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Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight and the Mystery of Daiba Nana (Part 2, more...
Nana “Banana” Daiba is tall. She is talented. The series makes a point to show her high up in the revue duel standings — third, behind Claudine Saijou and Maya Tendou. It’s a clear message that she...
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“Fly Me to the Star”— tracking the iterations of Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue...
“I’ve always had my eye on you. Seeing you let me leave my loneliness behind. But the moon bites back its laughter again tonight. Won’t you turn my way? Oh, fly me to the star.” – “Fly Me to the...
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To be a stage girl: the fall of Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight’s Hikari Kagura
To be chosen as a Takarazuka Revue trainee is part physique, part talent, and part effort. The audition includes singing, dancing, and sight-reading, much of which cannot be prepared in advance. No...
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Banana’s “Starlight:” Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight Episode 9
A script is a personal item. Even when I wasn’t allowed to scribble in the margins of my Guys and Dolls or Little Shop of Horrors scripts — they were rented, not bought, by my high school — I covered...
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The melancholy of a musumeyaku — Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight’s Claudine...
Throughout all of Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight, we never see Claudine Saijou’s dueling stage. There are glimpses of it when Mahiru Tsuyuzaki’s performance crashes through several other revues, but...
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The melancholy of a musumeyaku (part two) — Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight’s...
Hikari Kagura’s purported Episode 10 betrayal of childhood friend Karen Aijou is shown in Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight‘s first episode. Not foreshadowed, straight up shown, albeit in a dream. From...
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The Disappearance of Hikari Kagura
“Those who cannot wake up in the morning. Those who are content standing on the sidelines. Those people will never be called upon.” -Giraffe to Karen Aijou, Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight, Episode 1...
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The true giraffe was in our hearts all along (or, the Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue...
“A stage that never ends. Taking on the shine that this stage requires enough for someone else as well. Such is the atonement for a stage girl who must surely die. The stage of fate that she has...
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In the Summertime: yet another post on the cinematography and atmosphere of...
Winter has always been my favorite season, followed closely by autumn. Perhaps it’s because I grew up in the northeast. Perhaps it’s because my parents love to tell an anecdote about how my father had...
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We are who our backpacks say we are (or not) — the SSSS.Gridman trio and...
Initially, it seems like a fairly innocuous shot of backpacks. Yet, in the world of SSSS.Gridman — which uses a variety of pillow shots to create a stifling summer atmosphere in contrast with its...
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The flower language of Bloom Into You (Sayaka, Koyomi, and Akari)
Naturally a series titled Bloom Into You — although the literal translation of Yagate Kimi ni Naru would be “eventually I become you” — is going to be rife with flower language. I would have been...
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The flower language of Bloom Into You (Touko and Yuu)
The majority of Bloom Into You‘s opening sequence flower language begins with lead couple Touko Nanami and Yuu Koito’s friends: Sayaka Saeki, Akari Hyuuga, and Koyomi Kanou. Koyomi and Akari are each...
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When past was future: the goddesses of Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight’s...
“Starlight. This is the story of a distant planet from long ago, in the faraway future.” -Hikari Kagura, Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight, Episode 9 Compelling and captivating are two words used...
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Normal girl Usagi Tsukino
Usagi Tsukino never really had a choice. At the end of every day for the past three months, I’ve been watching a few episodes of the original season of Sailor Moon. Usagi Tsukino and her crew kept me...
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Welcome to Akane-ism — SSSS Gridman
“I’ve come to rescue you from ‘boredom.'” Oft-forgotten due to Yuuta Hibiki’s amnesia, Rikka Takarada’s awkwardness, and the initial launch of Gridman himself is the fact that none other than Akane...
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Creating Otherworldly Spaces (Visual Storytelling in Tsurune, Part 1)
Minato Narumiya’s initial introduction is as a wide-eyed child at a kyuudou (the Japanese martial art of archery) event. He asks his mother about the sound that a bowstring makes when an arrow is...
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[Twelve] Personality, Memory, and Phosphophyllite — Land of the Lustrous
Whenever I visit my parents’ house, I tend to travel along the same paths that I did when I lived there as a teenager and twenty-something. I grab a bagel at Bagel World, a breakfast staple that I...
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[Eleven] The 99th troupe’s 99th performance — Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight
Within my first month of high school, I carried an armful of drop cloths down a narrow flight of stairs, deep into the heart of the old building, a place that few students knew existed. The door...
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[Ten] To my younger self, in defense of Rei Hino — Sailor Moon
Before ubiquitous personality tests sorted people into houses belonging to a certain British magical boarding school, there was still anime. Sailor Moon used established, color-coded sentai archetypes...
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[Nine] There is always a Judy Knightley — Shoujo ☆ Kageki Revue Starlight
There will always be someone better than you. I have an odd profession. One that inspires questions like, “How did you get into this?” Or, more frequently, “What is this?” Depending on how much people...
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