku no heya/百合族の部屋 for women. For both men and women, these floral terms have stuck with their respective genres in some fashion — bara (rose), manga or media about gay men, and yuri (lily), manga or media about gay women.

Interestingly enough, both have developed opposite figurative meanings over the years. Bara is usually a shortcut for more masculine-styled men (interesting aside, they’re often also related to bears or kuma/熊 within gay culture) and has a harder, more realistic context as a subsection of yaoi as a whole. Meanwhile yuri is an umbrella term for media about relationships between women*, but also frequently used as a shortcut for the Class S genre, which is generally softer in nature, less harsh, and less permanent.

Class S features female/female relationships that are bound to a specific time period of adolescence — often within the isolation of an all-girls school — before both young women “grow up” and graduate to pursue heterosexual relationships. These relationships are framed as a phase, not true homosexual tendencies. This Class S boundary is what Yuri Kuma Arashi aims to push past.

Due to the lily’s association with Class S relationships, which are in Yuri Kuma Arashi‘s sights from the moment the series opens, it’s an emblem for Arashigaoka Academy: an all-girls high school, the perfect Class S setting. Lilies appear in the red wallpaper of the school, on the wall behind the podium in their auditorium, and in the school’s crest.

The fleur-de-lis (lily flowers) crest appears as another symbol of Arashigaoka and also the Severance Court, where Lulu Yurigasaki and Ginko Yurishiro make their appeal week after week to have their yuri “approved” by the three male bears of the court. During their judgment, they are surrounded by falling white lilies. A fleur-de-lis crest carries a similar meaning to a white lily — representing purity and chastity, it grew to become a symbol of the Virgin Mary in Christian art, as well as a symbol for the French monarchy. Here, the lily flower and crest represent the boundaries of Class S relationships, which either require a specific setting (the school) or approval from men who have high social standing (the court) to occur.

However, lilies aren’t only symbols of the Class S establishment. They also frame Kureha in her first appearance with then-girlfriend Sumika Izumino and appear while Kureha affirms that her love is true. When Sumika returns as Lady Kumaria (“Maria” tying into the Virgin Mary association) she appears in a white lily dress. White lilies fall from the sky when Kureha realizes that her decision to ask for Ginko to become a human was selfish, and accompany Kureha’s requested transformation into a bear. Lily (百合) appears in the names of bears at the school who work within their given societal framework — Mitsuko Yurizono and Konomi Yurikawa — and also those who are at least making an attempt to move past it in Lulu Yurigasaki and Ginko Yurishiro.

Black lilies — which are symbols of death in a more ominous way than white lilies are used for funeral flowers in addition to representing deceit/lies — also appear in Yuri Kuma Arashi at three specific times when the purity of the white lily/yuri is threatened. The first is when Mitsuko manipulates Eriko Oniyama into selecting Kureha by the Invisible Storm. The second is when Arashigaoka teacher Yurika Hakonaka gives up her “bearness” to become a human in service of exacting further revenge against Kureha’s mother, Reia Tsubaki. And the third is when Mitsuko appears again as an embodiment of Ginko’s lust and jealousy. All are acts of purposeful deceit, especially the case of Yurika, who gives up who she is to pursue revenge against Reia’s daughter due to a misunderstanding.

Yet Yuri Kuma Arashi doesn’t focus on just the lily. Another flower motif peppers the landscape: Kureha Tsubaki’s red camellia. Tsubaki/椿 is Kureha’s family name, meaning camellia flower, and Kureha’s emblem is a red camellia. It appears everywhere around her — the outside of her house, decorating every surface in her room including the lighting fixtures, wallpaper, pillows, and carpets, even in her shower drain and at the bottom of her teacup. The red camellia is Kureha.

This is reinforced by Kureha’s appearance later on. As “the moon girl” in her mother’s book, she wears a large red camellia flower on her head. When she makes the decision to become a bear and be with Ginko, her final crowing touch in the transformation is a red camellia, once again on her head.

Red camellias can symbolize divinity or nobility, but are more commonly seen as flowers of deep love. Kureha’s love for Ginko has been true this entire time — even when her memories were lost — and her emblem of the red camellia flower is a constant reminder of this.

*This is referring to yuri in a Japanese media context. In the west, yuri was initially used as a term for girls-love hentai. It has since slowly evolved to become something more in line with the Japanese meaning.

The opening moments of Land of the Lustrous feature an isolated Cinnabar huddled on a rocky outcropping. After a moment, they begrudgingly say that it’s time for work. Cut to the daytime, where Cinnabar is nowhere to be seen, but a group of gems runs across a field before one of them, Morganite, stops and calls out for Phosphophyllite. Their leader, Master Kongou, is looking for Phos.

Whimsical music feeds into our natural curiosity about this world. After Phos and Morganite banter back and forth a bit, Morganite is off to fight the Lunarians with their team and Phos goes to Master Kongou. The entire sequence gives us brief, distilled splashes of each gem’s personality. Cinnabar is sequestered and lonely. Phos is capricious and immature. Morganite is confident and decisive. Jade, who Phos passes en route to Master Kongou, acts like an amused older sibling.

In Episode 12, this sequence is revisited — the same musical cues, the same sweeping camera pans, the same players take the stage. Phos’ transformation takes most of the spotlight. It’s easy to see how much has changed for Phos throughout the series. Land of the Lustrous diligently follows every step of Phos’ physical and emotional metamorphosis. Yet, the series isn’t only about Phos. Pulling the camera back a bit reveals all of the gems in Phos’ periphery, all transformed by events in the series.

Much is made of the gems’ inability to change. Dia laments the gems’ static nature as they watch Phos’s physical transformation and when events force their hand, it leads to a much-needed heart-to-heart between Dia and their partner, Bort. This conversation has been a long time coming — possibly a hundreds of years in the making, given the gems’ immortality — but it’s not until Phos begins to push the seemingly static boundaries of their gem body that the other gems start to react and respond accordingly. As expected of beings that cannot die, the gems naturally lack the weight or gravity that a human would have in most situations.

Morganite begins the series as one such gem. On patrol with their group, Morganite opens Land of the Lustrous by teasing Phos when their partner, Goshenite, interrupts with news of Lunarian sunspot activity in the south. Rather than going immediately to Master Kongou as expected, Morganite tells Goshe that they don’t need to alert their leader and that they can take on the Lunarians themselves. Morganite’s arrogance nearly leads to their demise before Master Kongou — alerted by Phos — steps in and stops them from being captured. When this scene replays again at the end of the series, Morganite again calls for Phos before they are interrupted by Goshe with news of Lunarians. What happens next occurs off-camera, but due to the fact that we don’t hear Morganite’s immediate response, it’s safe to say that Morganite likely learned and went to talk to Master Kongou like Goshe requests, or at least does things a bit differently this time around.

Like the opening scene of the first episode, the ending sequence of Land of the Lustrous‘ finale begins with Cinnabar. Once again we see a few shots of them in the cave where they have forced themselves into exile. One of the more tragic elements of Phos’ transformation is that they partially forgot their promise to Cinnabar and here, Phos finally arrives with promise of a new job, more driven by their genuine respect and admiration for Cinnabar than their former sense of empathy.

It’s an awkward conversation with Phos where Cinnabar does the emotional heavy lifting for the first time, revealing just how much Phos’ actions have affected them. Rather than forcing the issue — as Phos initially did while talking to Cinnabar in Episode 1 — Phos backs off, leaving Cinnabar’s raw emotions in their wake. In a stunted monologue, only half of which Cinnabar expresses aloud, Cinnabar shyly ends their discussion with, “If you just wanted to team up, well then—” instead of their usual caustic parting words to keep Phos at a distance. It’s subtle proof that Cinnabar is finally willing to meet Phos where they are, even if Cinnabar can’t actually put this into words.

Before the bookended camera pan through the fields with Morganite and Phos, Land of the Lustrous visits various gems to further set the scene. Life continues for the gems but a lot has changed across the series’ 12 episodes. Rutile organizes their shelves as usual, but spares a lingering glance to the sleeping Padparadscha. Dia pets one of the stuffed animals designed to look like the large Lunarian (Shiro), but looks out to see their former partner Bort and responds with a smile. Bort’s latest partner, Zircon, vows to rid themselves of their “spoiled old self.” Benitoite and Neptunite play rock, paper, scissors and Benitoite wins for what appears to be the first time. Jade reminds Euclase that it’s Master Kongou’s “meditation time,” only to have him walk past the two, surprising them both.

In the background throughout all of this is Phos. The first episode’s Phos is spoiled and stubborn. They check their reflection in the pond to make sure that they look cute. For emphasis, Land of the Lustrous has Phos walk past this image of their former self, expressing jealousy of their ignorance. When Morganite first calls for Phos, Phos is sleeping lazily in the fields. By the finale, Phos stands at attention, eyes on the sky for Lunarians.

Despite a similar — at times, exact frame-by-frame — sequence showing how the gems’ lives continue in similar fashion to when we first saw them, the purposeful visual delivery underlines just how much has changed, not only for Phos, but for each and every gem.

“Is this emotionally manipulative?” is a question frequently asked regarding Japanese animation. I first heard it regarding Clannad — particularly in relation to Kotomi Ichinose’s narrative arc, but also about the series as a whole — but this query dogs certain anime, even if the series in question is completely upfront about these goals, like Clannad. The floating teddy bear in the ocean, the empty, overgrown garden, the musical cues, they’re all in service of eliciting tears from the audience. It’s the equivalent of Russell Crowe’s Maximus screaming, “Are you not entertained?” only the unspoken scream is “Cry, damn you!” to the affected viewer.

In the current anime season, two series have fallen into this category according to the community: Violet Evergarden and A Place Further than the Universe. Within the past week, both shows told similar but diverging stories regarding mothers, daughters, and letters that play with ideas of time and transience. These stories offer an easy point of comparison between each other while also pushing carefully constructed emotional buttons.

However, the question shouldn’t be whether something is emotionally manipulative, but whether it works, strings and all. Do these feelings still feel genuine despite obvious cues and pre-existing narrative structures? My definitely-not-dry eyes say yes, but whatever personal conclusion you come to, Violet Evergarden and A Place Further than the Universe offer parallel case studies — nearly a week apart in airtime — in what make letters and messages such emotional sucker-punches.

Violet Evergarden is a series about the written word and the value of letters. It uses anachronistic Victorian-era settings as a purposeful backdrop to Violet’s new job transcribing letters and documents as an auto memoir doll, and goes one step further in showcasing other ways that messages could more slyly be sent through gifts like flowers. In the opening sequence of the first episode, the first thing Violet does after waking up in a hospital is write a “report” to her former commanding officer, Major Gilbert Bougainvillea. The more we learn about Violet, the more we realize that the first act during her recovery is an emotional response, riddled with feelings that she doesn’t yet recognize or understand.

“No letter that could be sent deserves to go undelivered.”

-Violet Evergarden to Anne Magnolia, Violet Evergarden, Episode 10

By the series’ tenth episode, Violet has just overcome the first large hurdle in her emotional maturation: accepting loss. This occurs just in time for her to visit the mother of Anne Magnolia, who commissions Violet in writing fifty letters to be sent to Anne for every birthday following her mother’s death. Even in death, Anne’s mother will always be watching over her. Being seven years-old when Violet arrives, Anne understands only one thing: her mother is dying and spending a significant amount of time on these letters when she could be spending time with Anne instead.

At one point, Anne’s frustrations and despair boil over and she rails out at her mother and the people who will presumably be receiving these letters. People who didn’t have the decency to even be with her mother when she was sick, like Anne was. Imagining the older Anne’s realization that she, the person who was there for her mother the entire time, was the recipient all along is heartbreaking. Because we see Anne’s frustration at her powerlessness and her guilt that grabs hold when Anne tries to wrest some semblance of control of the situation back — “Mom fell sick because I’m a bad girl!” — her mother’s diligence and love is all the more poignant with each passing letter. It also acts not only as a reflection of how much Violet has matured emotionally, but also a parallel story of to Violet’s own post-traumatic-stress.

