The Fall 2023 Anime Preview Guide

Stardust Telepath

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Umika is a sweet yet shy high school girl. She has trouble speaking to others and dreams of having a friend from another planet. But her lonely school life takes a cosmic turn when she meets transfer student Yu, an alien with telepathic powers! The two become close and promise to go to space one day. So, they decide to build a rocket and shoot for the stars, making new friends along the way.

Stardust Telepath is based on a manga series of the same name by Rasuko Ōkuma. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Mondays.

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Richard Eisenbeis
Rating:

Putting the sci-fi elements and a myriad of cute moments to the side, Stardust Telepath is the story of a young person trying to find her place in the world. Growing up, many kids feel like they don't belong. Due to interests, personality, or simply social anxiety, it can be hard to find where you fit in. It can, in all honesty, feel like there's no place for you on Earth—which is taken quite literally when it comes to Umika.

Umika is so shy—so unable to connect with others—that she dreams of escaping Earth entirely and finding a race of telepathic aliens who can understand her thoughts and feelings even without her having to express them verbally. Of course, part of this is just her looking for the easy way out. Telepathic aliens would mean she's fine the way she is. She wouldn't need to do the hard work of practicing her social skills—and thus avoid the possibility of getting made fun of for the things she says as she has been in the past.

The good thing is that a part of her knows this. After all, it's not Yu's telepathic powers that form a friendship between the two girls. Rather it's because Umika keeps pushing herself to socialize with Yu. She tries to take every chance she is given—doing her best to stack the deck against her social anxiety by controlling the time and location of their talks (and even preparing notes). Now, it helps that Yu is a receptive, empathetic person with similar interests but if Umika had done nothing as usual—just sat in her seat never talking—then she would likely still be alone.

The simple fact is that Umika doesn't need a telepathic alien to make friends—and it doesn't matter whether Yu is actually one or not. The skills she is developing now can be used again and again to make friends. Umika took the (impossibly hard) first step. She fought with her insecurities to put herself out there. And now, it's time to reap the rewards. If that sounds like something you'd enjoy, give this one a watch.

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Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

It's probably just the "girls and space" combination, but something about this reminds me of the Subaru-sponsored magical girl show Wish Upon the Pleiades. As of right now, that's more a passing thought than anything more substantial, but I do hope that Yu is an alien and that the girls (four, according to the opening theme) get to do something substantive with the concept of aliens and space because otherwise there isn't a ton here to distinguish itself. Despite some adorable imagery and a heroine whose social anxiety I feel in my soul, the first episode of Stardust Telepath is one I enjoyed less and less as it went on.

The start is solid. Umika is about to start high school, and she's terrified, not only because it's a new stage in her life but also because of what that implies: having to interact with strangers and the risk that this will end up like every other school experience in her life, with her feeling so on the outside that she doesn't even belong on Earth. To cope with that emotional beating, Umika has convinced herself that somewhere out in the vast universe is a planet or two where she really belongs, a place where people will love and understand her. It's a very relatable coping mechanism. I was more on the fantasy side of things, where I'd walk into closets and wardrobes or makeup portal theories of my own in hopes of finding a world where I belonged, and it grounds Umika's character. She's so firm in her beliefs that she even has an "alien language dictionary" that she treats as real. To have been pushed so far by her peers is depressing, and even when we see the girl sitting next to her trying to be friendly, it's clear that Umika doesn't believe it's real.

All of this made me strongly dislike the teacher, even though I recognized her techniques, such as mandated group activities. In all fairness, she does allow Umika to half-ass her way through a self-introduction that had to feel like absolute torture to the girl. But that sort of well-meaning ice-breaking activity isn't calibrated to cope with kids like Umika, and I would have liked to see the teacher acknowledge that. (Wishful thinking even in non-Japanese schools, honestly.) But Yu is both Umika's savior and the point where the episode takes a turn for the annoying. While Yu's telepathy, or "foreheadpathy," as she calls it, is a salve to Umika's anxious soul, Yu is such a stereotypical perky girl character that she drags the tone down. Whether she's really an alien or not almost doesn't matter because there's so little else about her that's unique.

