While this set up on its safe sounds like a dime a dozen set up for any shonen sports series, its how the show focuses on the real lives of these characters instead of the games themselves that sets it apart. Since I haven’t actually explained it yet, the show follows around a boy’s soft tennis team on the verge of collapsing when the extremely talented Maki Katsuragi transfers in and starts turning things around for the time. Lots of positives and negatives all swirled up, culminating in a show that accurately reflects real life. Just look at the trailer above if you don’t believe us, however, we’d stop the article here of the animation was all to write home about.Īs has been hinted in the opening paragraph and the title of this piece itself, Stars Align covers a whole lot of ground. The Vision Of Escaflowne might be one of the prettiest TV anime we’ve ever seen with its gothic fantasy influences and high-quality Sunrise animation, but Kazuki Akane upped the game here with the character animation alone. Perfect shots, perfect timing, perfect ebb and flow. However, the show was animated, its a joy to simply watch. It looks like some roto-scoping, a form of animation that lays drawings over live-action film, was used to get the player movements down right although don’t quote us on it. ![]() Maki Katsuragi and Toma Shinjo, the two leads, along with the rest of the boy’s soft tennis team move fantastically about the court in each and every episode. These tennis matches are downright kinetic You can feel each swing of the racket and each bounce of the ball. The entire show oozed a simplified yet elegant style that looks good when still and even better when animated. On that note, Stars Align was certainly Kazuki Akane’s triumphant return artistically. Writing and directing an entirely originally show, Stars Align was supposed to be his big return. Unfortunately, this past decade has largely seen him directing the Code Geass: Akito The Exiled OVAs which were competent enough but not a series he had complete control over. The two shows he made after, Noien – To Your Other Self – and Birdy The Mighty Decode, are both something of cult classics in the medium. ![]() Younger fans probably aren’t familiar with Heat Guy J which, while not being the best, actually aired on America’s MTV 2. From there he’s always tried his hands at new things with some winners and losers under his belt. Cleverly combined a fantasy setting with mechs, it’s one of the most visually and emotionally impactful anime out there. As I mentioned, he directed the seminal The Vision Of Escaflowne which definitively holds up as one of the best anime of the 90s. Something of an auteur who always tried to make shows that stood out from the crowd, offering something different to the majority of cartoons coming out of Japan, Akane ‘s largely responsible for why it’s a standout. Instead, my first rewatch in over a decade of the 90s classic The Vision Of Escaflowne left me fiending for more of director Kazuki Akane and wouldn’t you know it? He just directed his first original show in over a decade… Which unfortunately got canceled.īefore we get into why Stars Alignwas so good and what makes its premature cancellation so damning, let’s talk a little about its director and writer Kazuki Akane. No, I had no idea about all the show’s incredible qualities which we’re going to get to. ![]() It wasn’t even sports anime heads talking up a show that had exceptional fluid tennis animations. I didn’t see fans on Twitter reacting to the shocking but emotionally impact scenes of abuse and unhealthy relationships between parents and children that are all too real in our world. What got me to actually watch this bombshell of a show wasn’t, sad to say, the anime community buzzing about a show that was openly included queerness with openly trans and, using the actual word, non-binary characters. ![]() I remember about a year ago Jizue, a jazzy post-rock band I’ve liked for a long long time, announced they were handling the soundtrack for the at the time upcoming anime however it had slipped my mind by the time the show came around in fall of 2019. Stars Align wasn’t on my radar when it was actively airing.
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