English Dub Season Review: Kageki Shojo!! Season One

The curtain rises on Sarasa Watanabe, a starry-eyed 5’10” student who hopes to perform as a male lead role in the all-female Kouka acting troupe. She forms a friendship with her new roommate, a former idol named Ai. Together, they’re in for the role of a lifetime…

Kageki Shoujo!! (or “Opera Girl!” as some websites call the dubbed version in English despite Funimation using its Japanese title) for the most part, works as a semi-accurate depiction of the acting world and really gave me a lot to think about regarding it. I can safely say it had some of the most realistic and modern drama I’ve seen in an animated show all based within a great setting of an ultra-competitive theatrical school with lots of storytelling potential. You feel the division, competitiveness, and edge that every girl attending is trying to get over the others. There’s very little breathing room in an episode, as every second had a level of importance to the proceedings.

The art style in the show is quite unique. It’s extremely bright and colorful in places while mixing traditional shojo art with a more modern take. The Visuals remain solid throughout the anime, and multiple directing techniques were used to enhance certain scenes but of course, the visuals aren’t anything too special but are still really good, everything is very soft and colorful which really sells the idea of Kouka being very pristine and perfect. The soundtrack composed by Tsuneyoshi Saito is used well when it needs to be, and when paired with strong voice acting the entire anime suddenly becomes more impactful. The opening and ending are both great with the opening theme song “Hoshi no Orchestra” (Starry Orchestra) is performed by the three-member band Saji, while the ending theme song “Hoshi no Tabibito” (Stellar Traveler) is performed by Sayaka Senbongi and Yumiri Hanamori respectively.

The story is simple yet delicate as it touches on some very important issues and handles them carefully. Episode 1 deceptively starts as your usual cutesy pilot-style setup, but from episode 2 and onward, the show really gets going and at points gets surprisingly dark. Offering realistic, but hard-to-watch depictions of topical shit you often don’t see in anime such as sexual harassment, stalking, grooming, eating disorders, and child abuse.

I was also amazed by how much each of the characters was developed over the course of the season. While it’s only 12 episodes, it felt like all of the girls had plenty of time for their arcs. Most are dealing with some sort of trauma from their past that stands in the way of achieving their personal goals. Speaking more about the characters, most of our main cast have pretty expansive backstories that become the focus of future episodes, and they all have their fair share of issues that so many young girls in similar situations in the real world absolutely experience – but it never feels like an “after school special” trope. They are absolutely written in a way that makes it all seem grounded and you can tell how much they are affected – this isn’t limited to just them either, things the other girls do reflect so much on the others and there is a lot of growth because of this.

Overall, despite some cringe-worthy unintentional “woke” moments with Ai’s character in early episodes, It’s rare to see an anime that handles its themes as tactfully and down-to-earth as Kageki Shoujo does. As it really made me think about the drama and issues it brought up, which to a realistic degree gave off Black Swan Vibes in nearly every episode, by introducing a new issue or thinking point about the prestigious world these girls live in as the issues themselves are on a consistent level, grounded in a realistic way. The characters are portrayed so well in these situations and it’s all so believable that I left me genuinely impressed throughout. Since there hasn’t been word of if Season 2 is happening, we can only hope it continues the story when it’s eventually announced.