Guest Review by Ambi Reine

If you found out that your life was based on a fairy tale, would you fight for a happily ever after?

From Studio Colorido and Studio Chromato comes Cosmic Princess Kaguya!, a retelling of the classic Japanese story The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter but with a near-future sci-fi twist.

The tale focuses on three main girls. The first, Iroha Sakayori, is an overworked high school student who is trying her best to make her own way in life, but doesn’t necessarily want more than she has. Second is Kaguya, an energetic girl who appeared as a baby inside a utility pole and claims to have run away from the moon. Ultimately she turns to being a content creator in the hopes of performing with Iroha alongside the virtual livestreamer Yachiyo. Third is Yachiyo Runami, who Iroha is a big fan of. At seemingly every opportunity, Iroha is either watching a Yachiyo video or listening to one of her songs. She even has a shrine to Yachiyo by her desk and is brought to tears by her songs. But it is made fairly apparent that Yachiyo seems to know more than she is letting on.

While Iroha initially names her Kaguya after the fairytale, it turns out that life really does imitate art in their case. From accidentally causing a myriad of people to want her hand in marriage, to the Lunarians wanting to retrieve Kaguya, the story’s events begin to play out in real time. But Kaguya wants only one thing: a new, happy ending and to spend more time with Iroha. And as Iroha grows closer to Kaguya, she begins to want to change the ending of the story as well.

Though she is annoyed with Kaguya’s antics initially, Iroha still finds herself doing things she thought would be out of character. And yet she still tries to convince herself that she would be fine with things going back to normal. It is only when it is seemingly too late that Iroha is able to fully step out of her comfort zone and confront the things that were holding her back.

Although some might find their relationship offputting since Kaguya is initially found as a baby, she grows up to be a similar age to Iroha within just a few days and we later discover that her infant state was just a physical body created by her ship. She’s even revealed to have held a job on the moon that she had ditched to come to Earth.

Visually the film is stunning. It uses a good mix of 2D and 3D visual effects to make the virtual world, Tsukuyomi, feel different to the real world. From the water made out of cubes to the flickering low polygon fire on the torches, the virtual world is full of charm. The game they play within Tsukuyomi called Kassan is a prime example of this, taking advantage of the game setting to craft expansive 3D environments. When it comes to the concerts, they go all out with visually impressive light shows and choreography. That isn’t to say that the real world in the film is uninteresting to watch. I especially enjoyed the use of exaggerated smear frames when Kaguya was doing pretty much anything.

The soundtrack is a mix of new songs and remixes by various vocaloid artists. The film’s main song, Ex-Otogibanashi, has been stuck in my head since I watched it the first time. As an added treat, the English dub track has English covers of all of the featured songs save for the ending credits. I always find it a bit jarring when English dubs of music shows suddenly switch back to Japanese for the songs, so it is quite nice to not have that immersion broken in this film.

The film is available as a Netflix exclusive worldwide. And as of the time of writing this, you still have a chance to see a “live” performance by Kaguya in VRChat as part of the 2026 Sanrio Festival. As well, there is a music video for the song Ray on the movie’s official Youtube channel, that also functions as a bit of an epilogue for the story. Unfortunately at the time of writing it is currently only available in Japanese with no option for English Subtitles.

I recommend watching the film as spoiler-free as possible for your first watch through, and as such have kept the spoilers to a minimum in this review. Later revelations help to recontextualize the dynamic between Kaguya, Iroha, and Sachiyo that make rewatching the film a delight.

The only real complaint I have is that the montages rush through a lot of character development. There is probably comfortably enough story here to fill out a full cour of episodes just by extending those montages. Still, the film knows the tale that it wants to tell, so those parts inevitably fell by the wayside. It also took me a few watches to fully understand how Kassan is played, but I think that someone more familiar with that type of game may have an easier time understanding it.

The film serves as an inspirational tale about overcoming destiny to be together with the one you love. It is also a love letter to Vocaloid and VTuber fans and communities who will have a lot to like with the film. It’s even inspired me to dust off my VR Headset to explore those virtual worlds once again.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 9
Characters – 6 A lot of Iroha’s development is unfortunately only told through the montages, and characters other than her, Kaguya, and Yachiyo do not get much focus.
Music – 9
Service – 3 While there are Beach and Onsen scenes, the outfits are not too revealing.
Yuri – 8

Overall – 9