We enjoyed the Revue Starlight anime, didn’t we? It was fun, with an edge of wtf. The music was appealing, the fights were colorful…there was a giraffe instead of a creepy obsessed adult human which would have made us feel bad.

So, I’m walking around Melonbooks, looking for Junna x Banana doujinshi (and finding a couple of non-skeazy ones!) and I see this: Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight ―The LIVE― SHOW MUST GO ON Manga, Volume 1 (matinee) (舞台 少女☆歌劇 レヴュースタァライト ). The title takes up approximately 50% of the cover. I liked that. I thought, well, how do you create a comic out of a surreal musical action show? So I picked it up.

The only problem with this book is the same problem the anime had – Hikari is unlikable and I don’t care if she ever shines again. But that aside, Ayatsugi Tsubaki does a pretty amazing job of rendering this particular nonsense in comic form.

What hooked me right away was the girls introducing themselves in song. It was loopy and a little gonzo. Of course we must imagine the music, but we can see the words, and the graphics indicate the tenor of the song.  But…the story, when ripped away from the shiny graphical rendering of symbolic fights, suddenly turns darker. I mean that literally. The girls find themselves fighting the faculty, other classes and each other.

I keep mentioning the giraffe, because it is objectively creepy for a bunch of young women to be forced to fight in order to excel on stage. Even more creepy, they sing songs about about their internal struggles, their hopes and dreams and fears. This is not the hallmark of a cutesy story, it is the hallmark of a horror story. Baring their souls, these girls “perform” combat for the ability to star in a horrible, tragic miserable play. The person overseeing the fights being an adult human male would be intolerably horrible. He would immediately become a vampire, feeding off their secrets. And that would suck. (hah) So we get a giraffe, and it gets put into the WTF box.

Here in the manga, the giraffe is merely a symbol of the audition, and the driving force behind the combat is…a creepy adult human woman! Not much less intolerable and yup, she sure comes off as pretty darn vampirey. Everything about her is drawn that way – broad, dark lips, pulled back in a carnivore smile, long dark hair, crazy eyes. And suddenly, this story which makes sense as a triumph of will only if you don’t poke too hard at it, looks about as creeptastic as possible. Hikari’s anger, Karen’s refusal to see the truth, Maya’s ego, Claudine’s self-esteem issues, Junna’s rejection of her true self, Banana’s desire to be loved, Mahiru’s dependence, on and on….the “audition” is a therapist’s office where each girl is forced to lay bare their weakness.

If I thought for a second that the second volume of the manga would not just be a facile reminder of friendship, love, trust, teamwork and belief in self will, triumph, I’d get it. While there’s a lot that could be done with this set up…I’m convinced none of it will be done. I will be happy to be proven wrong.

Ratings:

Art –  7 Really interesting more than good
Story – 7 The way it is rendered is again more interesting than the plot itself
Characters – 7 Still decent, except Hikari
Service – 7 for emotional vampirism, otherwise none
Yuri – Nope

Overall – 7

For a sequential graphic rendering of singing, dancing, and fighting, Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight ―The LIVE― SHOW MUST GO ON, Volume 1 (matinee) is a fascinating visual exercise.