The coming weeks, I’m planning to hold another movie spree, so you can expect a lot of movie reviews. I’ve been meaning to check out Five Star Stories for quite a while now, but I could never find it. Since a whole string of releases recently became available, I decided to check it out, but ultimately I had to be disappointed. This is another one of those movies that try to put way too much in way too little time.

But let me first give credit where credit is due: the art in this movie is absolutely gorgeous. The characters are incredibly detailed and well animated. And sure, some characters may look a bit too ridiculous, but you can see that nearly every character and mecha is drawn with a lot of imagination, I can’t think of any other anime that looks quite like this.

But yeah, the manga for Five Star Stories consists out of twelve volumes. The creators tried to stuff this into only one hour. There’s no way that fits, not to mention that only the first two manga volumes were released at the time that this series was produced. It seems like only the first volume got animated or something, which leaves HUGE plotholes behind.

As an example, we have this bad guy, who everyone says horrible things about, and yet we never actually see him do anything illegal. Sure, he’s a bit of an asshole, but in comparison, the good guys of the movie are much worse: they keep talking about morality and justice, but they also don’t resist to kill innocent people, they turn little girls into war machines and the president of a country somehow manages to leave his post for TEN WHOLE YEARS, doing God knows what in the process.

The setting does have potential: you can see some imagination in the political system for this story, the link between mecha pilots, and how these people fit into society, but it’s never really used well with the very limited scope that this series uses. Right now, the good guys do nothing but flaunt their super awesome mega powers, while the bad guys are simply being stupid assholes. There’s hardly any depth to the characters, other than the father of the girls, maybe.

The final scene of this episode really showed that the creators of this series are biased for the main couple. As soon as Kurumi even mentioned the possibility of talking to another boy, the dramatic music set in and they tried to make it look like a cliff-hanger. Like it’s blasphemy if the two were to even look at each other. Even though Kurumi was doing what she’s been doing ever since the previous episode, and it wasn’t really worse than any of her other plans. This really could hurt this show in the long run.

But yeah, it’s the small things like this that prevent me from fully enjoying this series. When you look at the big picture, there really isn’t much wrong with this series: it’s got a nice concept of an outcast who manages to find herself. The dialogue is well detailed and the characters have good concepts. But then there are times at which the creators are just trying too hard, like for example dragging the evil bitch-arc on for too long (I’m sure that I wouldn’t have complained as much about that arc if it was done in just one episode). This episode also carried Sawako’s naiveness a bit too far, and I feel that Mamiko Nouto doesn’t really fit her as a voice actress.

So yeah, I’m not often one to agree with the “the manga is so much better”-arguments, but I think that it really holds up here. This is not about cutting certain parts off, this is rather about blindly adapting a pretty good manga without thinking about the transition from still frames to animation. I personally couldn’t care less whether creators of an anime delete stuff or add extra stuff in, as long as it works. This goes with series that take a lot of these artistic liberties like Umineko and Full Metal Alchemist, but also with series that do try to put everything in from the original source-material like this series and Bakemonogatari.

Incidentally, I noticed something interesting when I looked at the staff page at ANN. While there is very little to say about the main director, the script has been written so far by two people: Tomoko Konparu, who wrote the majority of the episodes, and Mamiko Ikeda, who wrote episodes 2, 7 and 10. Incidentally, now that I look back, I can say that these three episodes belonged to the best ones of the series so far. My guess is that Tomoko Konparu, who also is doing the series composition, really isn’t having her right year: the series composition she did on Chi’s New Address also left a lot to be desired and while she has worked and contributed to a lot of great and awesome series in the past, this time she just seems to have an off season.

I think another reason why I’m extra critical of this series, even though it seems to be loved by many, is because half of the times, the jokes fall flat. Do other people have this as well? I mean, there are tons of awkward moments in this series for me when the creators are trying to make a joke, which just isn’t funny to me. There really is this thing called suspense of disbelief, and if this series had built up any at this point I definitely wouldn’t be whining as much as I am now, but it’s a shame that this show continues to break this for me. It’s especially annoying now that even Kobato, which once was even duller than this series for me, is getting better and better.
Rating: (Enjoyable)