English Dub Season Review: Show by Rock!! Stars!!

All the top bands from previous seasons are back in Midi City for an epic encore. But it’s not all fun and games. This all-star battle of the bands is set to feature their cutest—*ahem*—toughest competition yet…


On the technical side, the animation has been consistently handled by Kinema Citrus who has a decent track record of shows such as Rising of the Sheild Hero and “Black Bullet” with colorful scenery & backgrounds which makes sense given that this Anime franchise started out as a mobile online game with its Pop Idol/anime-like aesthetic. The characters are all very colorful and designed differently. From Humans to even Animal People, each of them differs from the others, their personal characteristics are well highlighted. For a show about music, it thankfully doesn’t slack off in that department as the Opening intro song is done by “Do Re Mi Fa Stars!!” is by Plasmagica & Mashumairesh!!, while the outro song from “Hoshizora Light Story” is by “Mashumairesh!!”. The “good mood” music can be felt directly in both parts and also reflects their style of music that cleverly incorporates into the soundtrack.


With the fourth season of this show with the added word “Stars!!” we finally get to see bands and singers from previous seasons actually performing together. However, the focus is mainly on the teamwork of the bands “Plasmagica” and “Mashumairesh!!“. They put goals together and attempt to achieve them hand in hand. The relationship between Cyan and Howan is particularly striking here. Our two “bell-bearers” get along very well. Their close connection certainly contributes a large part to their continued success. It’s great to see how well our characters get along. Even with the members of the other bands, there is a good atmosphere, although they’re supposed to be rivals, they encourage and help each other to improve which seems quite respectable.

However, the proceedings aren’t perfect. One major plot hole this Season seems to have is arguably Cyan’s presence. Specifically, how the hell did she manage to get back to Sound World after being sent back to the human world at the end of season 2?! It’s never properly explained. You can’t just throw a character back into a fantasy world without a solid explanation as to how she even returned in the first place. But this isn’t the show’s only problem. Outside of our leads, other characters don’t really develop much either.

At its core, a lot of the show is just the Mashumairesh girls interacting with the other bands. And while I do appreciate that Season 4 made effort to flesh them out a little bit, other characters could have also benefited from having their backstories also fleshed out, and a lot of the show spends its time on comedic band wackiness that’s just meant to be there for cheap laughs instead of how it was used to bring levity to previous seasons after some serious moments. And the fact that it prefers doing that over fleshing out its supporting cast to make us give a shit about them is what keeps me from giving this particular Season a higher rating.

Overall, this might please longtime fans if you can get past the aforementioned Canyon-sized plot holes. But given that this show threw continuity and character consistency out the window, at least it remains entertaining for those who might appreciate this more than I did. There’s also the subject of debate that you don’t have to watch the previous seasons to properly connect the narrative dots like you would with Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. And while each of Jojo’s seasons took place in different time periods to keep things unique and self-contained yet still managing to leave things open to more storylines, this isn’t the case here. It is advisable to watch the three previous seasons first before starting “Stars!!”, but even without this prior knowledge, the characters, bands, and eclectic styles of music are handled competently even if the rest of the story stumbles…