released 01 sep 09 / last mod 01 sep 09 / greg goebel / public domain
* At the beginning of KALEIDO STAR (KS) -- an anime series consisting of 26 half-hour episodes on five DVDs -- we meet Sora Naegino, a Japanese girl who has come to Los Angeles to audition for Kaleido Stage, a circus troupe along the lines of the Cirque du Soleil. Unfortunately, her luggage is stolen by a thief; she uses her remarkable acrobatic abilities to recover it, but she ends up having to explain matters down at the police station and misses the audition session.
It would seem there would be nothing left for Sora to do but go back to Nippon, but fortunately Carlos, the boss of Kaleido Stage, witnessed Sora's confrontation with the thief and, impressed, brought her on board anyway. The door has opened to Sora's lifelong dream, but even at that she has challenges -- Carlos is the kind of boss who brings out the best in his people, but he's gruff and does it by mercilessly throwing them in off the deep end. Still, Sora never admits defeat, getting help from her friends Mia, Anna, Ken, an oversized black cop named Jerry, a mysterious doll-sized phantom named the Fool, and the icy blonde diva Layla. In the end, Sora has to help Kaleido Stage prevail against the determined efforts of one among its ranks who seeks at all costs to destroy it.
* KALEIDO STAR was put together by director Junichi Sato, who was behind the well-known SAILOR MOON "magical girls" shoujo (girl's) anime series, and to no surprise KS is also a shoujo work, targeted primarily at adolescent girls. As such, KS might well be expected to be corny, trite, clumsy, overblown, soapish -- and in some measure it is in fact all those things. We get a too-cutesy pet baby sea lion, predictable plots elements and dialogue, and some episodes that approach unwatchable.
However, that said, KALEIDO STAR more often works and works well. Using a modern-day circus as the basis of a series was a shrewd move, resulting in an engaging story out of the ordinary rut, inclined to the colorful and with its clear touches of imagination. It is particularly strong when it focuses in on the creative process, for example when Mia, who likes to write as a hobby, ends up selling Carlos on one of her stories and is told to come up with a stage production in a week. Most of all, for the often predictable interactions between the characters, we still care about them since they come alive in some depth.
The production values are good, if not movie quality -- they're more along the lines of a reasonable anime series, though there are real flashes of brilliance, for example the striking second-half-season opening sequence. I do have to admit that there are some mildly amusing cultural quirks in the show: "No, Mister Sato, American girls do not BOW!"
Not everyone is going to like KALEIDO STAR; anyone who simply cannot get along with a story oriented towards girls is just not going to buy it. However, others inclined to be more patient may find this series worth the effort. This is the kind of work where the people involved seemed to have really enjoyed what they were doing and not merely plugging away at a knock-off -- and that spirit comes through very clear to the viewer.
