Starmyu 3 – Overstaying Your Welcome

Production

I think I write this every time, the production of Starmyu is fine. By now the story has gotten bloated as new characters are added to the core group each season and they’re like a 16-member band by now. So the little production quirks in season 1 that made it look like a maho shoujo at times, are long gone. But it still looks fine.

One thing I particularly appreciate about the Starmyu franchise is the way the musical numbers are handled. In a lot of idol shows, I would even say in most idol shows, the musical numbers are actually taking place in the world of the show as is. They are performances on stage that the characters are putting on. Moreover, a lot of time these sequences are completely rendered in computer graphics creating a jarring contrast with the rest of the show and occasionally terrifying spectacle altogether.

But in Starmyu, except for a few songs here and there, the bulk of the musical numbers are figurative. Like in Broadway musicals. They are these surreal fantasies that advance the narrative or tell us about a character’s feelings but you understand they aren’t actually happening as is in the universe of the show. And that means the visuals can get a bit eccentric if they want to. For the most part, they look like stylized music videos and they do not use full CG. I would have appreciated it even more if the visuals got a bit crazier in these moments, like Magic-kyun for instance, but it’s still leagues better than boring CG stage shows. So that’s a plus for me.

Story & Characters

By the title of this post, you may think that I did not like Starmyu 3. But that’s not quite true. Like most of these shows, I enjoyed it for what it is. However, I noticed something, Starmyu 3 is essentially the same as Starmyu 2 which was a variation on Starmyu 1. Basically, this show tells the same story each season with slight variations and I think that season 3 is where the diminishing returns really start to hit hard.

Also, we hardly got a chance to see Inumine this season and he’s 70% of the fun of this show.

In isolation, if this was the only season of Starmyu that existed, then I would call it a fine little idol show. And it definitely could exist in isolation. If you wanted to you could just start at season 3 and I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have too much trouble following along. But why would you when previous seasons were both just a bit more fun?

And that’s the problem. It’s an ok show but it’s also a slightly less fun version of itself. That brings the mood way down.

You may not know this but I have a particular review style I reserve entirely for idol anime. I like to call it the rainbow explosion giddiness overload. It’s mostly nonsense. I try to whip myself into a frenzy and then spew out all that directionless enthusiasm on the page. Most of my readers have no clue what’s going on when I do that. Even less than usual. I love writing those posts.

However, I couldn’t do it for Starmyu 3. I just couldn’t find the energy to get all excited because, at the end of the day, it felt like I’d seen this all before just a little better. And although I do like the idea of adding on new band members every season (hoping that they’ll end up with 74 singers at some point), it really doesn’t help with making the premise seem fresh and it screws up the cast dynamics. They can’t even make the little finger star thing anymore. booo!

You might like this anime if:

It’s not like it’s bad. If you’re a fan of the franchise I bet you’ll enjoy it.

A Star

I save all my screencaps on my Pinterest and you can find more there if you are interested. But I still like to show you a few in the post. If you’re like me, screencaps are something that really helps you decide to watch an anime or not.