Revue Starlight

Episode 7

We all have certain moments that shine in our memories like a flawlessly cut jewel—a slice of time that lasted years, or days, or maybe just a couple minutes, but which was nonetheless perfect. We've probably forgotten some of the messier details, and we probably didn't appreciate the moment fully then, yet it still exists within us as a reminder—sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter—that life can be dazzling. For Nana Daiba, this was her class' first performance of Starlight. The days leading up to any theatrical production are a mad dash of rehearsal, preparation, and last minute fires that need to be put out. There's always too much to do and not enough time to do it, so when the performance actually happens, it can feel like a miracle. In the afterglow of the after-party, Nana sits down and finally realizes how important this performance, this academy, and these classmates have been to her. The spark of passion lights a fire within her. The ultimate Stage Girl is born, and she is a banana.

I tend to save my comments on an episode's construction for the end of a review, but I need to lead with them this time, because so much of what makes this episode work is Tomohiro Furukawa's storyboards. As the series director of an ambitious show, he's probably been more busy than I can imagine, so him taking the time to storyboard an episode in the middle of the series emphasizes its importance. Even before the episode's twist drops, the framing and blocking repeatedly isolates the characters, and Nana in particular. Her omnipresent phone is a tool that both engages her and distances her, and so many shots are viewed through her phone's screen, emphasizing that we're watching this episode play out through Nana's eyes. A quiet melancholy suffuses the campus as the second year begins, and the entire production team does a beautiful job marrying lighting and music to set the tone. When Nana finally meets the giraffe, the underground theater has never looked so brilliant, so bare, and so sinister. It feels truly otherworldly again, and as Nana embraces it, she feels otherworldly too.

Nana's motivations aren't anything twisted or evil. We all want to relive the past in some fashion. This is what nostalgia feels like, and why it's such a powerful creative impetus. It goes beyond our own memories and extends into the art we make and consume, trying new and different things but still yearning for the comfort of the familiar. It's like Junna switching out her glasses for a new yet identical pair—we want change but we're also afraid of it. Art is forever torn between these extremes, and theater is no different. The successes of the past dictate how people act in the present, but it's impossible to recreate what's already been done. We can reference it, echo it, or even do our best to completely copy it, but it will still not be felt in the same way at the same time. Karen recognizes that their class will never perform Starlight exactly the same way again, but that's all the more reason to continue working hard and trying new things. There's always the possibility to do better. Nana, however, is blinded by the brilliance of their first performance of Starlight. It was already perfect, so it'd be pointless to try to improve it. What can the future possibly hold that will be better?

Nana doesn't stick around long enough to find out if there's an answer. The giraffe gives her a way to get what she wants: a true repeat performance of her Starlight. All she has to do is become the Top Star, so that's what she does. We don't even see her battle with Maya, which suggests just how one-sided it likely was. Nana emerges as the hardest-working and most talented of all of the Stage Girls, but she couldn't care less about standing in the spotlight. The blinding yellow light washes out everything except that one perfect performance of Starlight, so that's the stage she chooses. She enters a Groundhog Day scenario of her own design: an endless cycle of their first year at Seisho where everything goes according to the script, nobody drops out, and everybody puts on the best (and only) performance of Starlight that will ever be. This is Nana's Frozen World, to borrow a term from Penguindrum (which Furukawa worked on). It's a world that gives her exactly what she wanted, but at the end of each cycle, she still laments that the light remained too distant and too blinding. Even literally reliving the past is not the same as recapturing those fleeting yet powerful memories of the past. Her pursuit is impossible, tragic, and entirely understandable.

This episode seems to mark a dramatic shift in Revue Starlight's tone and ambitions, but it's built on everything that came before it. It reminds me of how the first episode was constructed; the rug-pulling elevator scene was clearly the highlight, but all the character work done in the first part was also smartly constructed. This reveal of a time loop might have felt silly if not for the time we've spent with the rest of the characters and learned about them. Nana's conflict with Maya, for instance, only makes sense because we know how seriously Maya takes her role as the Top Star, both in her practice and her goals. Nana is an even better actress, but she lacks any ambition to further either herself or theater as a whole, which is totally anathema to Maya. And now, Hikari's dramatic entrance in the first episode is recontextualized as an interruption of Nana's own carefully constructed drama. The ominous sound of her luggage wheels is the wheel of time itself encroaching on Nana's Frozen World.

This is the finest episode of Revue Starlight yet, and dare I say it, the most Bananice episode as well. When I said I was looking forward to Nana's episode last week, I really wasn't expecting anything like this, but I'm so pleased. Beyond the obvious twist factor, where this episode truly shines is as a powerful and critical look at the universal human desire to retreat into the familiar. Nana's final look dead into the viewer's eyes is an unsettling breach of the fourth wall, but it's one that implicates us as much as her. How do we approach art? What is our relationship with our own past? The time loop is a familiar trope in anime, but for Revue Starlight to drop this reveal in the middle of its season suggests that its ultimate ambitions lie beyond it. Nana herself also possesses so much more depth than an evil mastermind orchestrating everything. She's a warm, helpful, and kind person who loves her friends. She's deeply misguided, but she's sympathetic. Her fears and apprehensions reflect our own about our lives and our art. She just needs someone to snap her out of her own eternal revue, and Karen and HIkari might be the girls to do it.

Rating: BANANICE (A+)

Revue Starlight is currently streaming on HIDIVE.

Steve is a longtime anime fan who can be found making banana posts about anime on his Twitter.