A Place Further than the Universe does this in reverse.

Like Violet Evergarden, A Place Further than the Universe is concerned with communication. E-mails and social media are constant visual trappings that frame the series as a whole, immortalizing specific moments in time for Mari Tamaki and company to look back upon once the journey is done.

Throughout the series, we’ve watched as Shirase Kobuchizawa has stubbornly badgered her way to Antarctica to seek out her mother, Takako, who passed away there when Shirase was young. Shirase has made friends — each with their own foibles, hangups, and problems — along the way, but for her, this trip was a chance to finally say goodbye to her mother and accept loss. With Antarctica as a stand-in location, the place actually further than the universe is death itself.

Since learning of Takako’s death, Shirase (much like Violet and her reaction to the major’s disappearance) has been in limbo. She periodically is shown with her phone in hand, an email to her mother queued up. We discover in Episode 12 that all of these emails were sent and never read by Takako. Instead, they pop up in a never-ended torrent when Shirase reboots her mother’s laptop, a confirmation that Takako is truly dead.

Every letter to Anne read in her mother’s voice, every unread e-mail notification that pops up in front of Shirase as she hunches over her mom’s laptop screen in the dark is an emotional gut punch. In both cases, what makes these stories rise above accusations of emotional manipulation is the character development that frames Shirase and Anne’s narratives.

Violet’s maturation and struggles with survivor’s guilt, among other things, provide a backdrop for Anne’s raw outburst and later, her healing and moving forward as an adult, guided by her mother’s letters. For Shirase, the e-mails acted as a way for her to connect to her mother and, to some extent, deal with her disappearance at a young age. In both cases, there is added proof that the mothers were always thinking about their daughters at any given moment. Anne’s mother took the time to write her fifty letters, in order to watch over her growth and continue to be a guiding presence in Anne’s life. When booted up for the first time in years, Takako’s laptop is already open to her e-mail account, where she communicated with her daughter Shirase as much as possible. In Takako’s case, there’s also a hint that what she may have gone back for was the laptop itself, unintentionally leading to her death.

Sometimes you begin excitedly telling a story to friends only to realize halfway through the telling that it’s not a particularly interesting story. Yelling “Trotty too hottie” at Trot Nixon over the right field wall at Fenway Park wasn’t all that hilarious to anyone but teenaged you and your fellow friends at the time. The time your friend managed to eat an entire cheese loaf in English class on a dare also wasn’t all that funny.

Or maybe you just had to be there.

As humans, we have the habit of exaggerating the truly mundane because it means something to us, embellishing and using our imaginations to tell better stories than what actually might have happened. At its core, Mobile Police Patlabor: The Early Days is a collection of the opposite of these stories: things fantastic in nature are made mundane, beginning with the robots themselves.

Anime doesn’t always have the best track record for having robots that make sense within the in-universe context of their purpose — other than to look cool and sell toys, which are two core tenets of robot shows — but Patlabor‘s patrol labors are grounded by practicality. Labors were not initially developed for combat. Instead, they are humanoid construction robots that people occasionally use for violence. The patrol labors of the police force are based on a civil engineering labor prototype and are specifically designed to stop labor crime (although that doesn’t stop their unit for using them to fight other crimes). Patlabor follows a labor police unit: the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Special Vehicle Section 2, Division 2 (SV2).

In a way, this makes the robots of Patlabor decidedly uncool. They’re being used by the police, and resemble police patrol cars in design and color scheme. This is exacerbated by the fact that these patlabors are woefully inefficient in many ways. Traveling long distances at any useful speed is out of the question, so transport vehicles are needed to cart the labors from one place to another. The labors that were supposed to have arrived in time with unit personnel become mired in traffic on the freeway so the unit has to go retrieve them in bumper-to-bumper traffic. A stolen labor runs out of fuel just in time to be surrounded by police. Noa Izumi’s patlabor unit is stymied by an overpass en route to diffusing a bomb and requires help from a nearby police blimp (which she inadvertently destroys). Patlabors also require massive upkeep, to the point where Captain Kiichi Gotoh can rule out most terrorist organizations because he knows the faction he’s fighting has a labor, and upstart terrorists wouldn’t be able to finance labor maintenance.

For much of the series, the patlabors themselves do very little by way of movement or fighting. Patlabors are useful because they are fairly intimidating, and make for good blockades as well as a show of force. Outside of the gun-crazy Isao Ohta’s multiple misfires — who probably shouldn’t be a police officer, and also is exactly the type of person who desperately wants to be a police officer for all the wrong reasons — the patlabors don’t even fire their weapons. The most dramatic combat moment for any of the SV2 patlabor unit is when Hiromi Yamazaki is shot from a nuclear submarine, lands on the deck of a boat, and crumples an anti-aircraft gun using the labor. Even here, the use of a labor is more for added physical strength and protection — another testament to their construction roots. One could argue that Mobile Police Patlabor: The Early Days itself — despite thinking that the robots are, in their own way, super cool — purposefully doesn’t try to make a strong case that labors are the answer for fighting labor crime, or any crime.

Frankly, the reasoning behind using labors to fight labor crime seems like, for lack of a better phrase, very human thing to do, drawing the seemingly easiest line between two points only to find that it’s not the easiest line at all.

There’s nothing mundane about some of the situations in which the members of the SV2 find themselves. One in particular is a lengthy cat-and-mouse game between Gotoh and a former friend-turned-criminal-mastermind. Another involves a godzilla-like creature. Patlabor isn’t afraid to be silly or a bit weird. Yet, it’s often more slice-of-life than procedural, where most problems are solved without any sort of violence and we spend a large amount of time as viewers just hanging out with the cast doing mundane things.

For a final meta turn, a lot has been written about Patlabor by fans far more dedicated and authoritative than myself. As of 2016, there were still dedicated fanzines being printed solely about Patlabor. I’m certain that this mundane post pales in comparison to what is out there, and my thoughts are in no way original or all that interesting. Yet, here they are regardless, like a story I keep telling that’s not all that funny but still makes me laugh. Patlabor in and of itself — despite making the fantastic mundane — is a bit like this, highly recommended by fans only to have their charges return with the verdict that Patlabor is actually boring and too slow.

If this post inspires just one person to watch Patlabor, I will have been successful, even if they don’t enjoy it as much as I did.

“It is that very frankness of yours that is needed for this task. I am counting on you.”

-Master Kongou to Phosphophyllite, Land of the Lustrous, Episode 1

In the first episode of Land of the Lustrous, Phosphophyllite is tasked with creating an encyclopedia for the gems. It becomes the catalyst for their transformation.. The purpose of the encyclopedia from a narrative perspective is to give Phos a push forward, and also to show how what they want to do (fight like the other gems) is at odds with what comes to them naturally due to their brittle 3.5 Mohs hardness. The encyclopedia leads Phos to Cinnabar, which in turn leads them to another self-assigned task of finding Cinnabar a new job. As soon as Phos begins to transform, the encyclopedia is all but forgotten.

However, the gems could really use an encyclopedia.

Despite Phos’ fairly rapid physical transformation, the immortal nature of the gems means that they acknowledge their own thoughts and feelings fairly slowly, if at all. This also begets an obsessive nature in many of the gems. When something in their past affects them, they latch on to a specific idea or dedicate themselves to a cause with a singular focus. As Rutile says in the first episode, it makes it difficult for them to let go. Rutile is a prime example of this: their continued dedication to reviving their partner Padparadscha inspires their extensive, and often invasive, doctor’s practice. Similarly, Phos latches onto the idea of finding Cinnabar a new job, discarding her encyclopedia assignment. Alexandrite obsessively researches Lunarians because they lost a partner to them.

When Phos first begins working on the encyclopedia — for all of one episode in their own clumsy way — there’s a discussion of what an encyclopedia actually is, and how the gems could benefit from one. Although it’s not expressly stated, Phos’ conversation with Morganite and Goshenite hints that the rest of the gems find the idea of an encyclopedia as unnecessary as Phos does, since their concerns are limited to their jobs and what is immediately is in front of them. An encyclopedia is supposed to cover and index as much knowledge as possible, but various gems like Rutile, Red Beryl, and Alexandrite are already experts in their respective fields due to the gems’ natural obsessive tendencies.

Every gem that Phos asks for help is focus on their own individual tasks — . Cinnabar is recommended as the best resource for Phos’ encyclopedia, not because Cinnabar knows all, but because they too are directionless when compared to the other gems.

With knowledge sectioned off by task, the gems also don’t seem particularly interested in what lies beyond the scope of their own jobs. Phos and Cinnabar’s curiosity come from general restlessness and internal feelings of worthlessness, respectively. Even Diamond, who wishes to change, is focused on being a more worthy partner of Bort. They’re not naturally curious.

Knowledge in Land of the Lustrous is also tricky due to the gems’ immortality. When Phos, the youngest of the group, proudly claims that they fight for Master Kongou because they love him, it reiterates that the eldest of the gems, Yellow Diamond, doesn’t even remember why they’re fighting. Not only do the gems usually keep information to themselves — for no other reason than it applies to their job only and other gems likely don’t show interest — but the more time passes in an unending life, the more likely they are to forget certain things with time, even if they haven’t been physically altered like Phos.

The more Phos uncovers through their search — first for encyclopedia information, then for Cinnabar’s new job, then for their own understanding of Master Kongou and his relation to the Lunarians — the more distrustful they become of their mentor.

Master Kongou adds another facet to the gems’ knowledge, or lack thereof. He is the one who gives Phos the job of compiling an encyclopedia, saying that it will suit Phos perfectly. Yet the act of seeking out information for this job is what eventually leads Phos to doubt Master Kongou’s words and his relationship to the Lunarians. Phos asks Cinnabar about this only to discover that the rest of their peers already know that there’s some connection between Master Kongou and their adversaries, and have decided to fight for him anyway. The gems cast their suspicions aside and the result is the cycle that Phos’ physical transformation is, at the very least challenging, if not fully breaking.

Part parent, part deity, part teacher, Master Kongou also appears mired in his own guilt, which is interesting when compared with the fact that he tasked Phos with the encyclopedia. Either he underestimated how much Phos could uncover if determined (like his potential relationship with the Lunarians) or he (consciously or subconsciously) wanted to be “caught” by one of his charges. From Phos’ flashbacks, we know that he is the one who teaches them about this world from the time that they’re gathered from the Chord Shore. This means that he could limit what information they receive from the outset. When Phos discovers that they don’t remember Master Kongou’s teachings from when they were younger, they go not to Master Kongou but to Alexandrite because what they want to know is Lunarian-specific (in order to research Master Kongou’s connection to the Lunarians).

Imagine if they had an encyclopedia where all of this — the results of Rutile’s clinical experiments, Antarcticite’s knowlege of ice floes, Alexandrite’s comprehensive Lunarian library, the nature of the Chord Shore — could be found if not in one place, then in similar proximity for points of comparison.

From its first episode, Darling in the Franxx uses flower language and plant genetics to frame the entire series. It’s not subtle about any of these trappings, which continue to appear in each passing episode week after week not only in commonly-used titles (like pistil, stamen, etc.) but also in flowers found in the on-site greenhouses, in various rooms, and the series’ most recent ending sequence.

Mistilteinn was introduced as the title of the robot pilots’ home and means mistletoe, which is a parasitic plant. The pilots themselves are called parasites. Mistletoe was the parasitic plant used by Charles Darwin in his On the Origin of Species to frame the struggle for existence. In one of his opening chapters, Darwin states that mistletoes are more at odds with each other than the tree from which they draw nourishment. If just one mistletoe is feeding from a tree, both the mistletoe and the tree will survive. Yet, if multiple mistletoe plants are close together, they fight each other for survival.

