Revue Starlight

Episode 8

After last week's Banana Bombshell, I would have forgiven Revue Starlight for taking a week to let the audience and its characters decompress. Instead, it carries that momentum through into another propulsive episode full of drama and further revelations about the mysterious Auditions. Hikari takes center stage, and now that we know the additional significance of her sudden appearance, it's time to learn about what really happened in London and how it ties into the birth, death, and rebirth of a Stage Girl.

Hikari's life in London looks a lot like Karen's life in Japan. Both the Royal Academy and Seisho have similar curricula, similar performances, and even similar rivals. It almost begs the question why Hikari felt like she had to go to London in the first place, but this version of Hikari is bright, smiling, and seemingly just as capable of making rash decisions as Karen. Their mutual promise to perform Starlight together drives her to study and practice as hard as she can, urged along by Karen's frequent letters. However, even that is not enough to secure top billing for her. In a twist of fate, the Royal Academy suffers from giraffe overpopulation, and when he strikes up a conversation with Hikari, she finds herself seduced by the prospect of claiming her own eternal position on the stage of fate. She fights a series of battles called Auditions in a mysterious underground theater beneath a giant facsimile of London Bridge, which should sound familiar. Hikari does well, but not well enough. As we certainly know by now, there's only one position zero, and Hikari loses the final Audition. But that's not all she loses.

This whole Audition thing has been sketchy since episode one, and now its dark Faustian gambit is out in the open. The winner gets all the power and privilege that comes with being a Top Star, but that kind of mastery over space, time, and theater doesn't come from nowhere. That “fuel,” as the giraffe puts it, is extracted from the girls who fought and lost, and Hikari gets her passion for acting sucked right out of her. The weight of her loss is felt immediately—she's literally 130 grams lighter now—but the the real tragedy of this absence comes in waves. On the stage, her emptiness overwhelms the fiery spectacle of the play's climax and causes her to break character, ruining both the scene and the production. As she then reflects in a dark museum, surrounded by displays of similarly empty fossils, she realizes that her passion, her “shine,” was a gift that Karen gave her, and it was the link keeping their relationship alive despite their distance. Hikari the Stage Girl is dead now, but she can't abide breaking her promise with Karen, who means so much to her, so she takes fate back into her own hands and calls the giraffe. The composition and lighting of this museum scene is exquisite throughout, communicating both Hikari's sadness and the ominous consequences of the surreal underworld she's been wrapped up in. The giraffe skeleton in particular has a huge and threatening presence, and it reinforces that the second chance he gives Hikari is not out of kindness, but out of a singular obsession to create the most dramatic conflicts for the ultimate revue.

With Hikari's sudden appearance now explained, the show jumps from this flashback straight into her duel with Nana. Whereas the previous episode leaned into Starlight's ability to craft mood and characterization despite limited animation, this episode goes all out with a thrilling Audition scene. Unlike the previous duels, their conflict isn't personal so much as it is ideological. Banana is fighting for her repeat performance, a diorama in which her friends can relive the beautiful moments of their first production without having to suffer the losses and disappointments of the real world. In the context of what we now know about the Auditions, her time loop is also a kindness that prevents them from losing the fuel they'd have to give up for failing the audition. Hikari, however, is fighting for the possibility that a better future can exist and deserves to be given a chance, no matter how much sadness it might risk. She herself is proof that a person can lose so much yet still retain enough passion to push forward. Hikari, however, is fighting herself as much as she's fighting Nana. The stage metamorphoses to mirror the moment that she realized what she lost, with a giant hand reaching down to snuff her out as Banana, still blinding, stands among the flames. But Hikari doesn't let her sword falter this time. Memories of Karen, whose love and support inspired Hikari to become a Stage Girl so many years ago, flood her mind and douse her doubts and regrets. The tower inverts, the flower blooms, and Hikari's shine is born again.

That Revue Starlight is able to put together such an impressively composed and animated duel scene eight episodes into its run shows just how hard everyone on the crew must be working, and the result is dazzling. The water animation alone is above and beyond the call of duty for a TV anime, but the rest of the duel looks great too, with bodies and swords flying with every blow. For me, what really sets Starlight apart is its marriage of music with action. The lack of translations for the revue songs in these simulcasts continues to be aggravating, but the beauty of music is how much it can communicate without words. I legit got chills at the climax of this episode, with waves crashing, swords clashing, and the music swelling into the final blow between these two girls who gave all that they have. Banana's reign ends, and I appreciate that the show dealt with it so quickly. Making her time loop the focus of the story would have felt hackneyed and wrong. Banana had to be defeated, but she's not a villain. She was powerful, ambitious, and childish, and now she has a chance to grow into something beyond everyone's banana. Instead, this episode's conclusion reinforces that the real fight is going to be with the Auditions themselves. The giraffe practically drools with anticipation over the inevitable duel between Karen and Hikari, but I'm holding out hope that these girls can find an answer that exists outside of his zero sum paradigm.

Overall, this was another simply stunning episode of Revue Starlight. The visual storytelling is so good that you could mute the audio and still be swept away, but the plot and characterization are no slouches either. The surreal intrigue of the Auditions is now at its most sinister, and Hikari has emerged as much more than a mysterious and emotionless transfer student. Revue Starlight is also about theater as an institution, however, and this episode is both a dramatic and thematic refutation of traditionalism. Banana's repeat performance was born from the idea that the only real successes are replicas of past successes—that only by sticking to the perceived boundaries of the script can a truly great performance be made. It's a common sentiment, but taken to its extreme, a stifling one. Hikari is a perfect foil for Banana. She too often thinks back to one particular performance of Starlight, but she doesn't idolize that performance the way Banana does. Instead, for Hikari and Karen, that Starlight is their motivation to continue forward. They don't dwell on the past. They aren't blinded by it. They use it to keep moving, even when tragedy seems inevitable. That's what drives art and love alike.

Rating: A+

Revue Starlight is currently streaming on HIDIVE.

Steve is a longtime anime fan who can be found making bad posts about anime on his Twitter.