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Rating:  -
Picking up three years after the attack from the Triple Alliance. The Abh empire is forced to retaliate. Their retaliation comes in the form of Operation Phantom Flame. Which is the annihilation of the enemy fleet. Lafiel is now the commander of her own ship with Jinto working under her.
Banner of the Stars aka Seikai no Senki follows a somewhat different formula than it's predecessor. Where as Crest focused alot more on the characters than action. Banner makes an attempt to deliver on both characters and action. In which it does work partially. First off, the relationship between Lafiel and Jinto get alot of focus. The friendship really does develop and their interactions never came off annoying to me. It worked out in a rather mature way and the cheesiness is non existent. The new characters, Lafiels crew are pretty well developed and they get enough screen time to establish some type of personality. The rest goes the same for numerous members of the Abh forces.
Now, the same way the characters are the strength of the series. This is also some of the achilles heel which happens to effect the writing. And this keeps Banner of the Stars from becoming a stellar series. So much focus is on the protaganist. You never learn anything new about the enemies. Outside of their motivation which is explained in Crest, they are never analyzed. You don't get a single glimpse of their strategy or their struggles during the war. This results in just barely average storytelling because the viewer can never get a feel to either choose sides or hate the enemy. All you really know is that their fighting and it sometimes looks bad for the Abh forces.
The animation and artwork also has its moments. The scenery, battle scenes and ship designs look the best. The characters seriously get the short end of the stick and never come off impressive. I also have a small issue with the reused scenes. The soundtrack is still just as good but I have a beef with the ending theme, which is clearly out of place. I didn't find the english cast too bad but the japanese cast is far superior.
I never really had a problem with the pacing. I enjoyed the character interactions and action scenes. I feel they meshed pretty well overall. The series is entertaining and the last four episodes are worth the wait. I know alot of my gripes aren't going to bother the average otaku. So, if you already seen Crest of the Stars and loved it. Then it makes all the sense in the world to continue further. I still like the series overall but it could have definitly been better. Banner of the Stars is 13 episodes long on 3 disk.
Rating:  -
There was a time when I thoght that the best chapter in the Stars series was Crest of the Stars. Then it was the third chapter in the series, Banner of the Stars II. And now, after having seen Banner of the Stars III, and having reflected innumerable times on the entire series, reading every manga, and every novel available in English... this is my favorite chapter in the series. For now.
At first glance Banner of the Stars might seem a little cheap compared with the other chapters of the series. It's only 13 episodes like Crest of the Stars, but there's a recap of the situation at the start of almost every episode (to the point of becoming annoying). And the first episode is filled with flashbacks. It could have been done just to save money. On the other hand, with a story of this scope it feels good to review the story and keep looking at it from different perspectives. And while the animation is doubtless much higher budget in the first installment, and there's plenty of reused music and animation in Banner of the Stars, the new music is actually better than the old in my opinion and feels less repetitive. The animation likewise feels more fleshed out and warm to me, and the characters more relaxed. I also enjoy the overall feeling of tension and stress combined with close-quarers that the space battles entail.
In the first part of the Stars series Lafiel and Jinto were teenagers, little more than kids as far as maturity goes. In Banner of the Stars II they are young adults with more confidence and control gaining respect in teh Universe. But on this voyage they are just on teh verge of becoming adults, taking on responsibilities that scare them and going through the trials and tribulations of finding their place even as they face te terrible fear of instant death on the battlefield of space.
The conversations between Lafiel and Jinto are wonderful, but teh conversations between everyone are great. Hearing Lafiel and Jinto chat about where their life is going, hearing Admiral Spoor grow impatient dealing with a planetary government, and seeing the various crew members play off of Jinto and avoid confronting Lafiel never fails to entertain. But the most memorable characters are probably the Bebaus brothers, whoose incredibly dry and mild sarcasm back and forth entertains me every time (gotta love a guy who takes a bath right in the middle of a brutal battle for control of the Universe).
