[Februaryuri 2025] Revue Starlight
(as the year is coming to a close, I'm resuming my February attempt at recommending a variety of yuri animes. The name of Februaryuri is a bit deceptive considering we're now in December, but anyway. I'm not sure I'll follow through and get through all the remaining titles, but I've been wanting to continue a little, so here's one more review, at least!)
(base post on Februaryuri 2025 here!)
Shoujo Kageki: Revue Starlight (2018)
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Revue Starlight: The Movie (2021)
by studio Kinema Citrus, directed by Tomohiro Furukawa, written by Tatsuto Higushi, with music by Yoshiaki Fujisawa and Tatsuya Kato
12 episodes + 1 movie (2h)
Summary
Enthusiastic student Karen is in her second year at Seisho Academy, a prestigious music and drama school. Just like the year before, she and her classmates are going to play Starlight, a tragedy about two girls separated by fate.
Karen trains hard - they all do. But this year, Karen discovers something more to the school: a surreal and somewhat magical underground theatre stage, where some of the stage girls clash with swords through musical performances. Winning will grant the victor their "stage of destiny": the acting fame or stage euphoria they need, however they need it.
As Karen barrels into this tournament, she starts facing several of her classmates, all eager to win for their own reasons. But one of them is particularly bitter about Karen's sudden participation: her long-lost childhood friend Hikari, who joined the school this year, and who promised to Karen they would someday stand on the stage together...
... But surely, they're not the only ones here who are going to fight over frayed relationships.
CW
Nothing of note, aside from a brief bit of sliiiightly sexualized nudity in a bathing scene in episode 3. The movie has two notable elements: uncomfortable flashing lights at times; and one scene with a lot of blood which is subsequently revealed to be some stage prop.Comment
When I first tried to watch Shoujo Kageki: Revue Starlight in late 2022, I found myself confounded by the sudden shift in atmosphere in the middle of its first episode. I just wasn't expecting something so surrealist to pop up then. Why was there suddenly some ritualized costume change scenes and extravagant swordfighting like it was the most natural thing in the world? Why was there a giraffe?! Was this series going to talk about anything grounded related to being part of a drama school?? I pushed a little, found the characters a bit too one-dimensional for my liking, and stopped there.
The thing is, I was expecting this series to tackle too big topics, too fast; and particularly, I was expecting it to do so in a grounded way. Dejected, I shifted at the time my attention toward the similarly named Kageki Shoujo!!, a beautiful series of grounded character studies about how to survive amidst unfair systems related to drama plays and drama schools and small or big instances of sexism and abuse - which is however another story1.
Last year in December, I came back to Revue Starlight now completely ready to watch something mostly surrealist. I had also watched Revolutionary Girl Utena in the meantime, an inspiration that Revue Starlight frankly wears on its sleeve2. Having grown and changed in what I wanted to watch, I was now like: give me all the girls looking cool with swords and badass stage costumes. Give me the musicals. Give me the symbolic duels here to help your opponent move forward and break out of an unhealthy dynamic or behavior. Heck, give me the giraffe mascot, even.
Revue Starlight gave all this to me and then some.
And I ended up really happy of having finally watched it when the time was right.
The thing is, Revue Starlight is a bit "style over substance", a lot of the time. This doesn't have to be a flaw: it's honestly really great if you want to see girls battling while singing on a magical underground scene to see who's going to be the next star actress, and solving their interpersonal problems in doing so. It's just that the series is often... simple - though never bad! - when you consider its characters. Indeed, most of its cast of nine girls are admittedly one-dimensional tropes, each with a quirk of speech or catchphrase that can sometimes become a bit grating3, and each with one big frayed relationship with another of the girls - with all of these relationships heavily romantic-coded, though this is never completely addressed.
But this is most of the cast.
Three of the girls are a bit more fleshed out, and so they are the ones that obviously stay with me more character-wise.
Two of those are, expectedly, our lead Karen and her foil/childhood friend/romantic interest Hikari. While there is nothing groundbreaking in their dynamic - aloof brunette who tries very hard to triumph alone and puts up walls to protect the other, and enthusiastic/determined girl who tries her very best to reach out and prove they can win together - it's still well-executed and cute to watch. They have it all: a promise when they were children to stand on the same stage side by side, some meaningful looks and handholding and a now rocky relationship, an aquarium date, a place where they used to meet which is full of memories...
But what really brings all this together is how their relationship echoes the play they're supposed to play that year. This kind of story-inside-the-story is once again a true and tried trope, but the series has some real moments of brilliance around that. It's everything at the same time: how their play is about two girls who are fated not to end together; how the last arc of the story is literally about fighting with everything you have to break out from tragedies and doomed endings; how all this is subtextually lesbian to a level that borders text on all sides; and how the series just visually puts everything it has into its ending to make it the grandest finale it can.
Truly, the core of Revue Starlight, and one of the things that make it most memorable, is how its plot culminates into defying the common fate of tragic lesbian endings4.
Sadly, the queer subtext never entirely makes it to text, even if it requires iron-willed denial to pretend it isn't there. Still, this de facto absence of "canonicity" sadly plays into another common old lesbian trope. You have to read between the lines, despite it all.
... But, well, the lines are reaaally spaced out.
And to be honest, even for the girls who are ultimately not fleshed out beyond what you can evidently surmise from their first appearance, seeing them solve their problems (and blatantly unresolved romantic tension) through swordfighting remains fun and engrossing. Karen actively struggles to defeat some of them, and the plot is at its most interesting when it suddenly veers off the "one episode = one character" formula. Also, you know, having characters getting their feelings out by singing and looking cool is always a safe bet, as simple as they are - and this is also testament to how the series first started as the anime adaptation of a big, live musical (see the Extras section below).
