Review of Stars Align

7/10

Recommended

March 23, 2020

2 min read

4 reactions

Hoshiai no Sora is a product that fully suffers at the hands of its own obvious rushed development, and honestly, if it doesn't get a second season, it will stand to be an overall tragic flop that won't get to finish what it does well: Excellent, realistic characterization. Deviating from typical sports anime fair and focusing more on the struggles and development of each soft-club tennis member does give an overall special edge and feeling to this series, which I in particular appreciated since what always drives me away from sports anime is how heavy of a focus on the actual sports itself has. I'm sorry,but I just find sports boring in any form.

What this results in is spending a lot of time with the boys of the soft tennis club (Some more than others), which gives them a chance to be fleshed out as people, rather than just being built off of basic archetypes.

However, since some of the other characters do not get as much screen time, due to this being a short 12 episode season rather than the originally planned 24 episode season, there is also a large amount of lacking and wanting more from the writing and characterization, which especially rears its ugly head in the last three episodes of the season, and especially so on the sudden cliffhanger ending (Which I won't get into but let's just say it leaves a lot to be desired and did knock off a point from my overall final score).

The art is pretty low budget in a very large majority of the scenes and shots, with several instances of heavily noticeable, cheap CG. I feel that the use of budget animation and art could have very easily been eased with a slightly brighter color palette, but I can also understand how that may have taken away from the realism that the series aims for.

Overall, do you crave a sports anime that focuses more on characters above action? Do not expect a fully completed story, but do give this series a shot, and just hope that we get an actual conclusion to the story and aren't just stuck on a rushed cliffhanger for all of eternity.