I’ve just finished watching yet another complete anime series, this one called Stellvia of the Universe. I had picked it up before watching Last Exile, but got hooked on LE after watching about 3 episodes of Stellvia (I was watching both). I swapped over to LE because, after the first few episodes, I thought Stellvia was going to be, well, aimed at a younger crowd. Yes, its a space opera, and yes there is quite a bit of romance among the lead characters, but the first few episodes were of a light, almost comic tone. Along about the mid-point of the series, it really found its stride. Much like Star Trek, while the actual ‘science’ of the show borders on ridiculousness, the strength is the characters and their interactions. I’ve stayed up late the last few nights trying to finish the show. It became that good. Not quite as good as Last Exile, but not anything like Bubblegum Crisis. After having seen the whole thing, I now understand why people are rating it very high. You come to care a lot for the characters, even the secondaries, and you want to find out what happens next.

Production values are outstanding. Stellvia uses a mix of CGI and 2D animation, with some wonderful space scenery to boot. However, because its a fansub, the video is a Divx encoded AVI file, and you can see that the quality is not up to DVD standard. Another reason to buy when its finally licensed in the US. Since I don’t know Japanese, I can’t really comment on the voice acting, except to say it seemed appropriate and I could tell from the voices what emotions were occurring. The music is also top-notch. Very catchy.

The only downside is the ‘technology’ showcased in the show. Apparently, to fly a ship in the future, you have to be able to type really fast to adjust your course and speed. This really annoyed me as it seems to me that the good old joystick and throttle are more efficient than using a keypad. And the main character was able to completely re-program her propulsion system in flight. Right. In fact, ‘programming’ plays a vital role throughout the show, and they tried to spice the actual programming sequences up by using funky graphics and character close-ups. It didn’t really work for me, but maybe someone who isn’t familiar with sitting in front of a keyboard and typing for hours on end would go for it.

I wasn’t expecting anything from Stellvia, having never even heard of it, but I think I’ve found another winner.

And yes, I have deliberately left out a lot of the plot as you can get the basics from the linked website, and much of the enjoyment will come from sharing the characters’ discoveries about themselves. I’ll be placing this series on DVD-Rs as soon as I purchase a few more!

Filed under: Anime

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