Stars has a problem with believability. The author John Gardner once wrote “In any piece of fiction, the writer's first job is to convince the reader that the events he recounts really happened, or to persuade the reader that they might have happened, or else to engage the reader's interest in the patent absurdity of the lie.” The reader is given proofs—in the form of details—that what is said to be happening is really happening. One of the biggest mistakes a writer can make is to distract the reader (or in this case, viewer) from the events unfolding, which are usually missteps in maintaining the believability of characters, outcomes, the world around them, any number of things.

Unfortunately, Stars seems perfectly content to disregard the so called “fictional dream,” almost blissfully unaware of how jarring some of the developments are.

Right from the start we see Yume riding on S4's coattails. Very rarely do we see the Stars girls going out of their way to perform at smaller venues, working in the field to raise their popularity, holding fan events, etc. A lot of the time they seem to get handed important performances just for being near S4. A good example of this is Yume's performance in episode 36: Yume is given the opening concert of a new venue over any of the other characters. Why? Prior to this episode Yume had done very little to promote herself. In the episode where Yume acts as Hime's manager for a day we get to see her interact with a couple fans, in the movie there's that one island girl, in a handful of episodes the same two little girls who show up to Yume's performances sometimes. Then there's that S4 territory battle where Yume and the other song class girls hand out balloons to people in the shopping district (which comes after this new venue performance, I'll add), but aside from these very minor instances, Yume, and most of the other girls do very little to achieve their popularity. A lot of the performances done in the show were in-school or against other characters, which I can't imagine would go a long way to contributing to their overall success.

Ako lands TV and movie roles sometimes and seems to be making a decent effort off screen, and Mahiru gets auto-popularity points for being Yozora's sister and she also has her magazine and modeling work that goes on inbetween episodes, so those two gaining some notoriety isn't far-fetched. But Yume and Roller seemed to reach their positions mostly from being close to S4. The small incidences where they interacted with their fans are few and far between.

Episode 42 is quite egregious when it comes to believability. Nobody in the dance class can keep up with Yuzu, not even the admins, yet somehow Lily can? If they wanted to write a Yuzu/Lily episode they could have done it in a far better way. The whole idea that somehow nobody can keep up with Yuzu's dancing, not even the admins, is a silly one. But then they go and get Lily, the girl who's constantly shown to be of little strength and stamina? How is Lily supposed to keep up with Yuzu's dancing if not even the dance admins can? And then they top it off by making it only a single performance. You trying to tell me that none of the dance class members can keep up with Yuzu for even just two minutes?

Once we reach season two we get introduced to Elza, who is guilty of the biggest sins of writing. Her entire character is a walking anomaly. Every episode the other characters harp on about how perfect she is, but neither the writers nor the director have gone to any lengths to make that believable. You never once see Elza engaging in anything resembling practice. 99% of the time she's on screen she's on her ship, with a large portion of that time in her office, where she sits behind her desk. All of her performances are bog standard; a total lack of interesting camera angles, set pieces, visual effects, etc. The only time this isn't true is near the end of season two when Elza obtains her sun dress; they really decided to up the visual flair of that performance, but this is only one example near the end of the show, far after they've hammered this “Elza is perfect” angle without a shred of evidence to back it up.

The only way the viewers and writers can justify Elza's supposed popularity is by repeating it over and over. We're left to assume that she's doing things off screen that somehow helped her attain this “perfect” status. Now, I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with assumptions. There's not enough screen time to show every happening of every character. But for us to assume something we need a logical precedent for it.

Going back to Ako, she's shown to act in TV dramas and movies quite frequently, and we can assume that a large part of her popularity is due to these rolls she's cast in. Of course, this would be a logical assumption because there are more than a few times that Ako is shown on different sets, grinding her way up.

So, what is it that Elza is doing to make us believe that her popularity and skills are worthy of being called perfect? We don't know what she has done to get where she is; what she is currently doing to maintain that status; or what she will do in the future. She is never shown to be practicing her singing, dancing, acting, designing, etc. This is a little insulting, don't you think? That the staff would care so little to make this believable, that simply having the other characters endlessly repeat “she's perfect” is good enough justification for the praise she receives.

When she's introduced in episode 51 she already has the distinction of being known all over the world, which I find a little ludicrous as before episode 51 she apparently didn't even exist in the world of Stars. Imagine how easy it would be to put a little foreshadowing before episode 51. Maybe one of the characters is switching between channels on their phone and Elza shows up briefly. Perhaps we hear some background chatter about Elza or Venus Ark. Maybe there could be flyers up in the background somewhere about the arrival of Venus Ark. There are dozens of things they could have done to make her arrival (and existence) feel more real in the world of Aikatsu Stars, but they seem to have a total lack of foresight.

