Starmyu 3rd Season

Reason for Watching: Well I have already watched Season 1 and 2 after all~ TL;DR: Story is really weak and slow, but the musical aspect and pretty characters are satisfying to watch. This season is pretty weak, as compared to the previous seasons. The story is VERY slow-paced, and a little messy. The introduction of new characters is fine, but with the increased of characters, it seemed that the story has lost its focus. I can understand wanting to give the new characters some action to blend them into the plot. But unfortunately, it seemed like that's all the creators was able to do, just giving somescreen time to the new characters as well as the original MCs and Support Characters. The storylines of the new characters and the existing characters did not come together at all. We know through the hopelessly optimistic narration from the main MC that the characters' stories are somewhat connected. But that's all, just a narration POV from the MC that their storylines are indeed coming together to make a full complete story. But in reality, the story failed to display that to the audience. Never mind if the new characters lack their origin story for the audience to know how they have come to be, the story never really make full use of these characters to even develop the main MCs and main Support characters. It just seemed like the creators wanted to create and showcase more pretty boys. (I am not reviewing the musical storylines as part of the story aspect, I consider them under Sound). As with the previous seasons, the Art and Sound are a cut above the Story. The animation (reviewing this under Art) for this season seem to be lacking more than the previous 2, not like the animation production was really stellar for the previous seasons, but in this season, it is a lot more obvious that the animation is lacking. There are a lot of still frames instead of animated movements, and is most obvious when the moments build up to some sort of surprise/ revelation, and the scene is just a motionless character with some sound effects to create the "oooh" element. Or even more lame is that instead of showing how awesome the character is through animated movements, they just added a few frames of feathers and/or droplets of sparkling sweat. Though after all is said about the animation, the design of the characters, the stage, the costumes, and the lame sweat (hahah~) are really pleasing to the eyes, It would be great if the animation quality can match up to the Art style of this anime~ It would be more dynamic. The musical aspect did improved significantly as compared to season 1. Hahaha~ Now the musical scenes are more naturally build-up and followed-up by the regular scenes. Though there's one thing that doesn't sit well with me since season 1. That is, there are several instances with sound effects of a gaming scene. Quite the irony since most of the songs in this series are pretty fabulous, yet the sound effects of certain motions and "revelations" sounded really cheap. But overall, is not something I will discount the Sound score for. For the Characters in this season.... I do think that the new characters introduced are pretty interesting and refreshing. But as I mentioned above, the story really did not showcase them enough. The new characters are underdeveloped, while the existing characters are developed, marginally, through rough and awkward storylines. All the character designs in this series are pretty much above average, even among my top scoring animes, it is just a pity that the story cannot bring out more of the characters' persona beyond their introduction.

I legitimately do not understand why or how this anime even managed to get a third season, especially so out of the blue. The first season was a pile of the most generic clichés and stereotypes, without even mortar to hold them together, about a few boys who had to learn to work together. The second season introduced more characters that had to learn to work together, so everyone had less screentime to help you even remember their names. And here's the third season, which... seems to add even more characters who have to learn to work together? Some of those are apparent upperclassmen, even,yet we've never heard of them despite all the time the original cast has already spent in the school?? And in all this time, neither the designs, nor the image or animation quality has gotten any better??? I simply fail to see any sort of justification for this, especially when there are countless others, at the worst as "good" as this, that get the axe after only one season, or two if they're lucky. The cast is just way too big, and holy smokes, there's maybe two or three of them that don't share the basic bland copy-paste look of everyone else - there are very good shots of them in episode 7, iirc, to showcase this, with the perfect bored look on all their faces to boot. Nevermind characterisation, just remembering their names is as close to mission impossible as it can get (there are character cards around the middle of each episode, sure, but even those are bad because the text is in the background that the characters just cover). They do a lot of running around (many times literally) to be able to perform together at the - wait, what even is that Ayanagi Festival, exactly? Frankly, if we ever got an explanation, I forgot, because it's that uninteresting to try to keep up with. And all this running around in 11 episodes, only for the thing to finally happen in episode 12... and then skydive into the post-credits scene, way beyond that, where they're not even just third years but even one step higher? Talk about pacing. Then the catchphrases add a layer of extra annoyance too: even with a big cast, one would be more than enough, especially if heard in every damn episode. Here we have three, and even a fourth has a cameo, because something has to trigger a completely out-of-place transformation. I'm not sure how this happened. I watched it because of a sort of principle: I've suffered through the first two, I might as well pick the third up as well. I'd rather like to avoid having to go for a fourth round though.

I was looking forward to the new season for a year or so, and honestly, it was quite disappointing. Even after the last episode, I still didn't feel the satisfaction I usually felt after watching episodes of season 1 and 2. I felt like, even in those 12 seasons there was very little going on and the plot seems recycled from the first season. I honestly couldn't understand why the antagonists were doing what they're doing, especially since the same argument have been solved in the previous seasons. I liked the new characters, but it felt like we barely had any time to get toknow them. Not to mention, the songs in this season really wasn't as good as the ones in the previous seasons? And by the time we reached the final episode, I was shocked because I felt like we just went around in circles and suddenly everything is solved and now they're heading to their third year and saying goodbye... As a fan of this show, it really made me sad it ended like this.

Merchandise

Links may contain affiliate references

Studio

Producers

Themes