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REVIEW: Stellvia DVD 1

+ A unique vision of the future, with an endearing cast of characters

One thing that really sets Stellvia apart from the average space anime is that the characters look decidedly cute rather than realistic.

For a series made in 2003, the blending between 2-D and CGI animation is disappointing,

The English dub of Stellvia, while passable, has its priorities in the wrong places: the secondary characters, such as teachers, sound very competent, but the central characters of Shima and Arisa suffer from amateurish voice acting.

Despite the clever futuristic designs, the animation in Stellvia drags the visual style down a few notches. As mentioned before, the flight scenes look fine in motion, but the same can't be said for the 2-D work. The character animation, while not glaringly choppy, is just the bare minimum needed to make things look convincing. The storyboarding relies too much on plain, straight-on camera angles, with no signs of creativity in the way the scenes are directed

Overall, I think the reviewer shouldn't jump to conclusions. The series DOES start out a little slow

Kiddy Grade was another series that started slowly and got very interesting (around Episode 8, which is on the third volume), and I loved watching that series as much as I'm loving Stellvia. The series was very popular in Japan last season because of the strong character relations and good storylines. You can't expect the audience to be rushed into the plot of the series right away; the first four episodes were designed to set up the plot of the series. Stellvia is a 26-episode series, not a 4-episode OVA.

I highly agree, both about stellvia and about Kiddy Grade (another series I like alot. still haven't gotten it, since I'm waiting for the series boxed set first).

Like I said, stellvia starts getting good with dvd 2 and onward, so the slow eps in the first disc are necessary as character developers so that the story can still have it's deep characters even when it gets kicked into high gear, because of the character development that has already taken place and is still being built on.

A disastrous shock wave caused by a star severely crippled planet Earth. However, mankind continued to strive on, and has developed technology to survive through a future wave.
Many generations later, students are sent to space station academies to train for life in space, which is essential to the continued existence of mankind.