released 11 may 04 / last mod 01 jun 07 / greg goebel / public domain
* At the beginning of CREST OF THE STARS, a 13-episode anime series on four DVDs, the Abh, a spacefaring race of genetically modified humans with blue hair, occupy the planet of Rock Hyde, with the planet's president making a deal with the invaders to become the planet's king instead. This makes his young son Jinto Lin a prince of the Abh Empire, and he is educated accordingly, even though he finds the idea of being a prince a little baffling.
His duties as a prince include military service, and so when he comes of age he reports for duty to be taken to a training academy. He is greeted by the first Abh he has ever met face-to-face, a girl about his age with long blue hair and pointy ears who gives her name as "Lafiel". At the time, Jinto has no idea that pointy-eared Abh are royalty, and Lafiel is pleased by his unselfconscious and unfamiliar informality. However, as the two return to the patrol vessel that will take Jinto to the training academy, the wheels are in motion that will lead to a galactic war with the rival empire of United Mankind. The war will send Jinto and Lafiel off to many adventures and make fast friends of them.
CREST OF THE STARS, based on a novel by Hiroyuki Moriyoka, is basically a formula Galactic Empire story. There is very little that is conceptually new here, and the story delivery is not particularly inspired. CREST OF THE STARS can be annoying since it consistently fails to pick up on interesting story leads, for example on the nature of the semi-benign / semi-authoritarian Abh Empire, and also gives a consistently flat delivery of story elements that were probably meant to be funny in Moriyoka's novel -- for instance, the part of the story concerning the "Space Bimbos of Baron Fedbash" is played almost straight, though it seems hard to believe somebody wouldn't play it for laughs.
However, that said, I can see why this series has its fans. The story is actually fairly strong, strong enough to still shine to a degree through the clumsiness, and in particular Jinto and Lafiel are very appealing characters -- Jinto often boyish and bumbling, but still courageous and bold when necessary; and Lafiel leaking out glimmers of vulnerability under her sometimes overdrawn military / imperial bearing. The two form a good team. The animation values are also good in general, if not remarkable, though I found the theme music ham-fisted and thoroughly overused.
I tend to see CREST OF THE STARS as a "Galactic Empire Space Opera for Adolescents" and as such found it enjoyable, reminiscent of a lot of the sci-fi for adolescents I read when I was a teenager in the late 1960s. It has a certain Miyazaki-like flavor, not only because Jinto is drawn in a way that suggests Miyazaki's artwork, but because the Jinto-Lafiel team is reminiscent of Pazu and Sheeta in CASTLE IN THE SKY. This is not entirely a happy comparison, however, since thinking of it immediately brings to mind the thought: "CREST OF THE STARS would have been really fantastic if Miyazaki had made it."
Can I recommend this? Yes, if cautiously. It's better than ordinary anime; I like to think of it as being what I wish ordinary anime actually was. Certainly it's a good buy for the price, which is surprisingly low for a four-disk set. I did pick up the most of the two BANNER OF THE STARS sequels in hopes that the story and production would be developed further, but I was disappointed. BANNER OF THE STARS is really more of the same as CREST OF THE STARS; if you liked CREST OF THE STARS, you'll like BANNER OF THE STARS, and if you didn't, you won't. I got tired enough of it that I finally picked up the manga for the last few episodes of the series. The manga, unlike many other adaptations of anime series, follows the anime series precisely, and it was a lot cheaper than buying DVD.
