While the Sunrider series suffered from its heroines being plain archetypes and, for the most part, extremely shallow, serving as little more than props within the core storyline, Shining Song Starnova is pretty much all about the girls. The game is obviously not gloom 100% of the time, including a lot of (effective) comedy and heart-warming romance, but the overarching narrative is more than just a little dark and depressing, and the heroine routes drama-filled, even if you avoid the horrific bad conclusions (every route has up to a few choices, with usually only one determining what ending you get). Even though Starnova itself seems like a ray of light in this dark world, the whole setup, including Producer himself constantly spewing disturbing descriptions of “how the things just are” and justifying the status quo, makes it pretty clear that it’s nothing more than a rare exception, that can’t change the broader rules. The personal stories of Stanova’s members are similarly dark (especially in the case of Mariya and Aki, veterans of the industry and former Golden Calf talents) and can end in an appropriately sad manner if you make wrong choices. It’s a Hell on Earth, hidden under a thin veil of marketing and girls’ on-stage personas. In general, the vision of Japanese entertainment industry that the game offers is straight-up horrifying, with common-place sexual abuse, idols being treated as expendable commodities and top executives wielding pretty-much unlimited power, taking advantage of their talents on a regular basis. This is contrasted with the genuine kindness and sisterhood of Starnova – one that is not present from the very beginning, as both the Producer and some of the girls are highly disillusioned with the industry and borderline cynical, but always forms later on, thanks to the trials the whole team goes through. The leading theme of the whole game, present in every route, are the cruel realities of the idol industry, with its cut-throat competition and horrible abuses – their personification is Golden Calf with its cartoonishly evil executives and over-the-top hostile, messed-up personal relations in their top idol unit, Quasar. The love stories, BTW, come rather late in every arc, as Producer is generally a decent person, doing his best to keep his relationships with the girls purely professional, making sure to neither jeopardise the image of the company nor take advantage of his talents in unfair ways.
It also makes a good base for romance, as the Producer will naturally spend the most time with the group’s leader and form a unique bond with her.
This makes a good base for route variety, as every center will generate their own problems and lead the hole formation in different directions (even outside of their personal drama, which is usually also pretty intense, their personalities will influence the public image of the group as a whole). The route selection is tied with the choice of Starnova’s " center", the girl that will serve both as the central point of the group’s dance formation and its de-facto leader.
Broken, underfunded and with little faith that the project has any future (although definitely not without talent and unique appeal points), the team nonetheless starts working together and within a few months reaches a breakthrough – an attempted sabotage by Golden Calf during a major event, which was meant to humiliate Starnova, unwittingly gives it a lot of publicity and consolidates it as an effective idol unit.įrom this point on, the game transfers into proper character routes, one for each member of Starnova, although the “true” route, Sasami’s, unlocks only after finishing the previous six ones and is substantially longer than each of them (around 4-5 hours, while other ones take 2-3 hours to read through). The girls all have unique backgrounds, from the experienced and talented, but traumatized Mariya, whose alcoholism and being in her mid-20s make her barely eligible to be an idol at any capacity, to young and socially-anxious Mika, a former shut-in trying to change her life by signing up with Shining Productions. All of them are either troubled newcomers to the idol industry or individuals that already attempted to make a career for themselves and failed miserably – the protagonist himself is a former worker of Golden Calf (such a subtle metaphor.), the biggest entertainment company in the country, that was sacked after a mysterious “incident”. Its substantial common route (about 5 hours) introduces the reader to the protagonist, usually referred to just as “Mr Producer” and the seven talents of the newly-formed idol unit Starnova that he is meant to watch over. Shining Song Starnova is a large and in many ways impressive game, not just by the EVN standards.