Hoshi wa Utau
Twinkle Stars

Edit

What would you like to edit?

SynopsisBackgroundAlternative TitlesPictureChapters/VolumesPublishing DatesRelationsTypeExternal Links  

i might be biased since i'm a fan of Natsuki Takaya's previous work which is Fruits Basket...
even so Hoshi Wa Utau does not deliver to a mainstream audience since the plot is quite slow.the intricateness,the drama is thick but the comedy is thin.dont expect the same humour from fruits basket...
i recommend this manga to those who enjoys a slow but meaningful story;that is hoshi wa utau.
perhaps at an earlier stage you might find the characters typical after all the heroine is a typical cute but foolish girl..but as i thread on the story she grew on me,she has so many flaws but her strong will ... to live and her love for the stars touched me.
and for the hero of the story which is Aoi Chihiro,aside from him being very good looking and smart and all that,he bears the pain from his past love.which of course leads to the unrequitedness of the story..
but as for me the character Kanade interest me more than the main lead Hero.Kanade or better known as Kana-chan is the one who acts as Saku's guardian.He's quite a grumpy character and i cant wait to learn more about him in the future chapters.
overall it is a good read for me,be patient when reading because the drama starts around chapter 17 or 18..but you might be intrigued by it from chapter four if i'm not mistaken.hope you'll enjoy this manga as i did!
^^

Finally finished reading Hoshi ha Utau, by the infamous Takaya Natsuki of Fruits Basket fame. If you've read that manga (not just watched the anime), you'll understand what I mean.

For 9 volumes it was pretty damn good. Straight-forward shoujo. Then the inevitable Natsuki Twist. Made me seethe with anger until the very last chapter, where it rectified it.

I'm not sure I'm "over it" yet because it essentially cancels out the rage-inducing twist, but at least it ended well.

I guess I'd recommend it if you like some relatively heavy romance. It's slow, almost like Toume Kei pacing,but she's like the exact opposite in which she puts ... you under a deluge of thoughts (Toume Kei has a distinct style where hardly any "inner thoughts" are used, making it difficult to understand what people are thinking). If you tire of the standard romance with super bright sun-light main characters you might like it. But there's a lot of emo-ness, as you'd expect from her stuff.

Looking at what other reviewers had to say about this manga, I went in not expecting much more than a good story with a decent ending. Wow was I undersold on this one. Twinkle Stars is genuinely on par with Fruits Basket when it comes to Natsuki Takaya's other works and I'm honestly surprised I never hear people talk about it.

As other people have said, this story starts off slow. We are being introduced to characters and getting some setup to later plot threads but the payoff is well worth it. Takaya is amazing at what she does with story threads and tying certain aspects ... of characters to events that we weren't informed of yet. Nothing is a surprise just to surprise you, it all is interwoven together.

The art is exactly how I remembered her style to be. I will say I always enjoyed Takaya's earlier style but still the way she draws emotions is phenomenal. She can either pull your heart strings or make you cry from simple facial expressions.

The last chapter was a bit unsatisfying of an end. It felt a bit rushed but usually I don't hold this against the author. Most times in that case, the publication rushed the deadline or just not enough popularity during serialization can make series' end prematurely. However it wrapped up the story perfectly either way.

Hoshi wa Utau is a shoujo manga written by Natsuki Takaya, known for Fruits Basket. While Hoshi wa Utau does not really compare to Fruits Basket, it's still a solid shoujo manga that's really worth a read. Spoilers ahead.

Story: 7
The plot isn't anything really new or ground breaking, but it works well enough and is still enjoyable and engaging.
The story is both sad and uplifting at the same time, and Natsuki Takaya manages to balance these elements really well. There was also the twist at the end with Chihiro going back to Tokyo to help Sakura. Although it was obvious that Chihiro and Sakuya ... would end up together in the end, I actually thought the story's message would have been more effective if they didn't end up waiting for each other and walking off holding hands into the sunset.
The story's message deals a lot with moving forward, and it would have fit with that message nicely if Sakuya could have accepted that although Chihiro would always hold a special place in her heart, she can't keep waiting for him forever and she needs to move on with her life. It had the potential to be a very true-to-life and touching depiction of first love.
But instead, she doesn't move on at all (She thinks about it for about 10 seconds only to find Chihiro waiting for her) and waits for Chihiro for years until he finally DOES come back. That whole turn of events seemed to kind of contradict the entire message of the manga, although I'm completely not surprised it turned out the way it did. (If it didn't, there'd be a lot more bad reviews of this manga, lol!)

