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Forum - View topicREVIEW: Banner of the Stars DVD
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4441 |
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I'd say that Crest/Banner of the Stars is what made me realize that I'm a total sucker for characterization and can pretty easily stay engaged through that alone, even if an overarching plot is only ok. Honestly, Banner 2 came off as a relative disappointment since Jinto/Lafiel conversations were the main thing I liked about the series.
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CrisGer A.A.
 Posts: 170 Location: 世田谷区 Setagaya Ward |
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This is without doubt a masterpiece of both sci fi story telling and anime. And even the english dub is superb beyond all expectation,. The story is told in an unusual non linear way, yet offers all the satisfaction that anime and sci can offer and I have studied, watched, worked for ( anime studio wise) and written for ..same, the same genre for over 40 years.
The story shows insight into an alien race that has the most depth and sophitication of any that I know and tho we would wish to see more of the story, circumstances did not permit the studio and the author to go further so we can enjoy what we have, as i have over and over, I must have watched this complete series and the movie and the last short episodes over 20 or 30 times and plan to contiue..almost an annual event. the animation is fine for its era, it is true cell made animation and does not claim to be the most modern or slick for it was made when it was made. The preambles of the background are essential so do find a sub of them if you need it, I am Japanese so it is not an issue for me but i can also enjoy the dubbed version just as much. Glad you covered this in a nice review thank you. C |
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Stampeed Valkyrie
 Posts: 830 Location: PA |
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I think the Crest Trilogy was the stronger of the stories. However the Banner Story is still ongoing. The last anime adaptation was BOS III ova and the 3 Banner stories do a pretty good job continuity wise.
What I am more interested in is the continuation of the Banner story. I have always wanted to see more of it animated, since the novels are currently not available in english. Though that may soon be changing. |
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5339 |
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Barciad
 Posts: 130 Location: St Andrews |
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Watching a series like 'Crest/Banner of the Stars' is like watching an old BBC drama. You tolerate the weaknesses and focus on the strengths. With the former, it is of course the cheap production. With the latter, it is the story, the script, the characterisations, and the underlying themes. All which this series excels at.
I'll be honest and admit that 'Crest/Banner of the Stars' is the best anime series that I have ever watched. It is every single major reason that I love the medium so much. The radical reinvention of supposedly tired genres. The moral flexibility and shades of grey. The bitter-sweet outcomes. That Crest of the Stars works at all is a minor miracle. That it works as effortlessly as it does is tribute to just how good the writing is. Which is, after all, what you are here for. There might have been more tightly written anime (Infinite Ryvius, Now and then here and there). But there has yet to be a series more ambitiously written that stills succeeds in everything that it sets out to do. Which in itself is worth a hundred times more than the finest cell animation money can buy. |
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zrdb
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I've been a big science fiction fan almost my entire life and Crest/Banner is #1 on my list of sci fi anime for very good reasons. The show reminds me of hard core sci fi books by Greg Bear and Gregory Benford who write about galactic empires and stellar civilizations of the far distant future, very heady stuff. I will admit that the dub isn't among the best I've heard but it isn't the worst.
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melmouth
Posts: 167 |
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As soon as I read this review's comparison of this work to Spice and Wolf, I went and found and bought the first volume of the Crest of the Stars light novel on Amizon.com. (It's published by J-Novel Club.)
Anime with good characterization and significant intellectual content is VERY rare, and I'm always happy to find it. |
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Fluwm
 Posts: 893 |
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Yeah, the novels are pretty decent. I only ever got around to watching the first anime series, but always meant to keep going. My recollection is that the plot was mostly pretty bad with the occasional interesting bits, and that the series was buoyed by the very solid characterization and chemistry/dynamic between the two leads, and several aspects of the setting were interesting (the whole "birth secret" storyline was great and did a good job at painting the Space Elfs as properly alien, while still being recognizably human) and the space combat was pretty well directed, insofar as these thins go.
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4585 |
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I love this franchise to death. Banner 1 is space opera at its grandest, a massive conflict playing out dramatically on both the macro and micro levels that can stand right up there with the best of Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Banner 2 is a very different animal, and maybe not as ambitious, but it does a great job at fleshing out how the Abh interact with the planets that fall under their control. Banner 3 is a nice little bonus that serves as something of a coda to the franchise's opening chapter. As Nick points out, though, the real stars of the show are the characters and their interactions. Jinto and Lafiel rank right up there for me with Lawrence and Holo as one of the best anime couples of all time. They have this fantastic quick-fire repartee and mutual charisma, and it's immediately apparent how much they care for each other. Some of my favorite moments in the series were when Jinto was in danger, and Lafiel got that cold blue fury in her eyes. I know there's realistically no way we'd ever get more of the story animated, but I'd gobble it up in an instant if we did. At the very least, the announcement that the novels will be released here is incredibly welcome.
As far as other details go, it's a shame to hear that this doesn't really have any extras, as the original Bandai releases had some informative on-disk text interviews with the original author and anime staff. I'll definitely wind up double-dipping for this part though, since we never had Banner 3 officially released here. And while it's still not exactly great, I think the dub in Banner showed a lot of improvement over Crest, especially in the two lead roles. (Why couldn't we get a Blu-ray though.  )
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NJ_
 Posts: 3015 Location: Wallington, NJ |
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There was no Blu-ray release in Japan between the time of the license announcement (August 2013) and the DVD re-releases (December 2018) but it was announced just 2 months ago for a December 2019 release so it'll be a while before that upscale is brought over (or longer depending on Sunrise considering how long it took FUNi to get the materials for the DVDs). Trailer: https://youtu.be/GqdLcA6yvQM |
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levonr
 Posts: 811 |
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I didn't know it was getting a blu-ray release in Japan, too bad its upscale but who knows maybe it will be good as long as they don't overdo the DNR.
As I said on Crest of the Star review, if you have the old Bandai DVD's keep them. They actually have better video quality than FUNimation's release. Which was surprising since often I expect a re-release to be the same or maybe slightly better than a very old release. |
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