this is space anime wars. the first 2 minutes are spectating some high tech people speaking an alien language and fighting other spaceships with their own spaceship in space. we get a lot of shots of characters talking and presumably saying commands, and also shots of spaceships attacking each other with voiceover. But we don't know what they're fucking saying.
we're then met with a narrator, explaining the story-so-far to us. i think they were trying to go for a benevolent, all-knowing god type of voice with him, but he just kind of sounds bored. anyway, there's a war that might divide the galaxy in half. this war started in imperial calendar year 952, after an ambush by the united mankind. does that mean anything to you? It Shouldn't! Because,
second thing i noticed: Banner of the Stars (english title) is the season 2 of a different show called Crest of the Stars released in 1999.
Bad Start. Don't name your seasons different things and make it seem like a whole other show.
an empress declared war against the united mankind, and both sides fought too hard they had to call a ceasefire about it to wait to restart the war. all of this is being told to us by the narrator with little clips (presumably from the last season) playing silently in the background to give us something to look at.
and now we return to the anime space people in the ship, except now we can understand them. im pretty sure these are all returning characters, but the main boy jinto gives us a narration rundown of all of his crewmates. then he goes and talks to the captain. and then we see a flashback of three years ago. (is this also from last season? i dont KNOW!!!) a lot of this episode is just sitting and talking at the viewer. presumably to remind you what happened last season, because this is SEASON TWO of a DIFFERENT SHOW by a DIFFERENT NAME!!!!!
the artstyle is... i dont like it very much. it's very deviantart anime-esque in a way that i do not like. but, i will say that i really like the COLOR choices a lot!!!! the colors are really fucking nice! i just dont like the lineart that accompanies it LOL
btw im typing all of this while watching the last like 5 minutes of this episode because dear god i dont care at all im so bored. THE ED IS BORING TOO WHO CARES
do i want to watch more?
based off of this, as a first episode? No i dont. but i cant really say that because this is SEASON TWO of a DIFFERENT SHOW that released in 1999!!!!
favorite screenshots
this entire stupid fucking clip drove me crazy when i first saw it. also a screenshot of the worst part of the deviantart anime-ness.
(ignore the canned dub VAs i couldnt download the subs)
all in all its just kind of bizarre. weird character writing too. brown haired boy jinto and the captain (black haired girl) have known each other for presumably at least three years. but if you listen to what that guy is saying in the clip it sounds like they dont know each other at all? it's strange.
i'm going to lose my goddamn mind daa! daa! daa! uses comic sans and papyrus for subtitling. LOOK AT THIS
DAA! DAA! DAA! EPISODE 1
comedy anime!!! you can tell its a comedy by the 78 episode count.
those two people up there in that screenshot are our main girl miyu's parents! they've been chosen as astronauts by NASA, granting their Childhood Dreams of dissecting aliens (mom) and building rocketships (dad), so they're moving to america and leaving their 13 year old daughter behind in japan. she finds this out at this press conference, they did not tell her beforehand.
hey, what the hell? japan literally has their own fucking space program (JAXA). why the fuck is it NASA??? whatever.
they send miyu off to live in a temple with an old monk man. except, while she's taking a bath a 13 year old boy accidentally walks in on her in the bathroom! (-_-) turns out this is the monk man's son, kanata. kanata did NOT know this girl would be moving in, he did not tell him beforehand.
monk man gets a call on the phone to learn that his Childhood Dream of going on a trip to india has finally come true, and thus he is leaving his 13 year old son in japan to take care of the temple.
Fucking, Okay.
miyu is about to leave and find somewhere else to stay, when a UFO flies in carrying a baby named ruu-chama. ruu-chama can fly, because he is an alien baby. he also thinks that miyu and kanata are his parents. ruu-chama also has a talking cat babysitter whose only job is to take care of him.
they're here because they got sucked in a dimensional wormhole and it'll take a year for their distress beacon to reach their homeplanet Otto (Jerma Dog Planet!). so, now, these two 13 year olds feel bad for the alien baby and decide to live together for his sake, because they both understand the pains of having absent parents. and they don't want to put him through that.
i can't lie there's a couple moments in here that did actually make me laugh. which is HIGH PRAISE for a comedy anime from the 2000s. also, THIS is the kind of shojou-manga artstyle that i really enjoy they have such big freaking BUG EYES i love it.
do i want to watch more?
i would honestly probably watch at least one more episode of this. i doubt that i'd want to finish it, but i did mostly enjoy this first episode! (aside from the walking-in-on-bathroom thing.)
favorite screenshots
Unfortunately, all we have is this milk. (they were just eating a whole dinner 3 scenes ago.)
also, here's a closeup of miyu showing off the normal artstyle more clearly, and the cat babysitter being sucked into a dimensional wormhole.
i will say they handled the bathroom thing pretty well. kanata was fucking PISSED OFF about miyu moving in with him and wasnt weird about walking in on her. and then later, he apologized even though he genuinely didnt mean to walk in on her. which is leaps and bounds above what a lot of other anime would do with that situation. (this was later kind of ruined by the reverse happening, miyu walks in on kanata while he's changing into pajamas, and SHE goes "kyaaa!!! pervert!!!" like Girl you walked in on him!!! Close the DOOR!!!) it just doesnt seem too fanservicey from this first episode.
But again i must hold my tongue because there are 78 fucking epi-sodes.
