Cards on the table, i kinda hated Revue Starlight the first couple times i watched it. Or... well, it's hard for me to hate plotting this well-considered, and fights this well-choreographed, and characters so complex, but it was sort of a begrudging "like". Definitely not "love", though it spoke to me very deeply. i just straight up encountered a skill issue within myself watching episode 5; Mahiru's distantly hovering devotion to Karen had been building in incredibly identifiable fits and starts any time she was on screen. But at the same time it's clear Mahiru is the (heavy scare quotes) "loser" in the love triangle. In the same way Clannad and Monogatari are not harem-genre, Revue Starlight does not contain a love triangle. It would be a pretty shitty one if it were; it's pretty clear who's gonna win in all three cases. That's not why anyone tunes in here, at least i hope not. The "destined pairing" is telegraphed from episode one by Mahiru in such a way it's obvious she's no part of it. (Put a pin in that.) Either way, Mahiru's story supported the overall work's theme of "tragedy" perhaps the strongest for me. i mean it was like watching her heart break in slow motion, knowing what would happen at the agonizing end. The Revue Of Jealousy is especially hard to watch. Mahiru's giddy oblivion as she chases Karen around ? The unseen fear so clearly on the face of the one she longs to love ? It's like a waking nightmare. She can't see the girl she wants to love. Even just describing it makes me feel a little sick.
It was worse on my second watch, i think. In a way, that has to justify my considering it a favorite at first, right ? there's something about Revue Starlight that made me want to understand it better. But at the same time... for a few hours i'd marked the show as dropped on my anilist and had given it, like, a three. And then i got over myself. Because again there was always something about the work as a whole that spoke to me, even as i felt like it was pushing me away. Though i considered Revue Starlight a masterpiece even after my first watch, i would have called it mostly a matter of sheer awe at its scope. Even now, i'm sure i'm only scratching the surface of one of nine core characters, and i remain awestrauck by how layered each scenes are, the revues themselves especially. The dialogue, lyrics and choreography work in perfect unison each time, and when they break from that, it still conveys the emotionality of the story very well. But that's a very obvious kind of quality, isn't it ? i'm more impressed by something speaking to me without me even consciously hearing it, or that something could speak so strongly i could mistake its reverberating inverse, its echo, for a voice all its own.
Why can't Karen just be with Mahiru ? Or Karen be with both of them ? Why can't she just suck it up to do right by this girl who's always been by her side ? i would never think like this about real life, but it's all make-believe anyway, so why can't this play do right by all its players ? Without someone for Mahiru to glom onto, she, who would seem to need someone more than most, is without a match. And it stung more than i think was intended, right ? Like, "Sit down, shut up and support the happy couples' happiness," to the girl with the most explicitly romantic feelings for another cast member. It wasn't lost on me–In a group of nine, someone has to be the odd one out, and it just seems like good storytelling sense to pick the most painful candidate for that destined lonely way. But it still, really, did hurt.
Bluntly, i forgot the same thing about myself as Mahiru; had forgotten, or tried to. i've talked plenty about the mistake of changing myself for someone else, but i've always kept it pretty vague in the specifics. Simply put, i would have done anything to make someone happy, but that person had such a different idea of right and wrong, it was like speaking different languages without the ability to notice the vast gap in meaning. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the aftermath of that time was when the roots of my love for tragedy grew deeper, simply from having tried so hard to do everything right and yet, even still, being left with a great emptiness. It stung even more given just how my every conscious effort to become myself was in service of escaping tragedy. Even if someone knows they're doing the wrong thing, no one ever thinks they're doing things for the wrong reasons, so my perception of "justice" can't be what determines my ethical worth. Nor has anyone ever avoided tragedy by seeking justice; often, quite the opposite.
"Just do your best to make other people as happy as you can." Gross, it sounds so utilitarian when i put it like that. i feel like the way it manifested was different; in practice it meant considering the needs of all others and myself, and living in such a way that all can be met. Or at least, that was what i was aiming for, even if i couldn't have told you that. Realizing it now really does feel like glimmer. And after all, all my implacably aspirational characters then and now–Kinomoto Sakura, Tojo Nozomi–stand out to me for how they become better by both caring for others and allowing themselves to be cared for in turn. And like, isn't that how everyone wants to be ? i hardly feel unique for saying "any ethical framework i can derive from Cardcaptor Sakura, the sweetest, happiest show of all time, i'm going to seek to apply to my life." Maybe that only seems so obvious because of how warm Cardcaptor Sakura is in my memory, but it was one of, if not the first, stories i'd known to so thoroughly (over 70 episodes) convey care for its characters. And that was how i wanted to be !! How the characters and the world of that show made me want to be, the way they put me at peace. i did and still do very much wish i were Sakura's older sister or aunt or something; i feel like we'd be able to learn a lot about life from each other, lift each other up.
By the way, moe is inherently caring, and it is my firm belief that even though moe characters are make-believe, love and care for them is not without virtue. Simply put, caring for everything makes me evolve day by day.
Again, i've talked about that a lot recently. i've also mentioned how Hatsune seems genuinely afraid to touch Sakiko, right ? Sorry, but not too sorry, everything really is about them. That scene on the ferry really was a miracle, an act of the girl who styled herself as God. (Saki's chuuni-adjacent delusions of divinity really does a lot to make the almost ridiculously unfair circumstances that her family puts her through more comprehensible.) i only bring that up because a miracle like that really feels like the only way a miracle like that can work. Otherwise it's just absolute terror all the way down, cue Mahiru in episode 1 asking to play the fated two with Karen so pathetically the camera cuts away, as if to spare her.
In the end, Starlight is a tragedy. The "Destined Pair" are marked as such only by immense and unavoidable suffering–not that there was no way to escape starlight-gathering-as-atonement, but the people Hikari and Karen are make it an inevitability. Mahiru stands in sharp contrast to them in a lot of ways, not only as the odd one out in their pseudo-love triangle, but moreover in being (seemingly) destined to be alone. She's spared the exhausting hubristic struggle of aiming for the top while losing none of the glimmer of victory. "Justice" for Mahiru would dictate that she be paired off the same as everyone else. It's definitely unjust, that Mahiru could shine like that without dueling and winning, again and again. And it's unfair to her too, definitely. Everyone else gets a love story and she gets to watch her dorm eat her family's potatoes. But honestly, aren't there more important things than giving "justice" to your characters?
That scene with her sharing her family's potatoes with everyone at the end of episode 5 made me bawl my eyes out. Where previously i'd stared hollowly at the screen, on this watch it reminded me of nothing so much as Swamp Thing growing yams out of its back to feed to Abby Arcane, which i think i've mentioned once or twice; Mahiru's character post-episode 5 reminds me of Iskandar in Fate/Zero so strongly in how they effectively defy tragic fates through nothing more than following their own heart. (Even though Iskandar did die, its hard for me to say he lost.) In abandoning justice for the "loser," Revue Starlight allows her to win. She can't really be said to have lost, even if she didn't win the duel, when she walks away with a source of glimmer and a life with more love than before ?
She doesn't deserve to say that at all after the Revue of Jealousy, but that's why it's the right thing to do.
All that said, i think it might be a Homura and Sayaka situation, where if you say you're like Mahiru you're actually like Nana and vice versa. Anyway, thank you for reading !! Sticking to that one a week schedule, but for the new month, i'll reset the counter to be from the first. it's easier to keep track of and spending the last 2-3 days resting should keep me from getting burnt out. So–my next post will be out by February 7th !! Look forward to it !!