This is particularly creepy within the context of Darling in the Franxx, where it has become increasingly apparent that parasites are developed by adults in service of fighting klaxosaurs while also — in the specific case of Plantation 13 — fighting amongst themselves as part of a grand experiment completely out of their control. They are given next to no context, even as Doctor Franxx and others offer them breadcrumbs — like the beach conveniently located next to an abandoned town through which the children could wander, or the appearance of agency in choosing their partners for a day (which leads to a series of messes and uncharitable framing of several characters, to say the least). Doctor Franxx himself seems a bit at odds with the adults and ruling council of APE in even forming Plantation 13 where individuality is more celebrated, which means that there easily could be two factions of adults influencing and manipulating this group of children: through their training experiences at The Garden, and through their experiences at the plantation itself.

As an experimental group of parasites who are allowed slightly more individuality than the average plantation but are given less information — if Plantation 26 is any indication — about the world and their roles within it, the members of Plantation 13 are put in the awkward position of having their adolescence as an experiment in and of itself without the same awareness that other parasites have about everything from their role in piloting franxx to their own mortality. Instead, the truth trickles out based on their experiences, some of which are orchestrated by adults in charge in cruel ways.

Mistletoes appear again in Episode 12, “The Garden Where It All Began” thanks to Sir James G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough, which is shown in a flashback as part of The Garden’s curriculum. Both Ichigo and Hiro said that they didn’t understand it, but Hiro does tell Ichigo that “The Holy Tree” in the book is mistletoe, which is similar to the tree at The Garden. It also becomes clear in this episode that at this tree at The Garden, presumably underneath the mistletoe, is where Hiro and Zero-two first met as children, despite the fact that Hiro has obviously forgotten this (and much of his childhood).

The Golden Bough was first published with the tagline A Study in Comparative Religion, but this was later revised to A Study in Magic and Religion. It provides a comprehensive look at various religious practices from different cultures around the world, beginning with priests of the Roman goddess Diana on Italy’s Lake Nemi. The priesthood was continued when the current priest, named King of the Wood, was murdered with a golden bough (mistletoe) which was ascribed magical properties in their society. The belief that the soul of the King in the Wood was in the mistletoe begat the idea that only a golden bough could kill him. From this — following many comparisons between religions and magical practices of various societies — Frazer concludes that a belief in magic leads to religion which then ultimately leads to science.

Like On the Origin of Species, The Golden Bough now more commonly used as a starter text at the beginning of a class or curriculum to establish a base framework from which myriad studies and vast amounts of scientific research have come. Inspiration from On the Origin of Species can also be found throughout Fraser’s text. The Golden Bough has inspired and influenced many authors and texts, but now draws criticism for ignoring the context given by the various cultures themselves of their own rituals in favor of a looser narrative that is applied over all of them. It’s a good place to start, but not the end all be all of cultural religious practices just as Joseph Campbell’s monomyth in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (influenced by The Golden Bough) is not the end all be all of storytelling.

As a text that was available to Hiro and Ichigo at very young ages, certainly younger than the age that one would typically be assigned this in a modern-day classroom, The Golden Bough does little but make the connection between the tree present at The Garden, mistletoe, and later for Hiro, Zero-two. (As an aside, it also is a testament to their education that they could read it, given the Victorian-era prose.) The fact that it was at the very least in their library, if not assigned, frames their childhood development. In the society of Darling in the Franxx, there are the adults (the “normal” humans who live in a sterilized environment like the woman that Zorome met in the city), APE (the ruling council), and the parasites (of which Plantation 13 is an anomalous group).

We see that important knowledge of how their society works and the state of their own bodies has been purposefully withheld from the Plantation 13 parasites, but that they’re also given bits and pieces of things seemingly outside of what children in their social stratum would receive. Even within this episode, the fact that they were so easily able to walk into and tour The Garden in search of Naomi is a bit suspect.

Darling in the Franxx had put me off of its story in the past few weeks, particularly with the sitcom-y antics of “Boys x Girls” and the tone-deafness “Partner Shuffle,” but “The Garden Where It All Began” is a last glimmer of hope that the series may yet push back against its own sterilized heteronormative world. Despite the series’ gaffes, the struggles of Plantation 13 automatically make them outsiders more naturally disposed towards rebelling. Since basic pieces of information like the nature of their bodies as parasites, their mortality, and their own memories have been withheld, they will come out at a time during or after the Plantation 13 parasites’ adolescence, which they’ve been fumbling through on their own (with a bit of manipulation from Hachi, Nana, and Doctor Franxx).

In 2009, I began watching anime as it currently aired. It wasn’t long before I was writing about it. My first year of blogging was full of horrid, weekly recaps that described what happened, maybe gave grades for music, visuals, story, etc., and moved on to the next show after perhaps doing a separate series review that was much of the same.

Steins;Gate came at the time when I was finally shedding my self-imposed, unimaginative shackles of graded episodic recaps (this is in no way meant to be a reflection of episodic blogging as a whole, only my own inadequacies) and moving towards an editorial style, even when writing weekly. I wrote about Albert Camus’ The Plague while watching vampires slowly take over an entire town in Shiki, and later framed the entirety of Star Driver through the lens of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. For Steins;Gate specifically, I contemplated Mayuri “Mayushii” Shiina’s role in the story as a catalyst for Rintarou “Hououin Kyouma” Okabe.

It wasn’t the best or most original output, but I began to play around with the craft of writing via anime blogging and rediscovered my love for it. This remains the primary reason why I still blog to this day.

Yet Steins;Gate didn’t stay long at the top of my favorites list. I looked back on it fondly, but as I continued to fill in gaps of my anime education while also watching other currently airing series, it fell through the cracks in my memory — a series that I had loved at a specific time in my anime-watching life. A few years ago, I remembered why I had liked it so much — especially the first, slow half of the series that most fans say you have to suffer through in order to get to “the good part” — but also realized how gracelessly pieces of the series had aged. The only piece I wrote on Steins;Gate came as the series was ramping up, but the part I enjoyed the most was watching a group of oddball dorks accidentally discover a time machine and then grapple with the gravity of their situation (sans fridged childhood friends and new, potential love interests).

Returning to Steins;Gate through this first episode of Steins;Gate 0 was weird. 

This is the fourth time I’ve written about returning to a series. Every instance offered a different experience, depending on my personal relationship with the franchise along with the quality of the remake. Revisiting Sailor Moon (through Sailor Moon Crystal) felt like coming home at first, before the new adaptation truly began to disappoint, sorely missing the creativity of the old Toei staff, which had up-and-coming names of the time like Kunihiko Ikuhara, Takuya Igarashi, Junichi Sato, Shinya Hasegawa, Yoji Enokido, and Mitsuo Ito. Digimon Tri felt almost like trespassing on a group of kids who had tried to continue on with their lives before the events of the digital world caught up with them once more. Boruto felt like Naruto fanfiction.

Revisiting the world of Steins;Gate felt anachronistic, not only on a personal level — it took me to a specific place and time in my writing — but also due to in-universe detail. The series takes place in 2010, yet so many elements already feel dated, rooted in a specific place and time.

Given the series’ subject matter, this isn’t a bad thing.

It’s hard to picture Steins;Gate‘s great HOUOUIN KYOUMA blushing while talking about university tennis club and coed drink-ups, but that’s exactly what he does when anime-only viewers like myself meet up with him for the first time in years. He’s continuing his university studies, participating in social activities outside of class, and hasn’t been to the Future Gadget Laboratory in some time. This is the new, in the words of Mayuri, “normie” Rintarou Okabe.

At one point in his life, that label would have been a death sentence. Yet, after Okabe’s traumatic time travel experiences, this particular beta timeline iteration is content to bury himself in normalcy while shouldering a heavy burden of post-traumatic-stress-disorder. Everything about this Okabe feels off, and this makes Steins;Gate 0 wonderfully uncomfortable. Even with a new anime production team, the low lighting, lack of color — even in bright places like Akihabara during holiday shopping season — the dutch angles, they’re all there.

This is Steins;Gate, but Hououin Kyouma is nowhere to be found.

When anime fans look back on first season of Steins;Gate, the ramblings of Okabe’s chuunibyou personality, Hououin Kyouma, are often what people recall immediately. Lines like “Hey mister, I am mad scientist, it’s so COOL sonofabitch” or, regarding Dr Pepper, “It’s an intellectual drink for the chosen ones.” (As an aside, Steins;Gate integrated brands like no other anime at the time.) Or perhaps they first recall Mayuri’s signature, “Tu-tu-ruu!” Steins;Gate was a mesh of geek checkboxes, catchy one-liners, and marketing, but it wasn’t only those things. Its beating heart and camaraderie between the Future Gadget Laboratory members was what kept me coming back week after week, despite the fact that I didn’t personally resonate with the characters themselves and had a few issues with story execution.

Okabe’s return to the lab is appropriately muted. There’s a small celebration that they’re all back together, but for Okabe and us, there’s one specific lab member missing: Makise Kurisu. This is not only a timeline without Hououin Kyouma, but a world where Kurisu passed away, leaving Okabe irreparably scarred. And Okabe stripped of his persona turns the entire world of Steins;Gate on its head in a eerily quiet way. This, above all else, is what I enjoyed the most about this first episode of Steins;Gate 0. It plays with viewer perceptions of the characters and story, but everything is just slightly off, causing discomfort.

The finale of Violet Evergarden is superfluous to the emotional narrative of the series. Violet’s personal journey towards understanding what love means — and learning empathy in the process — ends in the tenth episode, “A Loved One Will Always Watch Over You.” The moment Violet bursts into tears and admits to fellow auto memoir doll Cattleya Baudelaire the difficulty of remaining emotionally detached from Anne Magnolia is the perfect bookend to her first disastrous letter attempt. Not only is she then one of the best in her field at CH Postal Company, but she is a more introspective, aware person — a person who not only recognizes her own emotions, but wields them to help others overcome their own personal problems.

Yet, the series doesn’t end with Episode 10, and continues for three more episodes that include extraneous action and fight sequences in addition to a somewhat hilarious festival that involves dropping letters from airplanes. Violet Evergarden wants to say something about the value of the written word and it’s rarely subtle in its emotional machinations, regardless of how affecting they are to a viewer (yes, I cried at various points throughout the series too) so perhaps the letter festival is, in its own way, a fitting end as well. The series doesn’t need to be subtle to tell its story, but some of Violet Evergarden‘s background subtleties and details tell their own story at the periphery of Violet’s.

Violet Evergarden isn’t set in the Victorian era, but it does concern itself with Victorian-era decor. The series also shows a strong understanding of certain minutiae of the time. Consider the tearoom pictured above, which is the Violet Evergarden version of McMansion Hell. The unnecessary and overflowing flora is accompanied by banners placed at random and a horse-drawn chaise passing by for good measure. However, the busy nature of this building fits with the overall series aesthetic, which reflects both the Victorian era and the specific post-war setting of Violet Evergarden. In Victorian-era Great Britain, relative peace (at least, at home) combined with rapid industrialization and quicker trade routes led to the availability of more plants, which led to personal conservatories and could have led to buildings like Violet Evergarden‘s tearoom.

Naoko Yamada’s episode, “You Write Letters That Bring People Together?” frames the entire correspondence between Princess Charlotte Abelfreyja Drossel and Prince Damian Baldur Flugel not only with the written word, but with flowers. Flower language flourished in the Victorian era as a way to express hidden feelings alongside a more polite and socially-acceptable letter.

Beyond architecture and floriography, the idea of the written word, who has access to it, and the variety of CH Postal Company’s customers within Violet Evergarden tell a tale that varies from oddly egalitarian to stratified. A large part of Violet Evergarden and the story of its titular heroine involves both post-war trauma and prosperity, another nod to Victorian society.

CH Postal itself is relatively new. It formed as or immediately after the war ended. Services provided revolve around ghostwriting performed by “auto memoir dolls.” At one point, Cattleya laughs at Violet’s description of a typewriter as a weapon, saying that it is a weapon in a way that it allows them to fight their own way in society. With the burgeoning middle class and prosperity that came with the Industrial Revolution followed a variety of working conditions for women that entered the workforce alongside the expectation that they would also run the household for their husband. Working conditions for impoverished women were often harmful and dangerous.

