Star Dust

Star Dust is not a good anime. However, that doesn't stop it from being an unintentionally hilarious parody of every 90's PSA and after-school special ever.

We have a future Earth that's been completely ravaged by pollution, and now garbage is thrown into sun and hazardous material is thrown into Jupiter. There's something about how radioactive waste dumped into the sun illegally is making sunstorms worse. I don't think that's how stars work, but whatever. The anime is not subtle or nuanced at all about its environmentalist themes, it's just a blunt "STOP POLLUTING!" message like every 90's PSA. Okay, but where *do* we throw our ... trash? Yeah, it's good not to litter, but what do you do when the landfills have gotten so big they cover the entire Earth? There's a lecturing monologue at the very end about how pollution is even going to make space uninhabitable, so clearly they *don't* want the solution to be "throw it into space." There's never an actual solution proposed, just a lecture on what *not* to do.

What elevates this from preachy to unintentional comedy gold is that almost every character in this is a wildly over-the-top racist. Like, racist in ways that would make your hillbilly uncle from north Florida go "Hey now..." There's zero explanation as to why race relations have deteriorated to this point, it's really just to make every character look like an unreasonable jerk compared to the protagonist, and I guess tell the audience about how racism is bad?

The main character, who is very obviously meant to be a role model for how people should behave, is against violence to an absurd degree. There's a space dogfight in which a guy is trying to shoot him and another pilot down, and he STILL insists the other pilot not kill the enemy! He's constantly lecturing about how killing is ALWAYS wrong... even in self-defense, I guess. He even talk-no-jutsu's the enemy pilot into surrendering.

By the end, everyone apologizes to the obviously-right-all-along protagonist, having seen the error of their ways. It's the most after-school special ending I've ever seen in an anime. "I'm so sorry, you were right all along! I'll immediately stop being a violent racist who loves polluting. You have truly shown me the error of my ways." Absolutely amazing.

Is there any reason to expect an obscure 30-minute OVA no one has heard of from the early 1990s called Star Dust to be worth a watch? No, not really, and you'd be correct if you dismissed this dud based on the shoddy looking cover alone, with the artwork being equally flat. Ichirou Itano directed a bunch of pulpy b-movie-like OVAs in the mid 1980s to early 1990s. Many of them are entertaining to some degree or feature fair production values, whether it's Angel Cop, Battle Royal High School, Megazone 23, or even Violence Jack. Star Dust remains one of Itano's most unrecognizable credits because ... of how bland and rushed it is.

While the script is preachy and typical of low quality straight to video productions, the premise for the story isn't too bad, as it's a twist on the usual ecological themes extended to space and using the sun as an incinerator for waste, but corrupt corporations engage in shady waste disposal measures that lead to more virulent solar flares. Yeah, it's basically a third-rate Planetes filtered through ecological disaster films. We're treated to a sample of the state of earth, but it's not enough to get a feel for what life is like other than you'd probably want to never leave the house without your trusty hazmat suit.

We immediately move to an empty, generic spaceport where most of the plot takes place. Anything other than the action is a mind-numbing slog, and I don't even want to think about it. They phone in a laughable environmental speech toward the end, complete with a maudlin tune that had me expecting to see a closeup tear like the notorious crying "Indian" commercial. "We ruined our planet. Now we might pollute space so much that we can't even live here either! Really makes you think." "Yeah, bro, so true." They also mix in a very real anime stereotype, which is the dorky idealistic main character who will risk life, limb, and everyone, rather than take a life: leading to the next gut buster as they confront the lone baddie whom they talk down from committing further violence, which leads to a lecture on trusting humanity (isn't that what led to the central crisis in the first place?).

There are only a few things that standout: 1) Decent space dog fights with crisscrossing lasers and missiles. Animators like Shinji Hashimoto and some others worked on this, though there's nothing too noteworthy here, and the designs are stock sci-fi (as bad as the character art and backgrounds). 2) Comical racial remarks and depictions of various stereotypes. All of the Asians have buck teeth like they came straight out of U.S. WWII propaganda. Blacks or mestizos at the beginning blame "whites" and "yellows" for the destruction of the planet, and everyone is constantly picking on Saki for being Japanese. Of course, this is just fake "conflict," so the wimpy Saki can prove how courageous and right he was all along, then they do the COME TOGETHER bit, and it turns into a borderline sitcom with everyone laughing! This garbage OVA definitely deserves to be launched straight into the sun.