It's just that I sometimes wish the series did even more with the characters themselves: to me, they often feel like some big fodder for sapphic shipping - templates more than anything else. But hey, they have resonated with people enough for Revue Starlight to have a significant impact on yuri fan mangas, which is something still.
... Oh. I did mention there was a third surprisingly fleshed-out character, though, didn't I?
Well, there is one. I wasn't ready for it at all. Her themes revolve around the fear of seeing people around you change, and prefering living in idealized memories instead of moving forward; and they struck me really deeply in how accurately they were handled. I can still hear her theme ringing in my head, and I always feel on the verge of tears when listening to it.
But you'll have to find out who she is by watching.
I just think her arc is among the top reasons to watch this series, along with the very moving grand finale of the last few episodes, which layers and shatters in turn all of its precedently established symbols.
Revue Starlight shows girls battling for a spotlight that has only ever been made to accomodate one of them, and ultimately rejecting that system and its siren's song of glory, through mutual support and (heavily implied) romance. And even if some of its moments and characters are weaker than others, its brighter parts are definitely dazzling.
Extra
I mentioned it before, but Revue Starlight was originally a musical. An English-subtitled rendition of it can be found here. I have not watched it yet, but I hyped myself up again writing all this, so maybe I will soon.
The license, which also includes several manga adaptations of the original musical and a dead mobile gacha game, has most noticeably two movies.
One of them, Revue Starlight: Rondo Rondo Rondo is a recap movie of the series (albeit with a few extra, spoiler scenes; but also a lot less content overall, as it is shorter). The second, soberly titled Revue Starlight: The Movie, is what I want to talk about here.
Because... because gosh, Revue Starlight: The Movie is really great. It is a direct sequel to the series, and it has the girls ending their studies at Seisho Academy soon, and having to pull off one last performance. At its core is this diffuse anxiety around graduation and change, like a sword of Damocles hanging over all of its cast.
My only complaint is, once again, related to the substance of the narrative: it is a sequel to the series, yes, but it is also kind of a retelling of it. As such, a lot of its themes feel reused from the series itself5, contradicting the new statu quo that the end of the series seemed to define. The characters are still more or less stuck on the same things, their relationships tripping them up in the same ways, and the movie isn't really here for character development: its overarching plot rehashes the same ideas and sadly offers some more bittersweet conclusions around graduating, while still not being exactly explicitly lesbian.
In that context, I feel like its parting of the ways also echoes the trope of "lesbian until graduation", to some extent. That trope where lesbian relationships dramatically end around graduation, as they were more or less tolerated within an all-girl school system but must be absent from society at large, haunted Class S literature due to real-life heteronormative pressure in the 1920s; and then came to haunting Class S-inspired yuri in the 2000s. Here the girls in Revue Starlight remain undeniably gay, though! But it's just... hard not to see this as a residue of that trope, with the cast inevitably going their separate ways and breaking ultimately-never-spoken-out-loud romances (even if gosh!!! is it obvious.).
The movie may also be aiming for ideas like standing by oneself and one's choices for the future instead of a somewhat codependent relationship, though, depending on how you read it. I suppose both of these readings can be true at the same time.
But in any case, if I may return to the more pressing matter at hand: that lesbian coding that the movie has. That lesbian coding. !!! Jlkmbljkkbnjklkmlk.
I don't have enough words to do it justice, honestly. To put it simply: the movie takes the series and cranks all dials up to eleven. The fight scenes are more intense and more grandiose and gayer than they have ever been. It's a visual tour de force of high octane battles so full of lesbian tension you could actually cut it with a sword.
It's so much, in a good way. It's just so much. I love it.
Seriously, I've been thinking about some of those visuals and battles every two or three days ever since, with how bewildering and exhilarating the movie has been. This is somewhat similar to how I feel about Utena's movie: both are maximalist, surrealist, alternate retellings into movie format of their original story, with as much flair and flourish injected into that as possible.
And wow, does it pay off.
As a last addition to the license, I must mention a videogame, a visual novel called Revue Starlight: El Dorado. I've heard only good things about it, and though my list of games is quite full at the moment, I'm really enthusiastic about playing it some day.
I wouldn't recommend Kageki Shoujo!! to you without a bunch of content warnings related to the things some of the characters have been through, which includes most notably CSA. I do however recommend it heartily for people interested in grounded character studies and ready for such themes. It's great, it feels sliiightly yuri if you wear the proper yuri goggles, and it is a series whose ending theme has been one of the most powerful motivators for me to watch yet another episode.↩
Another important common thread is the Takarazuka Revue, a famous all-women Japanese troupe which was also extremely influent on Utena (as I mention in the dedicated Februaryuri post). There's a lot to say on the Takarazuka Revue, from its heavily repressed lesbian overtones and its toxic workplace, to its immense influence on shoujo, the idealized "prince" archetype and blurred genders, or simply its current performances. This footnote is small, and I lack the detailed knowledge. But there's a lot to the topic if you're interested.↩
There's even one character who's theoretically French and who sprinkles her sentences with French words... even if her French is here to prop up her "beautiful blonde foreigner good at everything" character, and is, huh, not great, to be honest :')↩
A fate that was, after all, still very common not long ago. Heck, several of the animes recommended earlier in this Februaryuri series play into that.↩
There are interesting new decisions in this narrative though, notably the focus on Hikari going after Karen, and a few other things. And I suppose this double choice of doing an epic retelling while still making a sequel is also to make the movie slightly (emphasis on slightly) more accessible to newcomers, as evidenced by the numerous Hikari/Karen flashbacks that viewers of the series don't really need. Anyway, I get where that came from, and I'm still amazed by how the movie actually handles this in practice on most things.↩