The auto memoir dolls of Violet Evergarden reflect employed middle-class women, who were typists or secretaries. Although it hardly sounds radical at this point in time, these were outlier jobs for the bolder, educated women of the middle class. Many prominent female authors of the Victorian era disguised their gender with male pen names, although Erica Brown mentions that, in the world of Violet Evergarden, the term “auto memoir doll” came from a man who created the typewriter for his author wife who became blind. Most Victorian-era jobs for women still revolved around household duties, chores, and childcare. This too gives more of an edge to a few of Cattleya’s comments, especially since she is considered peerless in her field and trusted with ghostwriting important documents like entire peace treaties between nations.

Within Violet Evergarden, there are entire schools to teach doll work that appear open to anyone able to attend. Luculia Marlborough, the default head of her household that includes only her and her brother, is certainly not well off, especially since her brother drinks heavily to deal with post-war trauma and the death of their parents. Becoming a doll not only gives her a way to express her feelings to her brother, but also provides a way to make money for her household despite her brother’s injury and no parental income. Reading and writing also seems fairly free, although we don’t have a good glimpse of what true poverty looks like in Violet Evergarden, so it may still be restricted depending on economic class.

Auto memoir dolls themselves are employed by all types of people as well, from royalty to farmhand to soldier to playwright. Cattleya begins writing simple love letters and by the end of the series is ghostwriting the peace treaty to formally end the war. Letter-writing is an important form of communication and reading appears to be a leisure activity enjoyed by many as well, which does call into question the use of auto memoir dolls.

The most important duty of a doll is conveying the true message from one party to another. In this way, hiring a doll is simply another, slightly fancier, form of communication — something one does if they want to frame their message in a certain way. One of Violet’s charges is an alcoholic playwright, whose use of Violet to finish a play meant for his now-deceased daughter is emotionally affecting but also raises interesting questions of authenticity, similar to the modern example of The Player’s Tribune. Whose words are they really when everything is ghostwritten, or does it matter as long as the message is clear and reflects the original person’s intent? Violet Evergarden‘s answer on this varies from episode to episode. The Drossel-Flugel romance and Claudia Hodgins’ letter draft that Cattleya cheekily reads aloud in the finale suggest that more awkward, stunted attempts from the source are invaluable. Yet Violet’s ghostwritten letters to Anne from Anne’s mother, or the play Violet writes for Oscar Webster suggest otherwise.

In previous posts, I’ve written about flower language in Darling in the Franxx, including floral reproduction, basic genetics, and the names of the plantations themselves. The series’ use of floriography has been a straightforward roadmap — Darling in the Franxx eschews subtleties for directness both visually and in its use of symbolism or literature.

There are a few flowers that have gone unmentioned that are far more relevant now — the hibiscus flower and the cactus — in addition to revisiting Kokoro’s Franxx robot: Genista. Hibiscus and various cacti appear multiple times in the Mistilteinn garden alongside the Franxx robots’ various namesakes. These flowers make up the backdrop of Kokoro’s conversations with Mitsuru, which later leads to their partner reassignments and, in the most recent episode, a sexual partnership.

Hibiscus has been noticeably present in the garden since Episode 5, when it frames a recovering Mitsuru choking down medication after his traumatic piloting experience with Zero-Two. Kokoro appears, having followed him into the garden, and expresses concern for his health. This is the first of many meetings in the garden between the two. Hibiscus appears at some point in all of them, but receives a special close-up in Episode 16, when Kokoro cuts Mitsuru’s hair.

The hibiscus flower is seen as a very feminine flower, especially in the West. It carries a meaning of femininity, beauty, and the ideal wife or woman. In Japanese hanakotoba, it means gentle. Red hibiscus flowers, like many other red flowers, also represent passion and romantic love. Given Kokoro’s temperament, growing desire to have a child, and burgeoning feelings towards Mitsuru specifically (whom she meets in the garden, in front of the hibiscus flowers) its easy to see how these flowers embody Kokoro’s emotions. This is further accentuated by the close-up of red hibiscus flowers as a transition between Kokoro accepting Mitsuru’s request to cut his hair — which carries another meaning in and of itself, especially after he somewhat came to terms with the state of his relationship with Hiro — and her dutiful attention to his hair one scene later.

I’m kicking myself for not connecting the dots between the cactus flower/succulents and Kokoro’s relationship with Mitsuru sooner because their continuous reappearance whenever the two were in the garden together was repetitive enough that I noticed it, but didn’t make the connection until Episode 16.

The cactus flower is an interesting conclusion due to varying meanings in different cultures. In Victorian and western floriography, the cactus symbolizes endurance — a nod to cacti and succulents’ abilities to stay alive in harsh conditions — and chastity. Japanese hanakotoba gives the cactus flower the opposite meaning of lust or sexual desire. Blooming cacti and succulents are visibly separated in jars and elevated around the garden. Whenever Kokoro and Mitsuru meet up in the garden, these cacti surround them, and often appear, unfocused, in the background during facial closeups. The garden is where Kokoro makes her first sexual advance, and it’s fitting that cacti have framed her actions towards Mitsuru in the garden throughout the series.

The final punctuation mark of the episode is the title reveal at the end of the episode: “Eden,” as in “Garden of.” So in case there was any doubt, yes, Kokoro and Mitsuru had sex.

The opening moments of the Persona 5 video game set the player’s expectation for a stylish, visually-immersive experience. Sayo Yamamoto’s opening animation showcases callbacks to her work on the short Endless Night, and later Yuri!!! On Ice, with fluid figure skating and a limited color palette of black, white, and red that reflects the game’s UI design.

Masashi Ishihama’s opening sequence, which debuted during the fourth episode of Persona 5 The Animation, is the perfect combination of Ishihama’s strong sense of color and the game’s aesthetic. Opening with an MTV-like logo on an old television screen (in tried and true Persona fashion) the animation quickly makes use of Ishihama’s visual transitions. These again call back to the game’s attention to detail when it comes to color and integrating pop-up menus into the everyday life of your Persona 5 protagonist — Ren Amamiya in the anime.

(I don’t usually post spoiler warnings, but there are mild game spoilers in this post.)

Adapting the story of a video game into an animated television series is always a tricky task, and the nature of the Persona games makes this even more difficult. The best anime adaptations of original source material — games, manga, novels, light novels, etc. — strike a balance between integrating certain thematic elements visually in lieu of experiencing them through gameplay, or digesting them via descriptive paragraphs. They know what details to cut, and what details to keep in (especially for marketing purposes). Often, this requires narrowing the focus of certain plot elements while retaining the feel of the general narrative, tapping into the emotions experienced while playing or reading the source material.

A spinoff of Shin Megami Tensei, the Persona series is a sprawling combination of dungeon-grinding, visual novel-like social links, and Jungian psychology references. Persona 5 is the longest game of the franchise (and had plans to be even longer, with the addition of Hifumi Togo as another member of the main cast) with over 100 hours of gameplay.

While playing Persona 5, I was struck by its indignant, stewing anger. The game is undeniably Japanese in scope, but can resonate with anyone who has ever wanted to strike back against systemic injustice but doesn’t quite know how. It can be  tone-deaf at times, hampering larger narrative arguments with tasteless one-liners (Ryuji Sakamoto post-Kamoshida’s palace). But for the majority of the series, it taps into existing frustrations with societal problems that feel too big to tackle on an individual level. Persona 5 does well to begin with a narrow scope on a smaller subunit of four in what ends up as a larger main cast of nine, not including social links.

Nowhere is the Persona 5 game more intense or emotionally-resonant than in its first story arc about former Olympic gold medalist, Suguru Kamoshida, whose arrogance has taken over an entire high school. When tackling larger, nebulous concepts of systemic social problems, they can often seem too big or too distant. The smaller cast of “Joker” (Ren Amamiya), Ryuji Sakamoto, and Ann Takamaki makes it easier to focus on how these individuals’ every day lives are affected by societal issues well beyond their control — until they fight shadows in the heart of their immediate tormentor, Kamoshida.

The oppressive atmosphere of Kamoshida’s Palace and Shujin Academy is felt at every moment in these first few hours of the game. Kamoshida is aided by his higher-ups and peers, who look the other way as he abuses and assaults students, provided that he continues to give the school a good reputation through the volleyball team’s national results. In addition to larger, obvious cases of sexual harassment and Shiho Suzui’s suicide attempt, there are small details that ensure Ren and company are kept under the thumb of Kamoshida and his ilk while they’re inside Shujin’s four walls. When Ren wanders the halls of Shujin, whispers of his juvenile delinquency follow. Worn-out teacher Sadayo Kawakami laments that she has to deal with him at all, not out of malice, but world-weary annoyance.

Talking to NPCs often proves fruitless as Shujin students, even if they don’t agree with it, side with the status quo, and aren’t aware of the nature of Ren’s “crimes.” Ren was falsely accused by a political figure when Ren tried to save a woman from being sexually assaulted, but because he was the less powerful party, ended up with a record. Ren’s compatriots all have similar experiences with finding themselves on the wrong side of a person more socially powerful than themselves, and often are unfairly regarded by their peers due to a lack of knowledge, or desperate attempt to avoid drawing attention to themselves. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down, and so on.

These small details woven into the fabric of the game are what make the Kamoshida arc so complete. It’s only natural that as the story continues, it expands in scope and size. Like any story that widens its scope, Persona 5 sometimes loses sight of the simple narrative and individual focus the Kamoshida arc so potent. At no point again is the game as oppressive.

All of the meandering praise for the Kamoshida story is ultimately in service of my own, futile desire to see an 11 or 12-episode series of just the first Persona 5 arc, rather than the somewhat rushed four episodes that we received in the anime adaptation. Given the marketability and popularity of other main characters, it’s easy to see why the anime wants to include every arc, yet there’s arguably a strong, separate anime to be made for each palace narrative, especially Kamoshida’s. (As an aside, the other one I’d really love to see would be Futaba Sakura’s, since that arc is also deeply personal to her character.)

Although at first glance, this may seem too long, but there are a lot of details that the series pushed through or ignored that could easily add to the feelings of helplessness that the Kamoshida arc inspires. One of these is the effect of Ren’s leaked past at Shujin Academy. We didn’t experience the oppressive school environment that was palpable in the game. Similarly, Ann’s relationship with Shiho could have been expanded upon, and Ryuji’s own experiences with his former track teammates and Kamoshida could have also been addressed in more than a few fleeting instances. Kamoshida himself comes across as immediately awful in the anime, where the game is initially cagier about concealing his atrocious behavior. Most of his cartoonish villainy in the game is saved for his palace shadow. One of the reasons why Kamoshida has been able to get away with this for so long is that he’s outwardly a good face for the school.

I’m not suggesting keeping every detail from the game, but the anime’s choice of which details to include and which to leave out has been a bit odd. Thus far, Persona 5: The Animation is serviceable. Ishihama’s aforementioned opening is stunning and shows a strong understanding of the game’s aesthetic. However, when it comes to interpreting and adapting other pieces of the game, especially during palace fight scenes, the slavish dedication to certain details obfuscates the emotional narrative.

When Kamoshida later confesses his own crimes and faults to the entire school in the anime, its still wonderfully cathartic, especially when Ann confronts him, telling him to face his faults rather than killing himself. However, I can’t help but wonder how much more emotionally affecting it would have been if we knew Ann, Shiho, Ryuji, and even Kamoshida a bit better.

“Horse girls. They were born to run. They inherit the names of horses from another world, whose histories were sometimes tragic and sometimes wonderful, and with that, they run. That is their fate. No one knows how these horse girls’ future races will end.”

–Uma Musume Pretty Derby, Episode 1

In outlining the basic premise of the series, the opening of Uma Musume Pretty Derby raises more questions than it does answers. There are no horses, only horse girls and women. The souls/spirits of horses from another world (ours) impregnate women (it’s unclear as to whether this only happens to existing horse women or at random) who give birth to horses with predetermined names. Uma Musume mentions that their namesakes’ pasts were tragic and wonderful, but also implies that the horse girls of their world can defy these fates. Their only fate is to run.

