Series Review: Stellvia
Uchuu no Stellvia. Stellvia of the Universe. The series that, along with Onegai Twins and Narutaru, marks the beginning of my immersion into the digisub-downloading BitTorrent scene. The last episode rolled off the airwaves recently, and now that I’ve had a chance to digest the ending and look back on the series as a whole I’m ready to put forth my thoughts.
Stellvia starts out cute, a bit quirky, but full of bright promise. For all intents and purposes it’s the story of one Katase Shima, young new student at the Stellvia orbital facility. The true stars of the show are members of the group known as the “Not So Big Four,” comprised of Shima, Arisa Glennorth, Kayama Akira and Fujisawa Yayoi. Their friendship and their other relationships form the backbone of the series in a way that transcends the sci-fi plot elements that ostensibly drive the story along.
Nearly two hundred years prior to the start of the story, Earth was hit by a catastrophic impact. If that wasn’t bad enough, the survivors quickly establish that a second “wave” of debris will come a couple centuries afterward. All of humanity’s efforts are bent towards coming up with a plan and enough advanced technology to stave off oblivion.
The Second Wave is, of course, due not too long after Shima’s arrival on Stellvia. The first portion of the series plays like any number of other “academy in space” stories we’ve seen before, though generally better written than most I can think of. Teachers, rivals, challenges, disappointments, grades and young love… it’s all there, with few surprises.
To give those of you who haven’t seen the show a safe stopping point, I’ll sum up this portion of the review like so: Overall, Stellvia is an enjoyable series that I’ll be happily keeping and re-viewing from time to time. It has a great opening theme song, a solid pair of closing themes (alternating based on the “mood” of the episode), distinctive and entertaining characters, some compelling story arcs and the end of the story manages not to suck.
Oh yeah, and I’d love to have those bumper images as desktop wallpapers, if someone could talk the studio into it. Please? (That’s right, almost every commercial bumper has a unique rendered space scene relating to the show. Very cool.)
The show’s not perfect, nor is it particularly unique. It is, however, solid light entertainment that’s surprisingly well presented. There are a few sequences that I believe to be absolutely brilliant, and that raises the series up above what would otherwise be a “middling” grade.
My grade? I give it a B+, with a gold star for extra recognition.
Now, if you’ve seen the show and really want to get into the nitty gritty… or you just plain don’t mind spoilerish material… please continue on…
It’s probably unfair to pick nits in the extended, spoilerish section of this review. In my defense I’ll state that I stand by my summation and recommendation, and I don’t think anyone who watches the series based on it will feel cheated because they don’t know about what I write below. So be it.
Besides, my complaints are relatively minor.
Granted that “Shipon,” as she comes to be called, is a whiney crybaby… but that aspect of her personality isn’t always handled very well. Sometimes she cries without explanation, and sometimes she recovers from her fits of malaise and frustration rather miraculously. It’s entirely possible that I’m not really accounting for the way real people can shift moods. It’s also entirely possible that I’m still overly sensitive to the portrayal of leading characters after the RahXephon debacle. Either way, this isn’t really a big deal, it just catches my attention a bit.
The Shima/Kouta relationship stagnates after their aborted trip home, and that’s a damned shame. It’s as if the writers didn’t really know what to do after that pair had had their sweet romantic moments. Oddly enough, they did a far better job with the (nigh-inexplicable) JoJo/Akira pairing. We don’t see all that much of how their relationship develops, but the scenes we are given are remarkably telling ones. Why couldn’t the writers have treated their starring lovers with equal deftness? Who knows?
One of the things I admire most about Stellvia is the way they depart from what you might ordinarily expect. The Second Wave that you expect to show up around Episode 23? It’s well over before the show hits its halfway mark. “Whoah,” I thought, “so what will they do now?” Later on, Kouta is shown to be the exceptional wunderkind with the truly special abilities… which flies directly in the face of what you would expect given Shima’s central position in the cast. Instead we watch her struggle with the fact that she’s not the most exceptional person available; this provides some interesting moments through the back half of the series.
The issue of the alien beings is a bit of a wash. On one hand, it seems odd to bring them into the story in such a cursory fashion. On the other, as has been pointed out to me, to have made them more of a presence might have weighted down the narrative and ruined the overall story. I’m not completely happy with that part of the series, but I’m willing to let it slide. It’s not all bad, it’s a just a bit disconcerting.
Before I wind this up, I have to give major kudos to the writers for one particular scene. Fed up with Shipon’s pouting fits, her three friends all try to pull her out of her funk. After she snipes at one of them, all hell breaks loose as feelings are stomped on and buried frustrations come to the surface. This is, without a doubt, one of the most honest and true-to-life scenes I’ve ever watched in any medium. It feels true, straight from the gut. We’ve all been stuck in a bad mood and resisted attempts to make us feel better. When Shima lashes out at Yayoi in that nasty tone of voice, you believe that deep inside her is a core of frustration and bitterness that she works very hard to keep well hidden from those she loves. All four girls are immediately given depth of characterization that you wouldn’t normally expect from this style of anime series… and that’s on top of the already-solid characterization that came before.
Yes, I realize that not everyone will find that scene as fascinating as I do. I can live with that. Whatever you may think of it, it does stand as an example of the kind of writing this team is capable of. I look forward to seeing what they can do in future projects.
I’ll close by saying that the way the series ends is vastly superior to many endings I’ve seen lately. It’s a good, solid, no-nonsense close to the story. It’s not a last-five-minutes deus ex ending, it’s not a “let’s see the face of God” ending, it’s not a muddled incomprehensible “ooo, look how cool and mysterious we are” mess of an ending. For this reason alone, Stellvia would become one of my favorite anime series. Luckily there are many other perfectly good reasons to watch and re-watch the show.
Good stuff, Stellvia is. Well worth the time. ‘Nuff said.