Star Dust is not a good anime. However, that doesn't stop it from being an unintentionally hilarious parody of every 90's PSA and after-school special ever. We have a future Earth that's been completely ravaged by pollution, and now garbage is thrown into sun and hazardous material is thrown into Jupiter. There's something about how radioactive waste dumped into the sun illegally is making sunstorms worse. I don't think that's how stars work, but whatever. The anime is not subtle or nuanced at all about its environmentalist themes, it's just a blunt "STOP POLLUTING!" message like every 90's PSA. Okay, but where *do* we throw ourtrash? Yeah, it's good not to litter, but what do you do when the landfills have gotten so big they cover the entire Earth? There's a lecturing monologue at the very end about how pollution is even going to make space uninhabitable, so clearly they *don't* want the solution to be "throw it into space." There's never an actual solution proposed, just a lecture on what *not* to do.

What elevates this from preachy to unintentional comedy gold is that almost every character in this is a wildly over-the-top racist. Like, racist in ways that would make your hillbilly uncle from north Florida go "Hey now..." There's zero explanation as to why race relations have deteriorated to this point, it's really just to make every character look like an unreasonable jerk compared to the protagonist, and I guess tell the audience about how racism is bad?

The main character, who is very obviously meant to be a role model for how people should behave, is against violence to an absurd degree. There's a space dogfight in which a guy is trying to shoot him and another pilot down, and he STILL insists the other pilot not kill the enemy! He's constantly lecturing about how killing is ALWAYS wrong... even in self-defense, I guess. He even talk-no-jutsu's the enemy pilot into surrendering.

By the end, everyone apologizes to the obviously-right-all-along protagonist, having seen the error of their ways. It's the most after-school special ending I've ever seen in an anime. "I'm so sorry, you were right all along! I'll immediately stop being a violent racist who loves polluting. You have truly shown me the error of my ways." Absolutely amazing.