Nov 12, 2018
This is a horror show disguised as a musical and slice of life anime. Everything about this anime should have been viewed as a psychologically manipulative and sociopathic antagonist tempting impressionable performance arts students into acting, singing and dancing for his twisted entertainment, using dangerous weapons to deliver battle ending blows to their opponent. Lying to them about what their participation means at the end and the destruction/theft of these performers' identities.
Unlike others who have criticized this show for its dialogue, voice acting, and character development, I think all of that was done very well. This show had the potential to be great but missed
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its climactic turning point, dived right into the absurd, and played the entire climax to the end while breaking the fourth wall and acting as if the antagonist was part of the audience and had no part in creating this horrifying sequence of events that led to it.
This is an anime made by sheltered and narcissistic liberal arts people for sheltered and narcissistic liberal arts people. The amount of smug meta garbage they tried to shove in at the end made me despise everything about this show. It reminded me of how elitist and removed from normal life people in the Arts are now. A stage within a stage within a stage, because Lord knows if you just make something confusing enough, stupid people that you've hooked and made emotionally invest in your characters will assume and justify that it's actually something really intelligent or clever.
This show did a fantastic job of making me emotionally invested in the main characters and had me yelling at the screen for them to figure out what had happened and put a stop to this antagonist's machinations, but they didn't do that. They left it completely unquestioned and acted as if it was as benign as mislabeling price stickers at the store, even practically honoring him in the end.
I loved the art, the music was fantastic, it's good enough to own. The story was strong and it should have ended strong, unfortunately, it did not and it paid the price for its self-indulgence. I gave Shoujo☆Kageki Revue Starlight a 4/10 because it failed to deliver a final product that equaled the overall value of its parts. Its' directors shot itself in the foot just because they could and so they could make the show look smarter than what it was.
I only hope that others thinking about watching this show understand what they're getting into, if they want to buy into the show's logic, by all means, it's pretty wonderful, but for those that may have some trouble suspending belief, it may be best to skip it and watch something else that won't make you feel gutted like a fish emotionally.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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