Perhaps strangely, the part of the show that I enjoy the most is when teh Supreme Commander of the fleet (Lafiel's father) and his assistant are planning their strategy over massive simulated fleets, and you can see in depth just how desperate the fate of te Abh Empire is. If you love military strategy and war history it's the sort of thing you can really get into (if only there was a strategy game based on this series eh?).
The overall pace of this show is much faster than Crest of the Stars (which still takes the cake for slowest start of any anime series I have ever seen which actually turned out to be worth watching), with a heavy emphasis placed on intense space battles. In fact, the first time I watched this show I felt like I did when watching a marathon run of Gundam Wing. It was like I almost couldn't catch my breath from all that excitement once the battles got going. If you want to see our protagonists in desperate dramatic situations this show definitely does not disappoint.
Rating: -
great series, often overlooked, voice acting has a better flow and feels more natural than in crest.
Rating: -
Banner of the Stars, the sequel to Crest of the Stars - Complete Series Set, is a mixed bag to say the least. On the one hand it's slow, tiresome, badly paced, and boring; on the other it boasts some of the best space combat I've seen since Star Wars. Hailed by some as one of the best anime series ever (Crest of the Stars, Banner of the Stars, and the next in the series Banner of the Stars II) this show certainly has its strong points, but ultimately its flaws hold it back considerably to the point where I found it very hard to enjoy the story or sympathize with the characters.
Set three years after Crest of the Stars (which you'll have to see before tackling this series) Jinto is a supply officer on the quick attack ship Basriol, and Lafiel is the caption. the war between the Abh and the United Mankind has reached a stalemate, with both sides taking heavy looses in a failed UM attempt to take the Abh's capitol. For three years these opposing forces have been building up their strength, preparing for the day when the fragile cease fire will end and they can resume their conflict. Now, that day has come as the Abh launch a devastating attack called "Operation Phantom Flame" against the UM. Jinto and Lafiel, along with their loyal crew, are thrust into the midst of battle to fight for their lives and their nation.
The series never really seems to know what it wants to do with its scenes, one minute there's an enormous space battle involving hundreds of ships all firing their pulse cannons and space mines, the next you see the commanders sitting calmly in their flag ships, talking endlessly about completely random things which have absolutely nothing to do with the battle outside. Its these interruptions in the action that spell doom for the series; the transition from the frantic pace of battle to the slow, dull, boring pace of the conference room is done so often, so abruptly- often at the worst possible moments- that the grand scale of the war is lost. You'd think that a show like this, which is really all about one huge battle, would have focused on, well, the battle. The endless politics, the mood swings of the commanders, the twenty minute conversations, the characters taking brakes in the middle of battle to fix themselves a drink (no kidding), it all wore down on what should have been the series main focus.
Although not perfect, the soundtrack for this series is very fitting and nice. When I first heard it, it reminded me of ET and some old 70's sci fi music, but I also heard a lot of similarities to Star Wars and Now and Then, Here and There. Very nice music, with woodwinds and strings being the most present instruments. Unfortunately, if also suffers from repetition. Although I really enjoyed listening to it, I didn't enjoy it so much that I wanted to hear the same exact songs every single episode. I suppose that's to be expected, but still I would have liked to hear a little more variation with the song selection. the opening has a very old fashioned sc-fi sound to it, which makes it seem like an old classic as opposed to a futuristic tale, while the closing delivers yet another mediocre song to go along with a whole host of mediocre anime closers like Cowboy Bebop, and EVA, but that, too, is to be expected.
As for animation it's a notch above average, nothing great mind you, but the space battles are really memorable, even though they do recycle a lot of their scenes. You'll see the same UM ship blow up about twenty times in this series; just try to ignore it.
The three stars this show gets are for the music, animation, and the space battles which were nothing sort of incredible. The Stars series isn't amazing, certainly not up to par with a lot of anime I've seen, but it's still a show worth giving a look. If you can find it cheap then go for it.
Replay Value; Low.
Rating: -
To me this is a very interesting anime. There is so much action in this series and the characters in the anime are very cool. It is interesting how there is like a love triangle but yet not at the same time.
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