atching The Five Star Stories requires acquiring an entirely new vocabulary. For instance, a "mortar headd" is a kind of giant mecha, maintained by mechanics called "meisters." "Fatimas" are the lifelike androids—usually shaped like attractive young girls—who were created to help pilot them. Fatimas naturally bond with "headdliners," the elite few capable of piloting mortar headds. When a fatima's creator—known as a "meight"—releases a new creation to the general public, the result is generally a "fatima debut," at which the new fatima speaks to all available headdliners and then identifies the one whom she has bonded with; otherwise, she becomes the ward of a local guardian until she successfully finds her master.
All this trivia comes to a head in The Five Star Stories, a 1988 theatrical feature that adapts a small part of an immensely complicated, long-running manga series into a relatively simple love story between a fatima and a young meister. The fatima, Lachesis, is one of three recently created by the dying meight Chrome Ballanche. (Naturally, the other two are Clotho and Atropos.) None of the three has been conditioned, so they all possess normal human emotions, which rapidly cause problems when the creepy, piggish Duke Juba takes a proprietary interest in them. While Clotho and Lachesis' debut draws luminaries from all over the solar system, all hoping to claim the new constructs, Juba realizes that if he prevents the two fatimas from bonding with any masters, he can claim possession of them as a local authority, especially since the weakened Ballanche can't resist him.
Into this political stew enters Ladios Sopp, a phenomenally pretty blond meister who shares a history with Lachesis; as a child, she decided he would be her master and her husband, and she clearly still has feelings for him, but he resists. His reasons are fairly obscure, much like the identities of the many, many characters who pop up briefly to foreshadow storylines that don't fit into this part of the story, but fortunately, ADV's subtitled-only release of The Five Star Stories comes with extensive liner notes.
A teaser for a greater story
The liner notes for The Five Star Stories are essential reading, though they give away most of the plot twists, so it's a bad idea to go through them before watching the film. They present detailed summaries of each character, the film's plot, and its key terms and places, plus a set of producer's notes. And then there's the extensive timeline, which places this movie's action about a third of the way through a much larger story. Gundam fans are likely to appreciate the amount of detail and the extensive epic sweep that went into this subsection of story, but casual viewers may find it all a little overwhelming. And even with all this, several storylines are unresolved, and some scenes still aren't explained. The film very much has the feel of a tiny fragment of a larger work.
Standing on its own, Five Star Stories is an intriguing film, but not always a deep one. There's a lot of queasy horror in the way this society treats its humanoid fatimas with a mixture of courtly respect and casual ownership. The prospect of a constructed alien race becoming wives, chattel and bargaining chips just because of their artificially induced form is a uniquely creative science-fiction story concept; it's a pity the film doesn't do more with it. Or, for that matter, take time to explain the society's complexities. It's often clear that important rules are being broken, but not what those rules are, or what the consequences might be, either to the transgressors or to the world at large.
Instead, the film mostly focuses on simple romance and action: Some of the society's knights carry light-saber-like swords called "spadds," and whenever they come out, bloody heads and severed limbs are sure to fly. The animation during such scenes is so-so, but in more sedate sequences, it's about as rich and detailed as anime got in 1988. The motion is a little limited, but the elaborate painted art looks impressive and sophisticated, and the series' backstory is as well. It could certainly support half a dozen animated sequels, in addition to the many manga volumes. So where are they?
At one point, Ladios Sopp checks up on a rival's fatima, one of the few not shaped like a man or a woman; regarding the snaky, scaly, featureless thing, he comments dryly that this is probably a fatima's natural shape, and if they all looked like that, there wouldn't be so much fighting over fatimas. The idea that so much of his society is constructed around a visual lie is just fascinating; again, I wish this story had done more with it.
— Tasha
Back to the top.