Art: 8
Natsuki Takaya's art is very clean and solid, and her talent with lighting and shadows really shows. In the earlier volumes, the characters were sometimes hard to tell apart, but they become more individual and unique as the manga progresses.

Characters: 7
My main problem with the characters is the heroine, Sakuya. She's a very typical shoujo protagonist, and in the early volumes was nearly insufferably bland. She gets a little more development as it goes on, but she's still many times over less interesting than any of the supporting characters.
Luckily, the supporting characters are interesting and dimensional enough to make up for Sakuya. Her friends, Hijiri and Yuuri, are both a ton of fun to watch and I ended up loving both of them a lot. The romance between Hijiri and Saki was really endearing and I enjoyed it a little bit more than Sakuya and Chihiro's, honestly.
Chihiro, while sometimes so angsty to the point of ridiculousness, is an interesting enough love interest. You care about him and really want to see him grow.

Overall: 8
Although not perfect, Hoshi wa Utau is a very good shoujo manga with a very uplifting message and some pretty likable characters. If you really enjoy shoujo/romance manga, this is definitely worth your time.

To start, I just need to get this off my chest: The English title drives me crazy. Like, it looks like a mistranslation and very obviously should have been 'Twinkling Stars' or something and nobody caught that?! Anyway...

I'll be honest. I picked this one up because I'm a huge Fruits Basket fan. If I wasn't already in love with Takaya's work, the summary never would have caught my attention enough to buy even the first volume to try it out. But I had faith that there was going to be something deeper, and I think that faith was rewarded. The romance really wasn't what resonated ... with me in this story, but I'll be the first to admit that I'm not typically one for romance anyway. And to get that out of the way...

Not the best love story I've ever read. Some touching moments, but something missing overall. To name a few things that really stuck out to me, I think they immediately got off on the wrong foot. The mystery with Chihiro was interesting. And I think that was certainly enough to make Sakuya sufficiently curious to track him down and get to know him better. Especially after he leaves her that night with some really touching words. (Even if he couldn't have possibly understood the effect his words would have on her at the time.) But I definitely think she jumps to the conclusion that she's in love too quickly. And the extent of Chihiro's angst-- especially when we're just getting to know him-- was a little off-putting for me. That romance cliche where a love interest is perfectly normal and pleasant one day and then suddenly comes out with the dramatic 'I hate you' the next? Not a fan in general. Definitely didn't need to see it here. But I will say I think their love story is wrapped up nicely by the end. And the night they share together right before his return to Tokyo did have me genuinely emotional.

That said, I did like all of the characters. (With the exception of the parents, who were all written to be kind of one-note villains.) That was the one thing I was most looking forward to-- Natsuki Takaya's ability to write characters with emotional, dark backstories. And all of the characters did feel fleshed out. More importantly, we get to see them all grow and develop as human beings over the course of the story. I loved the family story between Sakuya and Kanade. I thought the 'twist' with Sakura was predictable, but I did like her character too. And Chihiro played his part well, even if he felt a little bland sometimes. In this regard, all of my expectations were met.

So at the end of it all, I did enjoy this series. I feel like the romance they were aiming for didn't quite hit its mark, but I wasn't really in it for the love story anyway. And if you're a fan of Fruits Basket and all the dark stories and character development it offered, I think you'll enjoy this one as well.

It started off really well in the first two volumes, the first omnibus. There was mystery and Chihiro was actually two sided. Chihiro meets Kanade on Saku's birthday. He's holding a present, and when he meets Kanade, he tells him he's her boyfriend. Saku comes home and meets Chihiro for the first time. She thinks he's Kanade's close friend and Kanade thinks he's her boyfriend.

She finds out later that that's not the case. He's neither her boyfriend nor a close friend of Kanade. He's unwilling to be who he really is. He tells her he can be anyone she wants to him be, other ... than himself. So I thought the writing was really good at the beginning. This would be as good as Fruits Basket.

I thought the series would talk about duality within people, how we have who we wanted to be perceived as and who we really are. It'd explore the roles we play in our daily lives. It depicts bullying in a really subtle way and explored the dark side of people, even within a classroom.