To switch gears a little, there's a scene in episode 90 where, during a race between Kirara and Rei, Kirara trips and sprains her ankle. Rei has to carry her up to the finish line, and yet somehow, Kirara is perfectly fine moments later and puts on a performance in front of thousands of people. And it doesn't stop there: after the performance both Kirara and Rei gain points that go towards their ranking through some asinine reason, even though it was explicitly stated that there would only be one winner, which should have been Kirara.

Aria gets introduced in the second half of season two. During her first live performance she gets star wings, and after a (supposed) total of three or four performances she went from a total nobody to being number three in the rankings. How is anyone supposed to believe that a nobody from Finland is somehow going to become one of the world's most popular idols in the span of a weekend?

I don't remember which episode it was, but Subaru mentions that M4 doesn't have elections every year like S4 does, and then they never explain it or go into any detail. They are sister schools, they both have their version of a top four idol group, yet M4 does not have yearly elections for some reason?

Even right up to the last few episodes they do a bad job of making the events that have unfolded over the last almost-100 episodes feel like they could have actually happened. Yume becomes the world's most popular idol somehow, even though she did less work than most of the other characters and also lacks the skill, and then she goes on to beat moon dress Hime.

The thing is, I don't actually dislike the results, I just have a problem with how the writers got there. Yume beating Elza in the tournament was expected and those episodes were very well done, but there's little justification for Yume to have world-class skills when she hasn't been shown to be doing anything that would put herself anywhere near such a level.

Some of this ties into characterization, which I will get into next.

Stars starts off rather slowly. The first few episodes do a fairly mediocre job setting everything up. The start of OGkatsu has a really thorough set up: Idol fanatics Aoi and Raichi encourage Ichigo to go see one of Mizuki's concerts; Ichigo is blown away by the performance and decides she wants to try being an idol; Ichigo and Aoi enter Starlight, but only after we get to see their auditions, which go a long way in letting us see who they are as characters. Stars foregoes any similar set up. All we see is Yume and Koharu pine over wanting to be in S4 and then bam, it cuts to them already students of Yotsuboshi. Thinking about it now, this is a pretty good indicator of how the writing in Stars would progress. A lot of it felt rushed, premature, and poorly planned.

Yume is the main character. She is the driving force behind everything that happens in Stars. You would think that with such an important character the writers would take a bit more time to carefully think about how they want to have her progress as a character. In the first season she has rainbow powers, and quite frankly, they did a terrible job. I feel like they could have gone two ways with it: not have rainbow powers at all, or have Yume keep the rainbow powers and work through the cancer and become a better idol for it. Let me explain a bit more.

In the scenario where Yume doesn't have rainbow powers, we would get to see her struggle with the typical ailings of an idol. She's outclassed by Rollerino and all her friends and everyone in S4, but Yume could stay true to her character and persevere, weathering the heartbreak of failure and her feelings of inadequacy.; all of that handwork would pay off in the end (preferably not S1 as I feel that would be a bit too quick) and Yume becomes a top idol through sheer will and never ending aikatsu-ing.

In the scenario where she keeps her rainbow powers there would at least be good reason for Yume's success. After spending a lot of time struggling with her rainbow cancer, overcoming her fears and working hard enough to be the idol the Aikatsu system sees in her, she conquers the cancer and gains full control of her powers. It would be a (somewhat) satisfying pay off, and it also wouldn't completely invalidate 36 episodes of buildup now that rainbows are no longer in the equation. During Yume's performance against Elza in episode 96 I honestly thought they might give Yume her rainbows back as a way to tie things up, but they didn't, although I can't say I didn't see that coming.

Rainbows as they were in S1 felt like a complete waste of time. Yume gets free wins for some 30 episodes only to ditch them, never mention them again, and then somehow Yume still beats Roller and Lily and the other non-S4 idols even though the show makes it abundantly clear that she's not as skilled as them. She's not the best singer, she's not the best actor, she's not the best model, and she's not the best dancer. Yume's second place in the elections over Rola and Lily only makes sense if you think about it from the popularity perspective (which Yume would have never gotten if it weren't for rainbows.) If the elections were based on pure skill then there's no way she would have gotten anywhere near second place.

