Recommended
This review is written by two people; the owner of this account (moi) and my friend. The first review is my friend's, and the bottom is mine. -- Alien stage is a good web show. It has its flaws, yeah, but it’s still a fun romp with good music and amazing visuals. The series exists in the form of music videos, comics and very limited pages of text. It is about (pet) humans who are in a singing competition where there can be only one survivor. The driving force of the project is the well rounded cast of characters that, with the combination of punchy writing,art and music, can make stellar impressions with the little screentime they get.
The piece uses its limited time well in most cases, not delving too deeply into the lore but showing bits and pieces of alien culture and how it affects the human cast in horrific ways, it helps that the aesthetics use a lot of the regular old sleek white sci fi designs, but with a lot of good twists to make it stand out from most shows.
Visually, the show is a marvel. It starts off good looking for a series of youtube videos, but by the end you can see the whole team flex their skills and make wonderful clips that really use digital art to its fullest potential. I love the use of color in this show, and how they really push for some great lighting with bounce light and secondary light sources. And of course, the character design is so sleek, it stands out even if they have elements from a lot of standard anime characters. Shoutouts to Sua for being the quintessential idol design.
The show, however, falters at the end with its writing. A lot of things are flipped on its head and characters don’t have satisfying conclusions, which really left a bad taste in my mouth. We are dealing with a story about how oppression leads people to do certain things, but are not willing to fully engage with battling the system of oppression. It just seemed odd.
Still, if you have two/three hours to watch all the videos and read all the comics, you will go on a nice journey with a very lovable cast of characters who all have their complexities and hidden desires. Just don’t expect a revolutionary girl utena out of it.
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Alien Stage is one of those “you had to be there” web series. Watching it live is electric, but it still stands on its own as a solid, one of a kind type of web series. Vivinos and her team did a stand out job, but that doesn’t mean the series is without its flaws.
Alien’s stage best quality is its art; while the show isn’t animated as fluidly as other series, the coloring and line work is top notch. The music is also very good, but I prefer the main numbers compared to the sub songs; I’ve never been a fan of kpop, which the sub songs lean more towards, while the main series songs are more musical-theater-ish.
I like the writing…….. most of the time. Alien Stage explores the idol industry and toxic romance, and I think it does a pretty damn good job of it….. Most of the time. Alien Stage revolves around three main character pairings, each exploring the aforementioned concepts. To its credit, I think Alien Stage does a really good job arguing its case around the dehumanization of the idol industry, and the hunger for control in an environment where it’s been ripped away from you. I especially love how non-linear the story is; we are constantly jumping back and forth from the present day to the character’s childhoods, each post deepening previously shallow interpretations of said characters. The lore of Alien Stage is also decent; its not terribly deep, but the visual design of the aliens is very cool.
In terms of exploring toxic love, its less of a success story; I personally found myself loving only Mizi and Sua’s relationship in its entirety, as I thought the direction the creators wet with Till and Ivan was a bit boring, and I found Hyuna and Luka’s relationship to be horribly racist. To try and dance around spoilers, Alien Stage’s brown cast (Hyuna and her brother Hyunwoo) are victim to racist writing tropes, adultified or painted as overly aggressive in a way that is very bad and not done well. Hyuna is either portrayed as overtly mature, either in her forced “motherhood” upon various characters or aggressive depictions. (I won’t spoil what happens to Hyunwoo.)
Alien Stage, as a story, is also messily organized. Very integral context is found not within the music vidoes, but side comics published on pateron. This google document (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PYwknYstNdlNYdLbnT89DhwC_vkXyVMDeqNB6o_RX2g/edit?usp=sharing) is the most comprehensive guide to Alien Stage, and I don’t think it should exist. While being a web series allows Alien Stage to explore different artistic mediums, when plot points are buried in Youtube Community Posts and links aren’t found within descriptions, it can be difficult for someone to navigate the story.
I still like Alien Stage. I think it’s a super fun, visually stunning romp, with genuine poignant moments---even if not every relationship was a knock out of the park. Recommend you watch, but definitely have a viewer’s guide with you.