That fact was too much is revealed too fast and Chihiro loses his edge. He loses what made him difficult to approach. Chihiro becomes bland. Before, he was sarcastic and rather rude, but blunt and honest. He's not willing to reveal anything about his life in Tokyo. His character to me becomes inconsistent once the hat's out of the bag. And somehow Sei-chan, the rich girl, digs up his file. How's that even possible? Like when Tohru's relatives hired a private investigation and dug into her living conditions. Then all the mystery's gone.

Good storytelling doesn't need to be told. It needs to be shown. Not revealed in a file.

And then it fell into a melodrama and became riddled with shoujo cliches: rich girl with a butler, a love triangle, girl crushing on a teacher, fireworks, and lastly girl in a coma. I've seen this done so many times in the "romance" genre that it's become old and stale. I already knew what would happen and yes I've seen and read Bokura Ga Ita.

Everything that made the first omnibus really good fell to the waist side and it became another angsty boy with baggage who can't be with his one true love for whatever reason. Of course he lashes out as his love interest at some point, for the added drama. He could be a jerk but he didn't need to physically put her to potential harm. Another Bokura Ga Ita, but with much better art. It plays out almost like Bokura Ga Ita. Chihiro becomes another Kakeru from Orange and that flighty boy from Bokura Ga Ita.

I was so disappointed. It started off so well, but devolves into this disheveled heap of a melodrama. Once they introduced the coma girl, I already knew what was going to happen. It's that predictable. I regret reading it or even investing in it. It honestly went on longer than intended.

Stick with Fruits Basket. This ended so badly.

Twinkle Stars Review. From the Author of Fruits Basket.

If Fruits basket is half as good as this, I'll probably hate it cuz this manga isn't that great either.

Twinkle stars revolves around the theme of stars. If the title wasn't obvious enough. Our FMC is currently living with a family friend because her parents hate her because this is a manga and loving parents is an alien concept to the Japanese. She meets the male lead whom she immediately falls in love with the male lead because he's the male lead and he said the one thing no one has ever said to her ever in ... her life because every person around is a complete asshole.

For real the manga has a huge problem of making majority of its characters complete dinguses... Dingi? The worst people imaginable. God Forbid you are a parent in this series because you are useless, a pushover, a cunt, or just someone that can push someone to the brink of suicide.

The series had this over the top comedic villains which is almost every parent in the series. I think 1 couple is the only decent parents' in the series. Even then there child is super fucking annoying.

The reason I'm hammering to hard on these problems is because the author tries to hammer the reasoning of MMC's behavior. Like I mentioned this is a shoujo manga, and no shoujo manga is complete without a dickish male lead that opens up slowly throughout the series. Even though I get it. I get his behavior, with parents like those. But its still goddamn annoying. There are series that do the exact same thing but they do it with a much more resounding success. This isn't one of them.

The series is at its strongest when it isn't dealing with parental drama. The parental drama drops the series hard. Even the dramatic crying moments from running away from home cuz your parents' don't love you didn't tug any heart strings.

The series fails on this front because I just don't have the emotional connection the author tries to build between the characters and the audience. So I can't cry with him because Frankly I don't care.

The series later turns into a decent love triangle. Because at this point. Either its Stockholm syndrome or Sunk cost fallacy but I've become somewhat attached to the characters. Even the male lead by the halfway point turns into someone that I actually enjoy reading about. However the love triangle is a bit odd. In the sense that the FMC compares the male lead to a star and the other guy to a Sun. But here's the thing. The sun is a fucking star. So what the hell. I get that she means that one brights up her world, whilst the other is a dream (shooting star concept) but I just found it hilarious.

In the end I'm kinda disappointed with this series. This is made by Fruits basket author. I haven't personally read Fruits basket but that is the main reason I picked up this series.

I think the fact that the author didn't try to redeem the parents characters was a good bonus because after everything they've done I would've hit my screen if they suddenly turned good for no reason.

The main cast is solid (though shakey) enough for me to continue reading this series. It's probably going to be enough for you too. Some of the characters are downright monsters and some characters are fun to hang out with. The art is great. the main Story kinda sucks. The ending is lopsided.

Overall. Medicore with some fun moments. But mostly Medicore. 5/10