Anime Hajime Review: Shadow Star Narutaru

Series Synopsis

While visiting her grandparent’s home, Shiina Tamai (voiced by Asami Sanada) hears someone (voiced by Satsuki Yukino) calling her; almost as if it were a dream. While out swimming in the ocean one day, she comes across strange, but cute looking starfish-like creature. Unable to shake the feeling that the two were meant to meet, Shiina realizes that this thing, who she names Hoshimaru, was what was calling her name.

The two become inseparable, but Shiina isn’t sure what Hoshimaru is exactly. The situation becomes much more complicated after she meets a cripplingly shy and insecure girl named Akira (voiced by Mamiko Noto) who also has a partner like Hoshimaru. The only difference, Akira is terrified of the creature.

Everything then goes from unclear to dangerous. Hoshimaru, and similar beings, is part of an ancient race of dragons, and there are a number of people who can control them. Unlike Shiina though, many of these people want to bring about the end of the world.

A critical turning point is on the horizon and people are going to die. What comes next will push Shiina to her absolute physical, and perhaps the more dangerous, mental limit.

Series Positives

What I’m about to say is merely an observation. For all the potential influences for the Higurashi series, Shadow Star could certainly be one of them. There are a lot of elements that are eerily similar.

For starters, they both hide behind a wall of cuteness; Higurashi being more moe whereas Shadow Star is more child-like. Yet these are façades concealing a much darker side. Both of these series are not nice, people get violently killed, and their stories rely on the disturbing.

Shiina

The first volume of the Shadow Star manga released a few years before the initial Higurashi game and their respective anime iterations saw a comparable airing gap. So to me, the potential for one inspiring the other seems possible

However that’s irrelevant. Shadow Star may have done it first, but Higurashi did it better; much better.

Atmosphere

I’ve got to give Shadow Star this, it understood creepy.

Hoshimaru

There are not many scenes where you can relax; pretty much right out the gate too. There was always something off, something not quite right. For better, or for worse, you never fully understand what's going on. There’s always a mystery and that’s totally okay, to a point; and this show crossed that point, but we’ll get that in a bit.

Two things though, I want to give credit to.

The first is Hoshimaru. This little bastard is cute, but he does scare the f@#$ out of me. He…she…it, I don’t know, felt way out of place and that’s why I think it worked so well. All the other dragons are not disturbing by any stretch of the imagination; in fact most of them have a rather adorable derpy look to them. Hoshimaru on the other hand is a god damn plushy as far as I’m concerned, except this thing has no problem killing you if deemed necessary. Good on you show, this was a success.

The second, the more impactful, was the music. You take this away and the series is left with almost nothing. Sure there was some really strong abusive imagery, both physical and sexual, that did add to the overall uncomfortableness of it all; plus factoring in how old the girls in this show were made it astronomically more disturbing. However that was sparse and mostly towards the end, the music was a constant though. It was the kind of tone that if you heard it when walking into a room, you would immediately think, “Yah there’s just evil here and I want nothing to do with it.”

Shadow Star does manage to do creepy and unnerving. Too bad it had nothing else to go with it.

Series Negatives

I kind of feel like a parent who's seeing their kid right after paying their bail. I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.

The main reason why I watched Shadow Star was because I had heard of its premise; cutesy, but f@#$ed up as hell. While I was sitting through the show, I saw that potential. Like I said this series did get a tad creepy. Unfortunately, something was holding it back.

I initially wanted to say that it had to do with the complete lack of gore and blood. I tried looking for an uncensored version, because I am screwed up like that. However I know damn well that’s not what did it.

I know I’ve gone on record for saying this, but I’ll say it again here. Excessive violence is an optional spice, not a main ingredient to horror. Once I eliminated that possibility, I knew what the problem was.

Boring and All Over the Place

It felt like there were episode long gaps of nothing happening. There were just dragged out pauses, characters with dumbfounded faces, and pseudo deep philosophical bull s@#$. The latter took a real toll on my patience.

Remember how I said the entire show is nothing but a mystery. This gets insanely heavy handed and exhausting because there was never any give back. I can't even begin to tell you how anything happened in this show. Even if I could, had this series continued, which really needed to happen, the rules of engagement would have changed anyway.

For the majority of the show, there's this group of teenagers with dragons that want to take over the world, kill all human, I don’t know because I really stopped caring. I maybe would've been a little more invested had a few questions been answered. First, who are you? Second, why should I bother? Your guess for either is as good as mine.

Anyway, at about the midway point, there’s a face-off between Shiina and this group of hooligans. This should have been kick ass. Strange mythical creatures battling each in the sky armed with heavy artillery (that was a thing apparently) all the while being bombarded by the Japanese military and oh my god why is nothing happening?

And then it ended, that was fun. Not sure why? Weren’t the sad emo kids winning; maybe? They might have been losing, they did kind of get their nuts kicked in at the start, but it looked like they were making a comeback. They did kill a crap ton of people, but why did they stop? No one was fighting back at that point so why did they stop? That’s okay I suppose because they’re coming back right? Briefly, what are you talking about? Oh…oh wait they’re actually not going to show up again, like at all, for the last third of this series. No…no, no, no that’s fine I didn’t know that much about them anyway, so no skin off my bones.

So anyway, what is going to happen for these last few episodes? Oh a totally different storyline that comes out of complete nowhere; what a f@#$ing shock. Hey you remember that one girl that kind of just showed up back in like episode two (seriously though, I don’t recall when this person actually first appeared and it took me awhile to realize we were in fact seeing a pre-established character), well she's been the victim of a twisted group of bullies this whole time and we’re just now telling you this here in episode eleven. You better get up to speed quick because this is literally the entire rest of the story.

In all fairness though, these last three episodes were pretty decent and would have made for a good series had they been the sole focus. A shame to since I was totally checked out by this point.

Many elements of this series are inherently unnerving. However, to make a story or a show memorable and worth something, you need to have these things makes sense in terms of the plot.

Final Thoughts

There is an idea to Shadow Star; an idea that might actually thrive in the manga version. For the anime though, it was a missed opportunity.

The show can get creepy, it can get unsettling. The music is effective and some of the imagery is hard to stomach. But all the good is surrounded by nonsense.  The story is something that happens, the characters are full of themselves, and any real meat to this series doesn’t appear until the end. By that time however, you’re most likely not going to care.

I don’t know what happened here, but this is something you don’t need to waste your time on.

                Google+                          Facebook                            Twitter