English Dub Review: Stars Align “Episode 2”

 

 

Overview

Maki’s arrival kicks off an important practice session for the tennis club.

Our Take

I have a correction to make; in the review for the first episode of Stars Align, I referred to the characters as high schoolers, when in fact they are actually in middle school. My bad.

The show opens up with one of the characters, Yuta, being bullied for being gay. The issue is resolved as quickly as it is brought up, and the episode continues on. It’s a relatively heavy start to a second episode, considering how the first episode ended. The show seems content with dropping these bombs and then moving along.  

Similar to that point, later in this episode, Kanako, one of the show’s few female characters so far, is shown to be an anime artist, and she is also bullied at school for it. Bullying appears as though it will be a recurring theme in this show. Thus far the characters have been able to just simply walk away from their bullies, which is honestly the best way to handle it, but I imagine there will come a point where things heat up.

The issue of Maki’s father is also addressed a bit in this episode. Maki is seen cooking dinner for his mom, and another man, who is either a friend or her boyfriend. The two praise Maki for his cooking then send him out to get drinks while they talk about how they’re dealing with Maki’s father. A restraining order is in the works but has borne no fruit yet. Maki’s mother is just about to reveal more information but is abruptly cut off by a convenient tennis training montage. Seems we’ll be getting our doses of drama when the show says we will.

Maki officially joins the tennis club and we are all introduced to the six other members. I’ve not quite yet put names to all the faces, but hopefully, some good character moments will help with that. Maki’s first impression of the tennis club members is a bit interesting. At first, he seems to not want to get involved with them at all, consistently snubbing their attempts to get to know him. But then later in the episode, when they’re all relearning the fundamentals of tennis, he deliberately aggravates them by calling them a garbage tennis team. He’s pretty belligerent with them, but it’s also obvious he’s pissing them off on purpose to get them to try harder. Here we observe he is really trying to help them. But whether it’s because he’s formed a genuine interest in them, or he just doesn’t want to be the only one pulling his weight, we shall see. 

To the show’s credit, the tennis presented here actually seems all very authentic. They have to begrudgingly run laps in order to build stamina. They have to practice how to hold a racket, the various grips, and the different swings to perform. Toma is teaching Maki all of these things because he’s new, but as said earlier, the entire team seems to be taking this as a necessary refresher course for the fundamentals of tennis. As one would expect, having to learn everything together at once builds some cohesion between the team members. 

The animation in the second episode is not only as good as the first, but it’s also actually better in some instances. When Toma and Maki are running laps together, constantly trying to outpace one another, twice it cuts to unique shots of them running. In these shots, the normal colored animation is replaced with simple pencil line art animated on a white background. These unique pencil-drawn scenes are just as clean as the regularly animated scenes, but the added negative space allows more room for visual emphasis and attention to motion. Overall it proves to be very visually interesting, and I hope there are similar scenes like this in the future.

Additionally, while neither the first nor the second episode had an opening animation, the second episode is the first to have an ending animation. The ending animation here is pretty funny. It features most of the characters from the school dancing to the ending theme. The choreography is modern and well animated, delivering a level of dance discipline that seems beyond the characters themselves. I didn’t get a full rotoscope vibe from the dancing, but I wouldn’t be surprised if parts of it were. Another feather in the animation cap for this show.

The show seems to be moving at a decent clip out of the gate. We’re not running full stride yet, but we seem to be making good headway.