It would be best not to think too deeply about this. Yet, because the show follows the lives of some of Japan’s most popular and successful racehorses and has, thus far, been true to most of their histories, Uma Musume offers a somewhat unique study in sports anime.

There are many different types of determinism, but the overarching idea is that the future is already determined by a causal chain of events in the past. This distinction differs from fatalism, which has a broader definition but focuses more on an inescapable fate rather than what came before. With determinism, human actions in the future are somewhat fixed by past events (usually, but not necessarily, and uninterrupted causal chain). With fatalism, humans have a set fate that’s not necessarily determined by prior actions and is often attributed to a gold-like, omnipotent being who sets said fate.

In the case of Uma Musume, the horse girls’ fates are decided by causality, but that causality is the history of the original Japanese racehorses. This goes beyond nominative determinism, which is a recent hypothesis that people gravitate towards careers that suit their names. It’s biological in a way — each horse girl inherits the name of a racehorse — but the opening of the series stresses that no one knows how their races will end. 

Sports anime often rely on a series of tropes, especially ones established by older adaptations like Aim for the Ace! that revolve around an underdog, self-improvement, and overcoming hardship with 頑張る spirit, the latter of which deserves nuance and a multi-faceted look all its own. Tropes aren’t bad, they’re just another part of storytelling. Yet, sports anime can seem rote, uninteresting, and predictable because of them. The events are predetermined and the audience is primed to understand what will happen based on prior sports anime and manga. It’s the job of the series to ensure that the journey to that end goal is interesting.

Uma Musume‘s leading horse lady, Special Week, and powerhouse El Condor Pasa meet in the Japanese Derby (Tokyo Yuushun) in the series’ fifth episode, “The Derby With Rivals.” The anime version of this race is commentated by legendary jockey Yutaka Take, whose first derby win came on Special Week in the real-life 1998 analogue. Foreign-bred horses were not allowed to run in the Japanese Derby until 2001, so El Condor Pasa was never in this race. Uma Musume pays tribute to El Condor Pasa’s dominance and the rise of Special Week by awarding them a dead heat, tweaking their history in a way that makes sense.

For the horse girls of Uma Musume, there is an added layer of determinism that comes from their names. Thus far, the series has followed the historical results of their horse counterparts as closely as possible, only making changes when necessary, like adding El Condor Pasa to the Japanese Derby and Tennou Shou, or changing Montjeu’s name to Broye, presumably due to licensing issues. Special Week’s weight gain and loss to Seiun Sky Haru Urara still loses all of her races. Gold Ship is temperamental and excellent. Grass Wonder still recovers from an injury to win the Takarazuka Kinan over Special Week.

Silence Suzuka still suffers a debilitating injury in the Tennou Shou.

In the 1998 Tennou Shou Silence Suzuka’s career was ended by an unlikely injury. He was euthanized because of it. Uma Musume does not take this route — you could even make a biological argument that horse girls, due to a human leg structure, would heal far more easily than a horse — and instead gives Silence Suzuka a rehabilitation schedule, aided by Special Week and the other members of Team Spica. Events that happen around or after Silence Suzuka’s injury still follow real-life events. Special Week loses to El Condor Pasa and Air Groove in the Japan Cup, and later loses to Grass Wonder in the Takarazuka Kinan.

The race outcomes in Uma Musume suggest that, outside of Silence Suzuka’s rehabilitation, the destinies of these horse girls are fairly fixed by real-life events. It’s an odd determinism that plays with what many anime viewers expect from sports series. The horse girls don’t know their own destinies, but we can look them up and learn. Half of the fun in writing this was researching the real-life counterparts of the Uma Musume horse girls, and learning how their individual personalities are portrayed in small details like Gold Ship’s unpredictable temperament or Oguri Cap’s love of food. Like most sports anime, Uma Musume is at its best when it adds its own version of what happens behind a win or a loss, like Special Week’s over-attention to Silence Suzuka’s recovery, or her visit to her mom in Hokkaido.

And if the thought that these girls are simply living out predestined lives of racehorses gets you down, you can always watch Gold Ship’s virtual YouTube channel.

In the double-feature of IDOLiSH7‘s anime debut, hapless newbie producer Tsumugi Takanashi books an outdoor venue that seats three-thousand for her rookie group, IDOLiSH7. Despite hard work handing out flyers, and trying her best to drum up interest, only nine people show up. Tsumugi tearfully apologizes, only to have all seven group members laugh and say that’s about how many people they expected.

This is where I fell in love with IDOLiSH7. 

At times as unrealistic as its idol anime counterparts, IDOLiSH7 excels in nitty-gritty business details like venue sizes and whether your favs are truly best friends behind the pretty smiles. The answer to the latter question is no, but that doesn’t mean they can’t care about each other deeply as business partners working towards similar goals. After all, no one besides your group mates will understand just how hot that one guerrilla live was, or what it was like to perform to a crowd of only nine people (twelve if you include your own staff). IDOLiSH7 also explores what happens when one member or subunit is significantly more popular than the group, and is never afraid to show disagreements between members, even over small, seemingly insignificant things. Some of the conflicts are melodramatic, but most are grounded in a reality that actively chips away at the veneer of being an idol group, especially one under a smaller company.

As the boys of IDOLiSH7 grow in popularity, so does their fanbase. This too is shown in a surprisingly organic and realistic way, with details scattered throughout every episode that reflect not only the group’s growing fandom, but how those early fans converted others. A red-headed, pigtailed girl meets the boys early in their career at a small outdoor live show and attends their larger, rainy-day concert in the next episode. In a following episode, she tells her mom off for calling them unpopular. By the end of the series, she, her older sister, and her mom are all devoted IDOLiSH7 fans. The series makes a point to highlight every one of the nine total fans that show up at the group’s first concert, and nearly all of them are shown again, converting friends and family to the IDOLiSH7 fandom.

Other idol shows have shown organic growth in fandom, but it usually comes in the form of more, generally faceless people showing up to concerts. As The Idolm@ster progressed, fans began following Ryuuguu Komachi and then the rest, but individual, repeated fans were rarely shown. Most series simply show more fans showing up and larger venues, reflecting the fandom increase. Individual fan growth has previously been reserved for family members (Raichi Hoshimiya in Aikatsu! who begins as a Mizuki Kanzaki fan) or one random, but memorable fan (the glasses guy in Wake Up Girls!). IDOLiSH7 is different. The fans are part of the boys’ growth as much as Tsumugi, President Takanashi, and IDOLiSH7’s rivalry with fellow boy group TRIGGER. As we become more attached to the characters, so do their in-universe fans, whose faces we begin to recognize.

In the final episode of IDOLiSH7, the boys compete against TRIGGER in the Black and White song battle (taken from the real-life NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen’s Red and White song battle). Before they take the stage, the MC asks them what they remember about their journey the most. Mitsuki Izumi sheepishly responds, “Performing a concert in an empty arena.” When a fan in the crowd responds, “I was there!” it bookends the entire series perfectly — a fan, surrounded by thousands at the largest Japanese concert of the year, who once was one of the original nine in an empty outdoor stadium watching what became her favorite group perform.

“The normal happiness, the pleasures of a young girl, all burned away to aim for a distant twinkling.”

-Giraffe, Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight, Episode 1

Karen Aijou is teased by her classmates for her inability to wake up early. It’s appropriate, friendly banter, especially given how much effort Karen’s friend and classmate, Mahiru Tsuyuzaki exerts trying to shake her awake. Their early morning conversations are light-hearted, poking fun at Karen, singing happily for short periods, and dancing freely around the studio.

Until Maya Tendou walks into the room. She interrupts Futaba Isurugi and Karen’s conversation and walks through them. They part, making way for her. Maya announces her name, position in class, and immediately stands at attention beside a pink piece of tape in the center of the hardwood floor that designates the center position.

Futaba drops her sleepy friend Kaoruko Hanayagi. Each individual class member announces their name, number, and walks to take their place on the studio practice stage. It’s time to work.

This sudden shift in atmosphere makes what initially appeared to be fairly mindless morning chatter ominous. There’s an entire other level of conversation that has nothing to do with sleepy morning conversations had with friends in order to wake up a bit more quickly. When Maya enters the room, they are in competition. They announce their class number and step forward.

The young women of Seisho Music Academy appear to harbor no delusions of what they’re getting into or the position that they’re aiming for: position zero, center stage.

Position zero, or the center, has been the the goal and envy of myriad young women in animated idol shows — AKB0048 immediately comes to mind, following the pattern of AKB48 senbatsu elections. In idol culture, the center is the face of the group, the star, and often the leader of the group as well. When you think of a particular group, the center will almost always be the individual that comes to mind first. They are the focal point of group formations.

Yet, Revue Starlight isn’t solely focused on idol culture. The center position is applied to a musical stage performance that includes acting, dancing, and singing. There are elements of stage production and musical theater throughout, and the more classical-focused Seisho Music Academy seems to be training the next troupes of the Takarazuka Revue more than it is raising idols. When Karen describes the school’s classes, everything from singing, dancing, acting, set design, and scriptwriting is mentioned. Revue Starlight‘s idea of a center is a young woman who is able to do all of these things exceptionally and embodies the desperate desire to take that center spotlight. The center position is synonymous with best.

Throughout Revue Starlight‘s first episode, that pink piece of tape on the studio floor becomes a recurring visual motif, reminding us of its importance. It even appears in the episode’s endcard as a small icon at the bottom of the screen. Karen immediately walks towards it and stands beside it when she’s the only person in the studio.

Maya is introduced to us through her assertive walk towards the center position. The lettering designating her name and title in class is shown with the image of her feet at position zero. Her shadow is cast over the pink tape and unlike Karen, she stands at the center point itself. Revue Starlight is telling us that, right now, Maya is the center. With the context of Junna Hoshimi, Hikari Kagura, and Karen’s duel in the underground theater of Seisho Academy, Maya is likely at the top of the chain because she is the center and leader. Junna is beneath her in rank.

The other person to take the center is Karen, who not only straddles the point but stabs it possessively with her cutlass after defeating Junna. She will challenge Maya for the center position. This is after she is taunted by a giraffe in saying that girls that can’t get up in the morning or don’t mind not playing the lead have no business in the underground revue. Karen proves him wrong, and Revue Starlight visually tells us throughout this first episode that Karen is made of sterner stuff than she looks.

Position zero is also reinforced visually by placing Karen in the center at nearly all times. When she and her classmates are showering, Karen is in the center stall. When she stumbles into the mysterious elevator that takes her to the basement stage, she stands on the center line. even in dreamier sequences that feature Karen falling in front of Tokyo Tower, Karen is center.

Another trapping of idol culture that Revue Starlight touches upon is the push and pull between conformity and the spotlight. As the leader and literal center of the stage, the center stands out. However, the training programs to be an idol or musical revue star are a machine that presses every young woman into a similar mold. They perform the same play, Starlight, at the academy every year. When Karen transforms, she is given a uniform from a factory line that has made hundreds of them. The sequence includes sewing machines, piles of identical buttons, rows of identical collars, and a uniform pattern that is presumably one-size-fits-all. One of the looms spins red thread, a nod to the red thread of fate indicating an unescapable destiny. Even those chosen girls with special dueling hairpins like Karen, Junna, and Hikari are trapped in a cycle. They’re just higher up on the ladder. Seisho Music Academy is a rigid system both on the surface and in the underground stage where Karen duels Junna.

Director Tomohiro Furukawa worked with Kunihiko Ikuhara on both Mawaru Penguindrum and Yuri Kuma Arashi. Nods to Ikuhara’s work on those two series and Revolutionary Girl Utena are sprinkled throughout this episode from the dueling stage and elevator (Utena) to the more mechanical lead-in to Karen’s transformation (Penguindrum) and the all-girls school Class S setting. Episode 1 of Shoujo Kageki ☆ Revue Starlight sets the stage with a system and a cycle. If Furukawa follows a similar pattern as Ikuhara, I can’t wait to see how Karen breaks the cycle. Already, Furukawa has left us a few visual hints, including the role reversal of Junna and Karen in the daylight and on the underground stage and how Karen uses the cryptic giraffe as a launching pad.