Near the end of the second season there's a scene where all of the girls are throwing beans at the former S4 members while shouting their fears and insecurities, a way to conquer their inner demons. These girls are pouring their hearts out yet Yume is awkwardly silent, only to wrap it all up with some feel-good words. Did the writer and director not see how emblematic this is of Yume's unqualified perfection?

The writers have also done a terrible job of making the viewer sympathize with Elza. She is a royal cunt most of the time, yet Yume and some of the other characters act like she's a goddess who can do no wrong. A big example of this is in episode 60. Elza, upon seeing the declining popularity of the french girl's popularity and brand, expels her from Venus Ark. Yume reasons that this is a case of tough love; threatened with expulsion the french girl will try harder and regain some of the clout she lost. Not only is this demonstrably wrong, it actively devalues Yume's character.

Moroboshi goes to great lengths to act as the driving force behind Yume's development in the first season. They liken it to a lion throwing her cub off a cliff as a means to toughen them up. I agree with this. Everything Moroboshi does is to toughen Yume so that she can be the best that she can be. This comes to a head in episode 35(?) where he proclaims that he will expel Yume from the school if she cannot get above a 90% approval rating after her next performance. The difference here is that Moroboshi only said this with the full expectation that Yume would easily achieve this rating; Elza, on the other hand, only wants the best on her ship and after seeing the declining popularity of the French girl decides that she is no longer worth having around, hence the expulsion.

At the end of the episode both Yume and the french girl suck up to Elza before the girl leaves the ship. Why? Elza demonstrates that she doesn't care about the French girl. When the girl is pouring her heart out about how she'll improve and one day come back to Venus ark, there are literally no words from Elza, only a momentary change in expression, which Elza goes on to say is because she saw some “sparklies” coming off the French girl; a result of Yume's mentoring and nothing on the part of Elza.

What's worse is that they screwed up a prime opportunity for redemption near the end of the second season. They tried so hard to paint Elza as a good girl that they missed the prime opportunity for an antagonist that could be sympathized with. In episode 97 the French girl returns to Venus Ark as it's about to set off. Elza, now fully aware of how awful she was to her, apologizes. The two girls make up and the Frenchie rejoins Venus Ark. Sounds great, right? Well it would have been if 30 episodes earlier Yume and Frenchie weren't adamantly defending Elza's behavior. In the very same episode Elza herself admits that she was using and abusing all of the Venus Ark idols for her own gain. This could have been an emotional, heartfelt scene, but it was totally soured by what I can only assume was a lack of foresight.

The next thing I want to talk about is something more subjective, but it left such a bad taste in my mouth I feel I need to talk about it.

In episode 80 Rei unveils her new brand, along with her motivations. To put it bluntly, they boiled Rei's character down to Elza wanking, completely demeaning her character while throwing all of her personal development out the window.

Elza spends so many episodes heckling other idols in an attempt to rile them up and get them to be the best they can be, and then Rei's entire character devolves to "IT'S ALL FOR ELZA BECAUSE SHE CALLED ME SHIT AT A SHOW A FEW YEARS AGO." You can't be your best when you're deliberately putting yourself on a lower level. This is not a rival situation, this is Rei going out of her way to put herself below Elza. Devoting your entire life and all your pursuits to potentially satisfy a single person is not a healthy way to live.

You can have love and devotion without being a subordinate. I don't think Elza would be happy to have such an eager bootlicker. You can make your friends and loved ones happy without reducing the meaning of your own life to the sole pursuit of satisfying them. I don't think there's anything wrong with doing everything in your power to make your loved ones happy, but devoting your entire life to the happiness of another person is monumentally different.

The writers have done a good job of developing the relationship between Yume and Koharu, which is similar to the relationship of Elza and Rei. Koharu starts the show following behind Yume, not really doing much of her own, her only wish being to design a dress for Yume to wear when she's on top of the idol world. But Koharu gets some life experience and realizes that's not a good way to live, and slowly but surely her dream becomes that of standing next to Yume on stage; not as someone who only exists to further Yume's career, but as an equal.

To have someone dedicate their life to waiting on your hand and foot would honestly be insulting. I think they could twist this in a an interesting way; maybe show how this sort of behavior can really be a mental detriment, and the eventual decline of Rei's mental well being. They kinda sorta started to do this with Kirara, but they never actually delved into the issue for more than a few crying scenes. Of course that would never happen, because this is Aikatsu and serious issues regarding mental health are probably too much. Hell, I could even accept this is it didn't go against what's already been written for Elza's character.

