#59: Five Star Stories (1989)

From https://media-cache.cinematerial.com/p/500x/
bdyjkomb/five-star-stories-movie-cover.jpg

Director: Kazuo Yamazaki

Screenplay: Akinori Endo

Based on the manga by Mamoru Nagano

Voice Cast: Ryo Horikawa as Ladios Sopp; Hideyuki Tanaka as Dr. Clome Ballanche; Ichirō Nagai as Archduke Juba Bardaim; Kazuhiko Inoue as Colus XXIII; Maria Kawamura as Lachesis; Norio Wakamoto as Voards Viewlard; Rei Sakuma as Clotho

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Synopsis: Far into the future, in a five-star universe known as the Joker Cluster, the various nations are kept in peace by the use of Mortar headds, giant robots which are as much for status as they are combat. They are all, usually, co-piloted alongside a human being known as a headdliner, with incredible skill to use the robots, with a Fatima, an artificially made robot/human hybrid always female. The fate of one Fatima named Lachesis, the prized creation of a doctor named Dr. Ballanche alongside her sister Clotho, is intertwined with a young man named Ladios Sopp. Sopp's attempt to protect Lachesis and her sister, against the corrupt leader of the region named Yubar, is to intervene with the ceremony necessary for all Fatima where they must name their masters. The outcome of this intervention, alongside Sopp's conflict about his love for Lachesis, will have seismic effect on the entire Joker Cluster through the decades to come.

Five Star Stories is sadly another example of a vast story, a vast world created in manga, we only get a slither of. This is always worse when, after viewing this theatrical adaptation, I found myself falling in love with the adaptation's melodrama and fantastical sci-fi world. The chances for a sequel were doomed anyway even if Five Star Stories had been successful. The production was done behind the back of the original author, Mamoru Nagano, and for whatever factor it lead to bad blood that would've made continuing on from the film significantly difficult or at least awkward. Even what we have is merely over an hour or so, and is a prologue to a work which barely deals with its mix of giant robot battles, space opera and a romance tale that spans millennia, many characters and across time and space.

It's merely a page of the curious tale of Five Star Stories, Nagano's personal obsession where he has worked on side manga, art books and even musical concept albums on. It's also, however, a manga which started all the way back in April of 1986 and is still to the current day unfinished and ongoing. Nagano, fascinatingly, gave away the ending of whole saga near the beginning, his belief instead of how the events will transpire in his tale being more important a really interesting creative decision. It does however leave one with a beloved, cult manga which is vying with Kentaro Miura's Berserk and CLAMP's X for which unfinished manga from years ago, and have had adaptations and strong fan bases, will end first. That may take a while, like the most frustrating game of endurance possible.  So it is something close to the heart for the manga artist/musician/essayist/animator/mecha designer/cosplayer and former fashion designer. The context also makes the film adaptation more tragic as, a slither of Nagano's obsession is beautiful in itself even if not fully informed by him, but with the caveat of how far it goes making the adaptation like one of the destroyed fragments of a Dead Sea Scroll¹.

From http://i.imgur.com/hASz4TJ.png

The best word to describe Five Star Stories is "exquisite". One of the biggest reasons, even if the film doesn't have Nagami's involvement, it enraptured me is his world and his designs are some of the most glamorous for science fiction. There is a potential issue how the story uses crude stereotyping of the glamorous "beautiful" characters are good whilst the villains are all physically "ugly", at least with the character Yubar, the stereotypical overweight and corrupt figure who tries to molest Lachesis until his heart problems take hold in one scene. It's a crass way to designate characters physically which Nagano is not the first person to fall into. Everything else about his personal obsession is immensely compelling nonetheless. Barring his preference for rock music, (though the score to this adaptation by Tomoyuki Asakawa is special itself,) it's a distinct world. One where even the clothes and uniforms are idiosyncratic. The Fatima are thin artificial maidens with long hair and sinewy figures, closer to fairies and maidens from fantasy rather than robots from sci-fi. Even the men, whilst not all of them, can be extremely feminine, purposeful androgyny found to a characters like Sopp, our protagonist, whose character design could've easily been that of a woman's. Jokes are even made of people confusing him as a woman through the film. The robots and their design are another distinction of Five Star Stories. Sandwiched between Go Nagai's crazy super robots and the realistic depictions of war machines of hard sci-fi, these elaborate creations with extraneous flair and potentially supple forms are closer to built for show rather than practical use, apt in a cosmos where these giants robots are meant to represent their nations' wealth as much as for combat, and the main " Mortar headd" is entirely made of gold.

That this only adapts the prologue does raise the problem that it barely touches upon Five Star Stories and what it actually entails. As Five Star Stories is a space opera involving giant robot battles, you are stuck on one planet, and only have one robot fight at the end with the golden Mortar headds. Major characters never appear, and the appearance of figures known as the Mirage Knights, superhuman warriors who protect royalty, feels like a cameo for important figures or at least fan favourites. What you get instead is a sci-fi drama with an aesthetic which ingest old medieval iconography, set in an almost feudal world with castle locations, with hints at a space western (a Fatima escaping into a frontier town for peasants). It becomes openly supernatural material eventually as well as our lead Sopp is hounded by an ethereal female figure who views his meeting with Lachesis as a fate he needs to accept, as much of this short film's length entirely on his conflict of intervening to rescue her. With only seventy minutes or so for the running time, it could've still tackled a lot of material but instead this adaptation takes its time which making sure the drama has emotional resonance. It also means that, barring that one robot fight in the desert and some action scenes, with a surprising amount of violence for story with a very wistful tone, you are not getting the whole of the source material in the slightest.

From https://cuteproxy.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/fivestar.jpg

Why Five Star Stories is still worthy to see is that all of this, hand drawn, is gorgeous and can still whisk you off your feet. Helped by the fact as well, unlike other anime in this scenario, that it still has an ending even if its merely a prelude to a greater, more elaborate tale. Whilst with some action scenes, it's a story more inclined to the fantastical, evoking a decade later the series The Vision of Escaflowne (1996) with its fantasy world containing elaborate giant robots and an integral romance plot of tragedy and love. Five Star Stories is openly theatrical as well, which drastically contrasts attempts at more realistic sci-fi but hinting at a comic science fiction in the final epilogue. Again, it's a shame Five Star Stories never went any further in terms of animated adaptations. If done right, such a story would be incredibly rewarding, with only the concern that such elaborate designs would have to be adapted into computer assisted animation rather than hand drawn now. Particularly as the series is about giant robots, that many are animated digitally in the current day does raise concerns of how Nagani's thin, unconventional designs would transition from the page. If it did work however, his personal obsession would be one of the most fabulous looking and lovely science fiction stories you could ever see.

From http://animuze.com/blog/wp-content/
uploads/2012/07/five_star_stories.jpg