“What happens to who?”

“The bananafish.”

“Oh, you mean after they eat so many bananas they can’t get out of the banana hole?”

“Yes,” said Sybil.

“Well, I hate to tell you, Sybil. They die.”

“Why?” asked Sybil.

“Well, they get banana fever. It’s a terrible disease.”

-an exchange between Seymour Glass and six year-old Sybil Carpenter, A Perfect Day for Banana Fish, J.D. Salinger

Feature writers are gifted with dialogue. Their task is to then craft a story around those words, which can be a blessing and a curse. How much should be left on the cutting room floor? Should you, the writer, become a narrator?

How much of yourself should you put in a feature?

The line between feature and fiction is often blurred. Authors of fiction draw on their own experiences. Their works are full of personal anecdotes and even when a writer tries to avoid taking a more personal tack their point of view will subconsciously bleed into their words.

What does this have to do with J.D Salinger’s A Perfect Day for Bananafish and Akimi Yoshida’s Banana Fish manga, or the recent anime adaptation?

What is a bananafish?

Novelist and short story author Jerome David (J.D.) Salinger was drafted into the United States military and served with the Army’s 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division in World War II. Following the Normandy campaign, Salinger met with Earnest Hemingway, whose works had been influential on Salinger, en route to Germany. Throughout his time in the army, Salinger wrote and was featured in The Saturday Evening Post. He continuously submitted short stories and poems to The New Yorker, which were rejected. Following the defeat of Germany, Salinger was hospitalized with combat stress reaction, often a precursor for post-traumatic stress disorder. Later in life, with the physical events of the war behind him, Salinger told his daughter that he could never rid himself of the small of burning flesh.

Although Salinger is best-known for the story of disaffected youth Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye, many of his other works include fragments of his military experiences— Caulfield himself in later mentioned as missing in action in Salinger’s This Sandwich Has No Mayonnaise. Salinger’s A Perfect Day for Bananafish was initially titled The Bananafish. It became his first published story at The New Yorker and follows war veteran Seymour Glass on the day of his suicide.

Both stifling and purposeful, the dialogue in A Perfect Day for Bananafish is smothering. What at first glance appears to be a meaningless conversation between Seymour’s wife, Muriel Glass, and her mother takes up half of the short story. It imbues Seymour’s conversation with Sybil with a creeping dread, and revisiting the conversation in an effort to solve the mystery of why Seymour did it only brings up off-handed mentions of what is likely post-traumatic stress disorder — Seymour’s reaction to Muriel’s grandmother passing away, something involving trees, and another incident with photographs from Bermuda. We read no interactions between Seymour and Muriel or his mother-in-law, although we see him through their eyes. Muriel takes on an optimistic or careless demeanor, as if acting that everything is normal while she and Seymour are on vacation will make his problems disappear. Her mother is actively suspicious of Seymour in a way that’s less empathic towards him and more scared for Muriel’s safety.

Banana Fish begins with Griffin Callenreese, a soldier in the U.S. military, who murders members of his own squad in a drug-induced frenzy. After he is incapacitated, he says two words, “Banana fish.” The series then cuts to his younger brother, 17 year-old gang leader “Ash Lynx” (Aslan Callenreese) in New York City as Ash meets with mafia boss (Papa) Dino Golzine, is selected for a magazine feature by Japanese photojournalist Shunichi Ible and his assistant, Eiji Okumura, and tries to solve the mystery of banana fish.

Correlations between Salinger’s Glass family and Banana Fish‘s Callenreese brothers are readily apparent. Seymour, the eldest, is affected with PTSD and it leads to his suicide in A Perfect Day for Bananafish while younger brother Buddy Glass effectively becomes Salinger’s alter ego and is said to have written or narrated several of his short stories, especially those involving the Glass family. Like Seymour, Griffin is described as a poet and intellectual and much of his personality is given to us from close acquaintances or family like Max Glenreed and Ash. However, Ash also shares a lot of qualities with Seymour himself, particularly his general distrust or disgust in other people and his personal draw towards the innocent or genuine, like Eiji. Despite remarkable street sense and intuition, there’s a sense that Ash wants to rediscover his own innocence or trust in others. In Banana Fish‘s first episode, he gives a guileless Eiji his gun in an unprecedented display of trust, and their relationship only grows from there thanks to Eiji’s own resolve, reminding Ash and us as the viewing audience that genuinely believing in others doesn’t mean helplessness.

The bulk Seymour’s dialogue in A Perfect Day for Bananafish is with a six year-old child, Sybil Carpenter. Seymour is shown to be standoffish and rude towards other adults, but willingly opens up to Sybil, to whom he tells the story of the bananafish: a fish so gluttonous, it swims into a hole with a lot of bananas, eats as many as possible, and then is too large to leave the hole, dying from what Seymour calls “banana fever.” The bananafish has been said to be a stand-in for many things, including general gluttony, materialism/consumerism, and depression as the shadow of Seymour’s death is cast upon re-reading the story.

Although the question of why Griffin shot his squadmates hangs over Ash’s actions in Banana Fish, mirroring Seymour a bit, it’s worth reiterating that Ash has a lot in common with Seymour as well. He is surrounded by gluttonous people, like Dino, and was presumably sold to Dino as a child prostitute at a young age. Ash tries to use this to his advantage as much as possible, going as far as to allow himself to be raped in prison in order to get a message out to Eiji. Understandably, Ash doesn’t like to be touched by others and this is mentioned whenever anyone besides Eiji reaches out, similar to Seymour’s final conversation, where he berates a woman in the elevator for looking at his feet. Eiji is the exception, and if there is a way out of Dino’s clutches for Ash, Eiji will certainly be involved.

Junna Hoshimi wakes up earlier than her classmates. The sun is just beginning to filter through the windows when she walks outside for her morning run. Her roommate, Nana Daiba, is still asleep. On her desk is a pamphlet for Starlight and a dog-eared, bookmarked script. She leaves a message: “I will show you that I can seize my own star.”

“We haven’t had auditions yet. Don’t assume that the leads have been decided.”

Junna Hoshimi to Karen Aijou, Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight, Episode 1

When Junna is introduced in the first episode of Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight, she is the first student in the studio that morning outside of Karen Aijou (who has day duty) and Karen’s roommate Mahiru Tsuyuzaki. She hands out flyers reminding Karen, Mahiru, and Nana of their Starlight play that’s over a year in the future. She admonishes Karen for thinking that the leads are already decided. Junna is framed as studious, hardworking, and authoritative — all traits that are reiterated when she receives more of the spotlight in Episode 2. Unlike Maya Tendou and Claudine Saijou, Junna’s talents aren’t presented as inherent.

Junna is talented — all of the young women in Seisho Music Academy are — but above all else she is a hard worker who will make up for any talent gaps or opposition with effort and ambition. While Nana’s dormitory desk is filled with photographs of previous plays, a pinboard with more pictures, cute buttons and stickers, Junna’s desk is filled with notebooks, textbooks, scripts and the Starlight flyer. Only her note to herself, adorned with a few hand-drawn stars, is personalized. Junna arrives first and stays late, redoing exercises from class.

Purple-pink light from the tiara representing the elusive “top star” position follows Junna throughout Revue Starlight‘s second episode outside of its place atop the dueling stage. It accompanies her on her morning run, is seen above the trees when she arrives at school, is over her shoulder in dance class, and glints off of the bed frame in the school nurse’s office. Even when Junna faints, light refracted from the tiara appears on the floor through the lenses of her glasses — a precursor to Junna’s dueling stage. Junna isn’t the only member of the 99 class that the tiara follows, but it appears behind her frequently as a reminder of what she aspires to.

Junna’s personality is also reflected in her chosen weapon and dueling style. The bow and arrow, another nod to how she collects information, assesses it, and attacks repeatedly from a distance, wearing down her opponent, regardless if that opponent is a difficult piece of classwork or a classmate on the dueling stage. In classes, Junna is often framed with her head turned away or cut off completely. Her eyes are frequently hidden by light reflecting off of her glasses.

Glasses play a large role in Junna’s stage setting. The acrobatic trappings and large colorful stars of the first audition stage are replaced with ruined arches and doric columns. These pediments of these setpieces have two round holes resembling glasses that refract light, distracting Junna’s dueling opponent — in this case, Karen — while Junna shoots arrows covertly.

Onstage, Junna relies on attacks from a distance and subterfuge. The glasses pediments help, but Junna also uses a group of mannequins to distract her opponent. For Junna, the mannequins also represent how, even with all of her effort and ambition, she still feels like one of many.

This added information and framing recontextualizes Junna scolding Karen in the first episode. Junna’s words aren’t for Karen as much as they are for herself. If the leads have yet to be decided, then Junna will use everything at her disposal to overcome any personal weaknesses. It also casts her annoyance at others in dance class who are cooing over Maya and Claudine. Junna certainly admires them, and is taking copious notes, but also becomes aggravated when the class too becomes their stage. Her scolding of the entire class is also a reminder to herself, and her initial disgust at Karen waltzing into the special revue unaware is understandable. All that effort and Karen defeats her in a debut where Karen wasn’t even chosen to participate.

Yet, at the end, two lights shine down onto Karen and Junna from the glasses pediments. Karen wants to perform onstage with her childhood friend Hikari Kagura, and has set out to prove that more than one stage girl can have the center position, against the tradition of the revue. After defeating Junna, Junna accepts this, signified by the lighting, while still strengthening her resolve.

Before we ever see her duel in full, Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight tells us that Maya Tendou is already established as the revue’s top star.

Maya’s first appearance not only introduces her as a character, but position zero itself: the place of the troupe’s top star. She walks through Futaba Isurugi and Kaoruko Hanayagi’s conversation and they part to let her through. Maya then claims the center position for herself. Revue Starlight introduces her there, at position zero, with title card as her shadow is cast over the pink tape representing the center position.

Where Karen Aijou had previously walked to it, stood beside the center position, and invited Mahiru Tsuyuzaki to join her in stretching, Maya claims it. Later, before Karen crashes Hikari Kagura and Junna Hoshimi’s first audition, Maya is positioned at the head of the table in the common room, calmly drinking tea as if she’s presiding over the audition even though she’s not dueling herself.

The second episode places Maya in a pseudo-otokoyaku role with Claudine Saijou as her musumeyaku. This is important, establishing not only the Takarazuka tradition in Revue Starlight‘s Seisho Music Academy, but also cementing their roles — at least for now, until that status quo is truly challenged by Karen’s desire to share the stage. Otokoyaku are the young women in the troupe who play male roles and the musumeyaku are the young women that remain in female roles. Only an otokoyaku can become the troupe’s top star. Claudine’s dance with Maya is a fight for control — one that she notably does not win because she’s still not at Maya’s level, and is also visually stuck in the role of a musumeyaku, automatically giving the lead to Maya. Revue Starlight doesn’t sort its characters strictly into otokoyaku and musumeyaku, but the imagery here serves to establish Maya and Claudine’s power dynamic.

This is later reinforced in their off-screen duel, of which we only are privy to the ending, Claudine’s defeat. Maya stands over her and says that dreams aren’t a goal or something to have, they’re to be exemplified. She then says her signature line, “This is Tendou Maya.” while standing over position zero on the dueling stage. Like her initial introduction in the classroom, her shadow is cast directly over the position. Adding insult to Claudine’s defeat, Claudine is cast in Maya’s shadow. Additionally, the distant light from the tiara gleams above her.

In Revue Starlight‘s third episode, aptly titled “Top Star,” the series makes the connection between Maya, the Venus statue that has been in the Seisho Music Academy courtyard, and tops this all off with swan symbolism on her dueling stage.

When Maya approaches a group of her presumed peers, they’re not presented visually as her peers at all. Instead, Maya takes a similar pose and position that mirrors the Venus de Milo statue in the background. The Aphrodite or Venus de Milo statue is the most well-recognized work of Greek sculpture, depicting the goddess of love and beauty. Maya is already beyond them. She is the goddess, for now. This is mirrored by her introduction and presentation in her dueling stage.

