The Spring 2023 Anime Preview Guide

Stella of the Theater: World Dai Star

The story is set in a world after Dai Star stage performers exploded in worldwide popularity in the 20th century. 16-year-old Kokona Ōtori follows her dream of becoming a World Dai Star by auditioning for the Sirius theatrical troupe.

Stella of the Theater: World Dai Star is an original anime part of multimedia project and streams on Crunchyroll on Sundays.

I'm a bit conflicted on this one. On the one hand, while this isn't an amazing premiere, there's plenty to like about it. This is an advertisement tie-in for a mobile game, but it largely avoids the problems most series of its kind brings with them. There's a relatively small cast, and this episode zeroes in on introducing just a couple of them, giving us a firm grasp of the premise and our main characters' personalities.

The portrayal of stage acting is surprisingly robust. Throughout the auditions, we see not just the basics of emoting and reciting lines but also characters using the lighting and blocking of the stage to enhance their performances. While some weird in-universe terminology called “Sense” might get in the way, this episode is just about the actresses making considered decisions to elevate their performances. There are notable shifts in quality whenever a Big Acting Moment comes. While the fluidity of it clashes a bit with the show's usual production, it's impressive how well they're able to capture the physicality of stage performance. It's a well-produced, thoughtfully constructed show, and the central performances made me interested in seeing more.

On the other hand, I admit I spent a good portion of this episode distracted from the main plot because I realized the show's twist about three minutes in and kept waiting for the shoe-drop reveal. That's a “me” problem, but it didn't help that most of the material leading up to the auditions felt pretty perfunctory. Kokona herself doesn't leave much impression as a protagonist. She's a perfectly nice underdog, but nothing about her personality could distract me from waiting to see when they'd acknowledge that Shizuka was a ghost that only Kokona could see. The dialogue was far less interesting than the fact that nobody acknowledged or spoke to the blue girl the whole time, which probably isn't a great sign for the overall rapport of the cast.

So yeah, this episode was very good at what it needed to be good at, but there's also a significant amount of chaff, at least in this set-up episode. I'm interested enough to watch another episode or two to see a deeper exploration of stagecraft, but it's more curiosity than excitement.