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rantheon · 4 years

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a love letter to hoshiai no sora

the other morning i sat down and watched this again. i went back to akane kazuki’s interview (pls read it if you haven’t yet! i reference it a bit) that i keep in the corner of my likes. my heart is still tender and i thought, why not heal it by spilling my feelings all over the place

the first week of anime fall season 2019, i saw this title and wondered why i’ve never heard of it. no one i knew talked about it. “sports” said the genre. it didn’t look very sport-ish. i watched it, i loved it instantly. i both anticipated and feared (as many fans would know) the next ep, and the next, and next.

honestly it feels like i'm watching a documentary. each frame is a captured soft, raw moment of life. the soft color palette and raw lines. softhearted middle-school boys with raw feelings. a “human drama,” carefully animated. it gives me the same feelings of calmness, delicacy and heartache that i only really get from ghibli movies, and maybe violet evergarden.

we call hoshiai no sora fresh and different because i think nowadays anime is kinda over-saturated: flashy, constantly moving, deliberately appealing to the masses. about half of releases are adaptions, made to become even more popular. everything sorta feels recycled and, dare i say it, a little soulless in this world where toxicity thrives in the corners of media.

but this defies all that. akane kazuki really said “hey, let’s not make something purely driven by sales and capitalism” (he actually didn’t, but that’s the gist of it). i love how everything is shown as is, laid bare, in such a seamlessly natural way. everyone commends how all the issues (lgbtq+ representation, abuse, etc) are portrayed well/realistically and i agree!

yet it’s also a little sad that it even needed to be celebrated. not that it doesn’t deserve it, but even with media in general, this should be the norm, not an exception. but we’re learning, everyone else is learning, and hoshiai no sora deserves all its praise for being one of the few that took that step.

now, a little personal but this is the main reason why i treasure this show so much:

growing up, my own parents tried to dictate most of my lifestyle to keep me studying at home as much as possible. while not to the extent of nao’s situation, it’s similar, so much that it hurt. the silence at the dining table during meals. the lies. the ignored calls and texts when i told them i was out for “school stuff.” i used to think that i just didn't know better and shouldn't complain.

i nearly sobbed when i read what akane kazuki said in the interview: “you’re not at fault for anything; you don’t have to blame yourselves.” i wish i had this anime as a kid, i wish i had someone to tell me this back then. i wish i had nao’s courage to be better or even to ask my parents “aren’t you hurting me?”

i’m glad that the children and teens (and even adults) of now do have this. they can watch this and be aware. they can see the soft tennis team’s struggle and see that it’s okay not to always win. see all these boys, their circumstances, their struggles and pain and joy, their choices. see that other things just aren't okay, their consequences. understand it. maybe learn from it.

this show is meant to inspire. not just viewers, but future creators who’ll be taking over the industry. it would be amazing if in the future we get more anime like hoshiai no sora, with bolder riveting storytelling, but first, i really hope that the staff will be able to finish this!

it was something really special, and it deserved so much better for what it’s trying to do

#i thought i'd be over this #nope #i don't think i ever will be #hoshiai no sora #stars align #星合の空 #x #it ended up a bit long oops #anyway this is more jumbled thoughts than a review per se #maybe im being too poetic about it lol #i just have Feelings ok #probably littered with typos i'll fix them in the morning

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