This isn't a bad start. Watching Umika find a place to belong is still a rewarding experience, and if the clearest sign that Yu is an alien is how her sweater stays up, well, the rest of the character designs make up for it. I suppose it comes down to who and what you're watching this for because it could be a heartwarming story of an anxious girl learning to feel safe or a madcap schoolgirl tale of aliens. Maybe it's all in what you want to see.

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Nicholas Dupree
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Stardust Telepath is utterly straightforward about what it's trying to be: cute and funny, both in a relatively mild way. It occupies that space that many Manga Time Kirara adaptations do: low key, but not so much that it becomes meditative or sedate, built on simple jokes driven by easily definable personality quirks, and generally sweet enough to be easy viewing. In combination, that ends up for a perfectly pleasant sit, but it also feels like it's not capitalizing on its most interesting ideas.

At first, it seems like there might be something to Umika's obsession with aliens, spurred by her extreme shyness to seek out the extraterrestrial as an escape. That's a pretty common fantasy among people who struggle to make friends or feel isolated from the rest of the world, and it could certainly make for a solid character arc. Yet the way it's handled here is so simple and repetitive that it feels more like a designated character gimmick than a fleshed-out personality. It's more a device to make her timid, cute, and sympathetic, but it feels like it could be so much more if it were allowed to be.

Similarly, you'd think they would play a little more with the question of Akeuchi being from a different planet – maybe keep it ambiguous and have the cast wonder if she's actually an alien or just her own kind of outcast who's created a persona to hide behind. Instead, we're pretty sure she's really from space by the episode's end unless she's just really good at reading people and super committed to the bit by living in an abandoned lighthouse. That means the most compelling parts of our main characters have been sanded down to comedic gimmicks by the end credits, leaving little to grab onto besides some alright jokes and the implication that the two might kiss eventually.

The show does look nice. It's far more polished than the last handful of Studio Gokumi projects. The characters are cleanly rendered, some interesting shots are scattered throughout to help build the atmosphere, and Umika has some pretty funny faces across the episode. It's just the right complement to this kind of light comedy and is a big reason why this episode, as simple and somewhat repetitive as it is, never felt stale. It's far from being out of this world, but if you're in the mood for a simple ensemble comedy with a lot of blushing and foreheads touching, this should deliver just fine.

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James Beckett
Rating:

Like many protagonists before her, Umika Konohoshi suffers from crippling social anxiety. Here's the twist, though: Instead of being obsessed with something like becoming a pop idol, participating in outdoorsy adventures, or indulging in some niche crafting hobby, Umika is a nerd…for space aliens! As in, she carries an “Alien Language” dictionary and doodles UFOs in class when she's supposed to be studying. Talk about feeling like you're from another planet, am I right? It looks like Umika is doomed to life as a social outcast, but then she meets the one girl whose alien obsession might rival even her own!

Did…did that slight variation in the usual coming-of-age comedy formula make you make you laugh or even crack a smile? I sure hope so because that's all Stardust Telepath packed for this field trip, and it is unprepared for any other activities. Umika is an awkward, alien-obsessed introvert. Yu is an awkward, alien-obsessed extrovert, and together, the two will pal around and do a bunch of cutesy stuff. That's the show, take it or leave it.

On the plus side, Stardust Telepath looks shiny and colorful enough, and the animation has the lively energy that a show like this needs to keep things moving from scene to scene. There's also a slight sense of “mystery” to the story, what with the whole “Is Yu really a space alien, or is she simply a deluded and potentially homeless girl in desperate need of a friend?” question hanging above everything. Just don't go into Stardust Telepath expecting master-class levels of intrigue. This seems to be a classic Cute Girls Doing Cute Things series, through and through.

The biggest risk with shows like this is that for however much we can break down the animation and writing and so on, the most critical factor for its success comes down to that intangible quality of cuteness that will vary from person to person. Does the show make you go, “Daaawwww lookit these girls, they so cuuuuuuute!” or does it make you roll your eyes. Unfortunately, my cuteness alarms remain as dormant as ever, and I spent more of this premiere cringing than I did going, “Squeeeee!” It's perfectly fine, but I don't see any reason to go back to it in the future.