I was looking forward to watching the beginnings of a new anime series in Crest of the Stars and I popped the DVD containing the series’ first four episodes in with a degree of anticipation. However, I was let down in most areas, served an anime with little flair or anything that set it apart from the many humdrum anime shows I’ve seen.

After viewing a fairly bland introduction sequence that flashed credits over a poorly animated and boring space scene whilst playing an epic orchestrated theme, I was thrust into the world of Martine. Martine is a small planet governed by a president and all seems well. However, an alien race known as the Abh rush into the scene and quickly prove that the Martine defenses are no match for the Abh’s sheer power. The Abh soon demand that the planet surrender to the Abh Empire, a powerful empire with many planets under its rule throughout the galaxies. The president, who happens to be the protagonist’s father, strikes a deal with the Abh in order to save his own skin, leaving his planet in the hands of the Abh. The protagonist, Jinto, is taken away in fear of his life and hidden. He is schooled for years under Abh teachings to one day return to his planet to rule. Soon after returning for a visit he encounters his first Abh. Though schooled under Abh teachings, Jinto had never seen one in person. Rumored to be a species of beauty and ageless, Jinto believes this when he meets Lafiel. The two become friends but unfortunately not all is well, and another war is on the horizon.

The anime seems to focus on the relationship between Jinto and Lafiel for the most part, and this did not pique my interest or show any signs of interesting development. Continual use of trite character development devices only left the relationship boring and stale, with no reason for me to watch it grow. The plot itself was mediocre in execution, with a rushed history colliding with a slowly moving present time. The lapse in time forced me to make little connection with the characters and events of the past. Also, the characters Jinto and Lafiel rely on rehashed humor and stale jokes for those funny moments which where definitely anything but funny. The characters end up being forgettable, with little personality, partially due to the horrible script and dubbing.

Jinto and Lafiel's relationship, which serves as a focal point for the series, shows little sign of interesting development.	A prime example of costume design gone horribly wrong.

The English voice acting was a major issue. This probably hampered the anime the most. In plain English, it was atrocious. The dubbing job as far as lip-synching was not too bad; I must give credit where credit is due. However, the voice acting was awful; lines were read without any emotion or emphasis on the wrong parts of the sentences!

The animation and artwork is sadly another humdrum area. The character design was not memorable at all; and seemed most accented by the horrible costume design. They ranged from unoriginal space suits to idiotic diplomatic robes. These poor outfits only helped me notice how pedestrian the characters were in design. The animation itself is another mediocre area, but it’s not as bad as the character design. Simple animations are littered throughout the four episodes and I never saw a sequence that was breathtaking in any manner. Much like the anime, it was all simple and boring, offering little of interest to any anime fan.

The music is orchestrated but fails to impress. Maybe I’m used to anime with great music from composers like Yoko Kanno, but the music in Crest of the Stars merely served as background noise while the voice actors chattered off the terrible script. I won’t say it is bad music, but it certainly isn’t interesting or memorable, with no catchy riffs or impressive pieces. The simple strings instrumentation is about as much as the anime offers and they play generic mood setting music.

The DVD itself offers very little in the extras department. There are only trailers and text information on the universe of Crest of the Stars. As for the quality of the DVD transfer, I noticed very little digital black and rarely pixelization that were worth pining over. The sound quality was mediocre, but tolerable. There was no Dolby Digital 5.1 encoding, but the Dolby Digital 2.1 was acceptable, but this simple stereo sound still didn’t sound as clear as other transfers.

Overall, Crest of the Stars seemed to disappoint in every category and I cannot honestly recommend it to anyone. My advice is to steer clear of this one and spend the money elsewhere.

Distributor: Bandai
Creator: Sunrise
Released: 1999

Video Quality: C+
Audio Quality: C
Presentation: C
Content: D
Overall: D