That poor level of thought pervades a lot of the show. Another (minor) example is Lily. She is in song class because...? Yume looks up to Hime, so her being in Song class makes sense. Roller comes from a long line of musicians, so she's also in song class. Mahiru chose beauty because she's very much into fashion and she wanted to catch up to her sister. Koharu wants to be a fashion designer so she opted for beauty class as well. Ako wants to be an actress, so of course she would choose theater class. And then we have Lily.

All of her backstory and flashbacks tell us that her dream (and entire motivation for wanting to be in S4) is so she can have her own brand of clothing. This would obviously fall under beauty class territory, right? I actually got into an argument with someone over this, but none of the arguments they put forth as to why Lily is in song class make sense (although the most obvious reason why she's in song class has nothing to do with her character and everything to do with lazy writing.) Hell, even dance class would make more sense. We see Lily with Yuzu in dance classes during most of the flashback scenes.

The arguments I was given were along the lines of: Lily chose song class because she could not do much during her sick days, so she practiced singing; she didn't want to mix her work with her passion so she opted out of beauty class. To that I say, we already got confirmation from Lily's own mouth that she spent most of her sick time teaching herself sewing and fashion design. It would be perfectly reasonable to also assume that Lily could practice dancing and acting along with singing in her own room, and if she chose song class because she didn't want to mix her work with her hobby then I would also say that's a bit stupid. Lily could've chosen dance and accomplished the same thing, except it would be more logical since we already know Lily had practiced dance since she was a child. We don't hear a single word from Lily regarding singing. literally nothing.

She never so much as mentions even liking it, though we have to assume that she does, as you would probably assume most of the girls in the school enjoy singing, dancing, modeling, etc, as they all want to be idols. Putting Lily in song class requires a lot of wild assumptions since the writers never bothered to give any actual reason for her to be there. Of course, she was put in song class so she could get stomped by Yume and Rola. If they put her in beauty class where she belonged then she would have had to compete with Mahiru, and that would threaten the tearful Mahiru/Yozora S4 scenes, and later on in S2 Lily being in Beauty class would clash with Koharu. Giving Lily her own brand outside of S4 was their way of rectifying a problem that they wrote themselves into.

Meanwhile, dance class might as well not even exist. There's Yuzu and nobody else. Luka is off in SanFran most of the time and only shows up for five seconds every twenty episodes, and there isn't a single main character in dance class. Now that we're at the end of the show we already know that Luka is going to be the next dance class S4 representative, but that's a little too late.

I think the writers spent way too much time focusing on S4 and the pointless class separation. Why even separate the classes and then do nothing to make them feel unique? All of the girls in the school end up doing mostly the same things, and the unique things they could have shown are neglected. S4 could have been the top four most popular idols in the school and they wouldn't have been so restricted in what they could have done. I understand why they did it the way they did: putting girls into certain classes means being able to put competition where you want it. If S4 was just a competition for a top four spot then the plot would introduce conflict where they don't want it and they would have to find some way to finesse around it.

The whole S4 thing feels even less meaningful now that Stars is over and the second elections that happen during our time with the show happens off screen and is discarded in an astonishing two minutes. The current S4 girls remain in S4, except Yuzu, who's graduating so Luka gets the pity spot. The entirety of the first season makes a tremendous deal out of S4 and they go on to completely toss it aside as an afterthought. For what reason did they introduce S4 if it was going to be so completely pointless? And this is of course after Yume and Mahiru transfer to Venus Ark for some amount of time, completely leaving Yotsuboshi without the important S4 members who are supposed to be beacons for the other students to look up to and follow. Even Laura abandons her duties as admin to mess around on Venus Ark for a few months.

The writing in Stars requires you to constantly suspend logic and make assumptions. I don't know if it's because the writers were forced to change the scripts on short notice (unlikely) or if it's because they just didn't care, but everything from the popularity of the girls to minor character details need you to just not care about things working logically. The things I wrote about are just a few of the things that annoyed me, but Stars is loaded with other instances of clumsy writing.

All that being said, I don't hate Stars. The characters are all fantastic, and some individual episodes are directed very well. The final episode was noticeably better than most of the others, which only makes me wish that level of quality was seen throughout the whole show. There was a lot of potential for Stars to be truly amazing, but it feels like they had no idea what they were doing half the time. I would like to see a Stars where the staff working on it has infinite time and money. Imagine what could have been.