I thought Episode 10 ended on one hell of a cliffhanger but to be honest, this episode takes the cake. It’s one big teaser for the finale and it does a darn good job at hyping it up. Obviously, Revue Starlight can be binged watched now and I know what happens next but at the time this show aired, I was on edge the whole way through the episode and waiting for the finale was tough.
So after beating Karen in the “Revue of Tragedy”, Hikari becomes the last girl standing and she is crowned the Top Star. I remember seeing a couple of hunches on what Hikari would wish for. This show has proven to be quite wild and we know from Nana’s time traveling shenanigans that being the Top Star means you’re borderline omnipotent. An elephant in the room that you may noticed since Episode 8 is what would happen to the other characters’ shine once someone wins the Tokyo revues. I don’t know if Hikari is as friendly or warm as Karen is but it is still hard to picture her being selfish enough to steal everyone else’s shine once she wins.
As it turns out, Hikari refuses the fuel needed to make a wish and she tells the giraffe that she’ll set her “stage” alone. Everyone later assumes that Hikari does this to avoid taking Karen’s shine. I really like that Hikari grips the blade of her dagger as she makes her decision. Her hand starts to bleed as a result and somehow, some of that blood ends up on the button of her coat. It’s a very literal metaphor for Hikari’s decision. No one’s blood gets spilled here, except for Hikari’s.
After making her decision, Hikari is seemingly nowhere to be found. Seisho faculty believes she’s transferred out of the school but they have no idea where she’s gone. Karen tries a bunch of things to contact Hikari but none of these attempts pan out. Some of this is actually pretty funny. Like, I laugh when Karen tries calling the Royal Academy of Theatrical Actors in Dondon about Hikari, while Mahiru holds up some cue cards written in English. I lose it even more when the two of them try calling the police for help. I wish Karen explained the auditions and the talking giraffe to the cops, if only for the hilarity that would ensue. Putting the humor aside, it’s apparent that Hikari is straight up gone and that grows more alarming as more time passes, both in terms of the episode’s run time but also in-universe (this episode pretty much goes through the entire rest of the school year).
Naturally, Karen doesn’t take her best friend’s disappearance very well. You’d think since she didn’t lose her shine, she would be able to act, sing, and dance just fine. But as we see throughout the episode, she’s struggling to keep up with class and rehearsal. There’s a scene where Karen has a breakdown, that explains what’s going on. Even though Karen loves the stage, Hikari is the most important thing to her and the main reason why she performs onstage. With Hikari gone, Karen loses all of her motivation and she can’t tap into her shine even if she tried. It’s an ironic twist to Hikari’s decision earlier in the episode. Hikari chooses to act alone so that Karen is spared from losing her shine but evidently, Karen still loses it in a sense. This can also be see as another parallel to “Starlight”. Karen doesn’t literally get blinded like Flora does at the end of the play but in a way, Karen does lose sight of her friend after the revues.
Things start to turn around when Karen decides to read “The Starlight Gatherer”, hoping to find a clue regarding Hikari’s whereabouts. A bit cheeky but everyone has been living through their own version of the play so I buy it. I find it a little funny that Karen actually goes out of her way to study English so that she can translate the book into Japanese and be able to read it when realistically, she could just feed the text into Google Translate like most people would. Also, you’d think since this book is a classic, there should already be a fan translation or an official edition written in Japanese for Karen to check out. That said, I get why Karen puts in the hard work. It’s to show how determined she is to find Hikari. A nice touch in this scene is some of Karen’s friends supporting her as she becomes a translator. Junna is definitely the most helpful, what with her providing a language book for Karen to use, though Mahiru is the sweetest for putting a blanket over Karen when she falls asleep.
When Karen reaches the end of the book, she learns what actually happens to Claire after she and Flora make their wish. I admit that it’s a little odd that this one detail was omitted from every version of “Starlight” that Karen has experienced but whatever. As it turns out, Claire suffers the same fate as the six goddesses, becoming the tower’s newest prisoner to atone for her and Flora’s sin of using the stars’ power. This detail casts an interesting light on Hikari’s decision earlier in the episode. Despite knowing the truth surrounding the Top Star, Hikari chooses to fight in the revues again so that she can claim the crown. And because she auditions again, Karen gets dragged into the revues. Perhaps Hikari sees her actions as a “sin” and she decides to disappear as part of her atonement. When Hikari refuses her friends’ shine, she says her decision is her “Starlight”. She really wasn’t kidding. She pretty much copies Claire’s fate.
In light of this new detail, Karen deduces that Hikari is imprisoned at the underground theatre so she heads over to the elevator and tries to break in. I like to think that crowbar in Karen’s hands is the same one Hikari used back in Episode 3. A cool detail here is the elevator seemingly lighting up when Karen manages to get through the door, as if to convey that Karen has regained her shine and the theatre is respond to it.
While this isn’t technically a revue, the show does classify the next scene as an “interlude” of sorts, complete with an insert song. Not going to lie, this scene makes me pretty emotional. You have Karen descending down towards the theater and along the way, she’s seemingly greeted by all of her friends. It’s admittedly unclear if they’re actually there. Like, the scene does cut to them at other locations so either they’re at the stairway as visions or they’re appearing to her in spirit. An odd choice but this is Revue Starlight so I suppose it’s entirely possible that they can do this. Everyone talks about the lessons they’ve learned throughout the show and they tell Karen that they’ll be waiting for her and Hikari. In the background, we see the characters’ respective Revue props one last time. It literally is a walk down memory lane before the big finale and a very effective one at that.
The insert song is titled, “The Knowledge of the Stage Girl”. Before the anime, this song was originally a rock pop number sung by all nine main characters. For this scene, it instead takes the form of a more bittersweet piano piece, with Hikari being absent for the sake of continuity. I’ve listened to the original version and it’s good but obviously the alternate version for this episode fits the tone of the scene a lot more.
The lyrics have the characters singing about how they’re Stage Girls who will continue to dream, learn, and grow. Like with “Star Divine”, these lyrics are much broader than the ones found in previous insert songs but that’s perfect for a song that’s meant to be all encompassing for the cast. It’s also thematically fitting given that we’re near the end of the show and almost all of the singers’ arcs have been resolved by now. A very neat detail to the lyrics is how they’re assigned to the characters. Karen rarely gets to start the song off but since she is the main protagonist, she gets the honor to do so in this song. The others more or less in the order of when their arc is resolved, starting with Junna and ending with Claudine and Maya. Occasionally, Karen will sing with whoever is currently singing, signifying her friendship with them and coinciding with her friends rooting for her to come back with Hikari.
Upon arriving in the theater, Karen finds a miniature replica of the tower from “Starlight” with an open entrance. Meanwhile, we see Hikari alone in some sort of wasteland. Why Hikari is naked and why the sand all has this weird pinkish shade is beyond me. I won’t spoil but given that there’s one last episode and there is no way this musical series wouldn’t go out without one more musical number, you can probably make a good guess as to what is about to happen next.
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