Unlike Karen and Claudine, whose light appears beside them or creates a path in front of them, Maya is always visually introduced as the center. The light falls on her directly as the center at position zero.

The swans and other birds during her dueling stage are also imagery associated with Aphrodite/Venus. Maya throws Karen down a flight of stairs to punctuate Karen’s arrogance in these duels. Karen falls back onto a large swan, also representing Maya. When she looks up through the flying feathers, she sees Maya at position zero at the top of the stairs. It’s in this moment that Karen realizes just how much more of a lead Maya has on the title of top star. Karen can’t begin to reach her.

The birds are even present in Maya’s dormitory room.

Maya’s dueling stage also features a staircase. This is another important Takarazuka setpiece. Every Takarazuka finale involves a giant staircase where all of the actresses sing, dance, and walk down a lit path. These finales also highlight the top star, a troupe’s lead otokoyaku. In Revue Starlight, this is Maya.

Maya finishes her duel with Karen by casually claiming the center position and saying, “Position zero, this is Tendou Maya.” Not only is the title of top star and position zero Maya’s, but the specific Takarazuka imagery in her dueling stage also establishes her as the status quo for Karen to eventually defeat. However, this duel, the “Revue of Pride” also serves to showcase Karen’s own arrogance — she has been claiming to fight for her and Hikari to stand onstage together, but hasn’t bothered to talk to Hikari at all.

Height frequently decides one’s fate in the Takarazuka Revue, if not definitively, then at least in setting would-be Takarazuka stars down a certain path. Only those who become otokoyaku (the Takarazuka women who play male roles) can be the top star. And only those who are naturally tall and well-proportioned can become otokoyaku.

Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight‘s “Banana” Daiba is tall.

When Maya Tendou thoroughly trounces Karen Aijou on the revue’s dueling stage, further proving her position as the troupe’s top star, it comes as no surprise to anyone but Karen. From Revue Starlight‘s first episode, Maya has been visually established as the top star. Therefore, it’s also not a surprise to see her name at the top of the revue rankings followed by Claudine Saijou — the latter of which lost to Maya but won her duel against Futaba Isurugi.

Although Claudine has been visually placed in the musumeyaku role to Maya’s otokoyaku, Claudine too is taller than most of her peers, giving her a natural advantage in her quest to become top star. It’s not fair, but in the world of the Takarazuka Revue — from which Revue Starlight is directly drawing influence, including Seisho Music Academy’s setup and hierarchy — height and proportions can automatically propel a trainee up the ranks, provided that they continue a grueling course load and dedicate their lives to improving. This isn’t to say that Maya and Claudine haven’t worked hard. Revue Starlight is more nuanced than the age-old clash of hard work against talent. It instead takes both into consideration and acknowledges that certain members have natural advantages, especially Maya and Claudine.

Nana’s appearance as the third-ranking revue member, right behind Maya and Claudine, comes as somewhat of a shock, furthering the mystery of Nana’s personal ambitions.

In the same episode, Nana reveals that she will be taking more of a backstage production role rather than vying for a lead role in the 99 troupe’s upcoming performance of “Starlight.” This is met with confusion and surprise from her classmates. It’s implied that Nana has the respect of her peers, especially with Claudine’s genuinely confused reaction later in the episode. There is also an interesting visual and verbal showdown between Maya and Nana, where Maya sizes up Nana and considers her decision to step offstage before accepting it — portrayed visually by Maya taking one of the banana muffins that Nana made for the class.

“For some, knowing what it is to stand upon the stage empowers them to write for it.”

-Maya Tendou, Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight, Episode 3

Revue Starlight reminds us and its characters periodically that the play “Starlight” only has eight roles, but the addition of Hikari Kagura makes nine potential candidates for those eight parts. Nana’s decision to step aside creates a timeline where new arrival Hikari doesn’t have to worry about displacing anyone. Coupled with Nana’s natural leadership qualities — she has been shown to want everyone in the troupe to get along with each other, continuously brings them snacks, her side of the room that her and Junna Hoshimi share is full of pictures of the group and Junna — this could easily be seen as Nana taking the path of least resistance, eschewing her position as one of the top-ranked trainees.

Yet, Nana’s position as the third-ranked duelist defies this. She wouldn’t have been able to get as far as third place in the standings continuously defaulting to the easiest path that upsets the least amount of people. When she talks about writing her script for “Starlight” she admits that she feels pressure from everyone counting on her (jokes about bribery for the lead roles aside).

The Revue Starlight prequel manga gives us another scenario where Nana steps aside, this time for the role of class president in favor of Junna. Nana appears to have the position all but won, when Junna is able to help one girl who is struggling to sing find her voice. After withdrawing, Nana is confronted by Junna who asks her why she stepped aside. Nana simply responds that she wants to support Junna and under her breath whispers that she used to be that girl, the one who couldn’t find her voice. This flies in the face of Nana’s natural abilities that automatically place her on the path towards top stardom: her height and overall look.

It would be easy to write off Nana as the 99 troupe’s “team mom.” Yet her height and appearance combined with her third-place rank — especially since she hasn’t dueled within the scope of the series — and the Takarazuka trappings of Revue Starlight hint that there’s a lot more to “Banana-chan” than meets the eye.

“Starlight. It’s the story of goddesses drawn by the glow of the heavens. We can fight and argue and disagree but there are ties that bind us together.

Yet, we may just as easily be pulled apart, never to meet again. It is a sad story.

The tale of those eight women captivates us.

The song of those eight women draws us in and compels us.

Let’s go to that stage. To that shining star together!”

-opening narration between Karen Aijou and Hikari Kagura, Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight, Episode 1

The opening moments of Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight blur the line between an in-universe theatrical performance and a conversation between lead duo Karen Aijou and Hikari Kagura. Karen takes the lines that highlight similarities between the women. Hikari reminds her that this is a sad story. These women are fated to be pulled apart. It’s an introduction that encapsulates the Takarazuka Revue tradition from every angle.

Young Karen and Hikari take the position of two girls inspired by the performance to eventually apply to Seisho Music Academy to become actresses themselves. Their older, adolescent versions fill the two lead roles onstage. The lines they speak are supposedly from the play Starlight, but also reflect their respective outlooks, breaking the fourth wall a bit. Karen recognizes that their desires for the stage and the spotlight bring them together while Hikari is afraid that those same desires will irrevocably separate them.

Starlight is a framing device for everything that happens, or will happen, in Revue Starlight. Like Maya Tendou’s dominion over position zero as the top star, Starlight is another reminder of the Takarazuka status quo at Seisho Music Academy, presenting the competitive cycle that Karen aims to break. It also offers a way forward that breaks the cycle, especially in context.

“But it was completely amateurish. Next year, our performance has to be more polished. That’s why, for our three years here, we’re doing ‘Starlight.'”

-Junna Hoshimi, Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight, Episode 1

Following the cold open of Revue Starlight‘s premiere, the next mention of the Starlight play occurs when Junna Hoshimi hands out scripts at lunch in Episode 1. This scene establishes more context. Starlight is what the 99th troupe will perform every year, meaning that it’s a very popular play in the tradition of Revue Starlight. Its place in the 99th troupe’s training likely puts it at a similar position to iconic Takarazuka stages like Elisabeth — ai to shi no rondo (Elisabeth — rondo of love and death) and Rose of Versailles.

At this point, Rose of Versailles is in many ways synonymous with Takarazuka itself. Based on the Riyoko Ikeda manga, it follows the life of Oscar François de Jarjayes, a woman who was raised as a man by her father so that she could take his place as head of the royal guard. Not only did it cause a renewed interest in the Takarazuka Revue in the 1970s but it also helped solidify the otokoyaku and musumeyaku roles first seen in the revue’s Mon Paris. Lady Oscar was the perfect otokoyaku role. More importantly, Rose of Versailles was influential in establishing the top star system.

By contrast, Elisabeth has no leading male for the otokoyaku to play opposite the tragic Empress of Austria, Elisabeth. Her husband, Emperor Franz Joseph I is not attentive and defaults to his mother in all things, making him ill-suited for an otokoyaku hero. Instead, there is an anthropomorphized figure of Death that the Takarazuka version adapts to be a romantic hero in the Takarazuka otokoyaku tradition.

Revue Starlight doesn’t strictly adhere to otokoyaku and musumeyaku roles, but hints at them throughout the series, especially with lead pairings like Maya Tendou — who has been established as the 99th troupe’s top star — and Claudine Saijou. We see them opposite each other in Starlight playing the two lead goddesses that are torn apart in their pursuit of a star together. There can only be one top star in the troupe, and in Starlight, there can only be one who captures the star. Despite this, Starlight also has trappings of Elisabeth, with no true male lead.

The tagline of Starlight is “And it shall be bestowed upon you, the Star which you have longed for.” Yet when that star is claimed by one of the leads, the other is struck by beams of red light and disappears while the other watches helplessly. In Hikari and Karen’s fantasy version that opens Episode 4, Hikari watches as sand falls through her fingers while Karen disappears. Moving platforms and transforming stages, along with the staircase promenade that acts as a Takarazuka Revue performance finale, are often designed to showcase the top star, who transcends their onstage performance with continuous appeal to the audience. This goes against the two leads of Starlight who want to grasp the star together — echoing Karen’s promise to stand onstage with Hikari as equals. It’s yet another frame of friction between the nine leading women in the 99th troupe who are pitted against each other in surreal revue duels but also show genuine affection and concern for each other.

In lieu of a dueling stage, Episode 4 gives us reconciliation between Hikari and Karen. When the two stand together, the “stage” of the episode is in a park beneath Tokyo Tower. They stand side-by-side as equals. The tower resembles the tower in Starlight that the two goddesses reach out towards, but instead of a perspective that shows how far away the star is, Hikari and Karen are elevated alongside the tower as a united pair. Unlike the Starlight stage where one of the goddesses vanishes on a moving platform, this scene reiterates that Hikari and Karen are standing on the same platform on the same stage.

Tomohiro Furukawa’s overarching direction of Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight is an interesting cycle of influence. Furukawa worked alongside Kunihiko Ikuhara on Mawaru Penguindrum and Yuri Kuma Arashi. Ikuhara’s directorial flair has clearly inspired a lot in Revue Starlight, especially in the mechanical transformation sequence that transitions Karen Aijou from Seisho Music Academy to a surreal underground dueling stage

Yet, Ikuhara was influenced by the Takarazuka Revue itself: the main subject of Revue Starlight. He also drew inspiration from Takarazuka-influenced anime and directors like Rose of Versailles and Osamu Dezaki. Rose of Versailles in and of itself is often synonymous with the Takarazuka Revue, and helped cement its top star system — the same system that is under scrutiny and criticism in Revue Starlight. Furthermore, Revue Starlight isn’t just an anime project, it’s a multimedia project that includes a stage play directed by former Takarazuka actress and director Kodama Akiko.

No other episode showcases this cycle of influences better than Episode 5, “Where Radiance Resides.”

“Where Radiance Resides” is Mahiru Tsuyuzaki’s episode. In it, she continues in the tradition of Ikuhara’s Nanami Kiryuu (Revolutionary Girl Utena), Ringo Oginome (Mawaru Penguindrum), and Lulu Yurigasaki (Yuri Kuma Arashi) by expressing her extreme jealousy in comedic and repetitive ways that always backfire on her. These comedic theatrics too could be ascribed to the influence of Takarazuka stages on Ikuhara — certain Takarazuka performances are routinely fourth-wall breaking, especially in service of enhancing an emotional narrative or simply showcasing the top star to an eager audience — which he has turned into a more specific style of comedic anime episode that, at first glance, doesn’t fit with the rest of the series. Furukawa takes this blueprint and runs with it in Revue Starlight, bringing everything full circle to the original Takarazuka trappings.

The repetition starts with a pent-up Mahiru smelling Karen’s things and then being caught by her romantic rival, Hikari Kagura before throwing away the object in anger. In their dormitory room, it’s a pillow that Mahiru sniffs without realizing that Hikari is still in the room. She screams and throws the pillow at the door as Hikari walks out. In class, it’s a towel that Mahiru gives to Karen for her sweat. Mahiru stares at the towel in awe without knowing Hikari is behind her. As Hikari walks away, Mahiru screams and throws the towel on the ground. Later, Hikari catches Mahiru about to drink from Karen’s water bottle for an indirect kiss. Once Hikari makes her presence known Mahiru screams and drops it to the floor. Every time Mahiru tries in an indirect way to get closer to Karen, Hikari “interferes,” further highlighting Hikari as the only obstacle that Mahiru sees between her and Karen.

Another visual device that draws attention throughout the episode is a series of glittering sparkles that look like glass fragments. Unlike the purple spots of light found in every episode that represent the revue’s top star tiara, these are specific to Mahiru’s feelings, not only towards Karen but about herself. Like Lulu’s bee that follows her around in Yuri Kuma Arashi Episode 4, or the stars and mosquitoes that interact and break the fourth wall with Ringo in Penguindrum, the sparkles are tied to Mahiru’s jealousy and attraction. This too can be another trapping from Takarazuka, where part of the splendor of their performances relies on slight nods of acknowledgment from the top star to the audience.

They first radiate from Karen while the two are backstage at last year’s Starlight performance. Mahiru is struck by them when Karen smiles. Later, Mahiru wakes up only to find that Karen has already left with Hikari. When she sees Karen at the studio, she’s once again struck by the sparkles that radiate from Karen and surround her.

Sparkles appear not only around Karen, but around Hikari when the two are together. At one point, Mahiru imagines Karen in the position of the top star tiara atop Tokyo Tower, bestowing sparkles onto Hikari beneath her. Hikari catches almost all of them in a net, keeping them from Mahiru who is waiting for scraps below. She’s jealous that Karen is shining for Hikari.

The most telling scene is that Mahiru doesn’t just imagine the sparkles around Karen, she sees them while looking at classmates Futaba Isurugi and Claudine Saijou while they practice scenes. Mahiru’s sparkles don’t just represent her love for Karen, or her jealousy towards Hikari. Yes, she’s jealous of Hikari’s time with Karen, and wants Karen to recognize her feelings. Yet, Mahiru hasn’t actually voiced those feelings, nor has she been honest with herself about her own jealousy. Mahiru is also jealous of Karen, and her other classmates, for their talent. Karen’s talk with Hikari at Tokyo Tower renewed their promise and Karen’s purpose as a stage girl, which is why Karen is shining so much. By contrast, Mahiru has seemingly been trailing in Karen’s wake, unable to figure out what kind of stage girl she wants to be for herself, Mahiru Tsuyuzaki, lacking the same radiance. 

We also see into Mahiru’s head via cardboard cutout puppetry during her dueling stage, the aptly titled “Revue of Jealousy.” Mahiru acts alongside the characters, changing demeanors when she’s acting as herself or Karen. Her representation of Karen as a cool, collected guide for Mahiru confuses Karen herself, who at one point asks, “That’s . . . me?” The puppets represent an idealized version of events that doesn’t accurately reflect reality, but what is going on inside Mahiru’s mind. Mahiru then chases Karen, continuously teeing off against her in a bizarre baseball setup.

The sparkles appear here too, but they’re false. They come from a basket and are meant to be used as a stage prop for Mahiru’s puppet performance. When she talks about herself finding radiance with Karen, she throws them at Karen but visibly isn’t giving them off herself since she hasn’t accepted her own feelings.

Mahiru’s dueling stage also breaks pre-established rules of the revue duels. Where other duels have been secluded from each other even as they occur simultaneously, Mahiru’s interrupts every other concurrent duel as she chases Karen alongside a cat laying lime lines for a baseball diamond. Her setup is also very silly and comedic, especially when compared to the bombast of Maya Tendou or the heartfelt personal touches of Junna Hoshimi’s ruins. Mahiru’s weapon is a wand, which she uses as a baseball bat or club, bludgeoning things directly in contrast to how  she hides her own feelings. It suggests that Mahiru still doesn’t recognize what she wants, and her jealousy is further clouding her judgment.

Karen pulls her out of this by telling Mahiru that she’s already shining as a stage girl who is warm, kind, and enthusiastic.

As champion of her sleepy Hokkaido town, Mahiru was the center of attention and the star of the town before she was attended Seisho Music Academy. In this episode, we see a shy Mahiru in a local news segment about her acceptance to the prestigious academy, calling to mind just how difficult it is to get into the real-life Takarazuka Music School. Mahiru goes from being a big fish in a small pond, to a small fish in the ocean that is Seisho Music Academy, with top-tier talent like Maya Tendou. This causes Mahiru to lose her way a bit and forget what kind of stage girl she wanted to be for herself.

It’s no accident that Mahiru is framed by the news channel overlay and a boom microphone that encroaches on the shot. Normally that would be removed for television, but the shy, unsure Mahiru still isn’t prepared for this much attention. The scene is awkward and the microphone along with the interviewer and Mahiru’s classmates trap her on a makeshift stage in front of her school.

Returning to the sparkles, the first time Mahiru sparkles in this episode, it’s her past self when she is asked by the interviewer to describe what kind of stage girl she wants to be. Her answer, revealed after she loses to Karen in the revue duel, echoes Karen’s words about what kind of stage girl Mahiru is: someone who is kind.

This leads to Mahiru finally shining for herself. The sparkles envelop Mahiru as she’s surrounded by her friends, eating food from her hometown. As a final touch, one of the sparkles taps her baton on her bed as a reminder of Mahiru’s path to becoming a stage girl.

“I’ve been there before so I understand what you’re going through Hanayagi-san. For those who pursue us and those who support us, we have the duty to become the very best versions of ourselves.”

-Maya Tendou to Kaoruko Hanayagi, Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight, Episode 6

Or, in defense of Kaoruko Hanayagi’s duel victory.

Kaoruko isn’t an easy person to like. She’s not supposed to be. Instead, she’s obviously spoiled, lazy, and manipulative. Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight ensures that, leading up to and throughout her focus episode, we as a viewing audience are just as frustrated with Kaoruko’s antics as her lifelong partner, Futaba Isurugi. Perhaps the series did too thorough of a job here, because I’ve seen a lot of pushback that Futaba, not Kaoruko, should have won Episode 6’s Revue of Promises in order to concretely put Kaoruko in her place. However, this would have taken a large amount of the nuance portrayed when it comes to Kaoruko and Futaba’s relationship. It’s fitting that Kaoruko won, even if she’s still as insufferable as ever to some.

“Kaoruko doesn’t seem to understand. This school isn’t the kind of place that let’s you waltz in as someone’s hanger-on.”

-Claudine Saijou to Futaba Isurugi, Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight, Episode 6

Futaba’s rise to one of the better students in the 99th troupe isn’t a shock. Her dedication and effort have been shown throughout previous episodes, most noticeably Episode 3, where she befriends Claudine Saijou. Claudine is in a similar situation as Futaba — trailing after someone who is naturally talented and has a stage pedigree in Maya Tendou. “This is Tendou Maya,” now a catchphrase for how Maya represents the Takarazuka status quo, is first uttered following Maya’s dominion of Claudine in the underground revue duels. Maya never lets up, and is always both a role model and an inspiration, not only for Claudine, but for everyone in the 99th troupe. She takes this role very seriously, going as far as to say that dreams aren’t something to have, but something to be exemplified. Maya is the dream and Claudine does her best to try to beat Maya. Both are shown working hard, long past class time, always going above and beyond what is required of them.

This effort extends to Futaba when Futaba realizes that the top star position is something that she wants to challenge Kaoruko for as a stage girl herself. Thus begins Futaba’s secret training with Claudine, including after-hours practices. By Episode 5, Mahiru Tsuyuzaki sees sparkles around Futaba, an indication that she is shining brightly with her own radiance.

Then we have Kaoruko. Kaoruko is a bit like Mahiru in that she’s the toast of her town growing up, although Kaoruko also inherits a dance style passed down through generations of her wealthy family. She’s used to being adored, especially by Futaba. The episode opens with their childhood promise. After Kaoruko threatens to leave because she’s tired of putting effort into her lessons and simply wants to be showered with praise, Futaba walks away, lamenting that she won’t be able to see Kaoruko’s dancing anymore. Kaoruko follows Futaba and makes her promise: Futaba will continue to be her number one fan, and in return, Kaoruko will show Futaba her true radiance first. There’s a bit to unpack here outside of a childish promise, but the main crux of this scene is that Futaba’s opinion matters more to Kaoruko than anyone else.

This includes Kaoruko’s family, who are presumably teaching her their dance style and preparing her to become the family heir, and the crowd of tourists taking pictures of Kaoruko’s dancing. When Kaoruko wants to further her education at Seisho Music Academy, it’s Futaba who she tells, and Futaba who she insists follow her. The entire world could dote on her, but Kaoruko would trade this for Futaba’s devotion.

“To think the day might come when my dear Futaba-han and I should be forced to cross swords! Well, if that does happen, do kindly let me win, won’t you?”

Kaoruko Hanayagi to Futaba Isurugi, Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight, Episode 4

Naturally, this should place Futaba in the role of “hanger-on.” We learn in Episode 6 that of all applicants, Futaba barely made the cutoff at 30. Futaba has had to work hard just to keep pace, and even harder to get ahead.

Yet, alongside Futaba’s improvement and development as a star in her own right, Kaoruko has stagnated. The “hanger-on” that Claudine references is none other than Kaoruko. In Episode 4, Kaoruko is confused as to why Futaba would enter the giraffe’s revue auditions, especially without telling her, underestimating Futaba’s dedication. This same episode, we see Hikari Kagura and Karen Aijou talk about their own relationship and childhood promise while Kaoruko threatens to rat them out in order to further her own standing. Kaoruko had already been painted as manipulative, but this firmly roots it in her own ambition, showcasing that she’ll figuratively dirty her hands to get ahead. It is, as they say, not a good look when paired with her general laziness.

A few further factors complicate matters more for both Kaoruko and Futaba. Revue Starlight‘s Starlight, which is used as a framing device on multiple occasions, only has eight roles. With the addition of Hikari to the group, there are nine stage girls vying for these positions and the inclusion of Nana Daiba in the auditions during Episode 6 indicates that she’ll still be competing for a spot, despite working on production as well (although there are many things about Banana that are still a mystery, and will likely be explored in Episode 7, which has her name as the title of the episode). This means that one of them will inevitably be left out of the production. Kaoruko’s dedication waxes so much that her audition is uninspired and she fails her first attempt.

Instead of seeing this as a problem of her own laziness, she looks outward, coyly asking Futaba to pick up the pieces for her before throwing a tantrum and threatening to leave, similar to the flashback shown at the beginning of the episode. Back then, Kaoruko immediately renewed her promise to dedicate herself to becoming a star, drawing on Futaba’s love as inspiration and motivation. Here, Kaoruko stubbornly sticks to her decision in an attempt to manipulate Futaba without recognizing Futaba’s own inspiration is Kaoruko herself, even after Maya spells it out for her.

Futaba and Kaoruko’s relationship is irrevocably tied to their respective ambition and desires. Kaoruko repeatedly makes the mistake of conflating Futaba’s desire to best her as a desire for Futaba to abandon their relationship — especially when Futaba relies on Claudine to help improve, drawing out Kaoruko’s jealousy — when the opposite is true. Futaba values their relationship so strongly in part because of Kaoruko’s initial dedication to becoming a star for Futaba.

This inevitably leads to the duel in question, where Futaba beats some sense into Kaoruko as they sing their feelings at each other. Kaoruko being Kaoruko relies on some underhanded tactics — threatening to remove her own button — but in her victory reaffirms her promise. Because of Futaba’s love for her, Kaoruko will continue to work towards becoming her best self, much like Maya does for Claudine. This is why Kaoruko had to win. It’s also why she could only win after finding herself again, in a direct attack dancing sequence with her naginata that reminds Futaba of her childhood dance performances.