Love in Space, authors of the highly-appreciated Sunrider series, are a very peculiar kind of EVN developer. In their games, they unapologetically cater to weeaboo sensitivities, copying the Japanese storytelling tropes and stylistics pretty much in every aspect of their games. Sunrider: Liberation Day, the second Sunrider titles was the clearest example of this, with its Japanese speech mannerisms (which look at least a bit questionable in English prose), Japanese voice acting and pompous, Japanese opening song – each of them included despite the story being placed in a fictional sci-fi world with no clear connection to Japan, and being directed pretty much exclusively to Western otaku audience. Thankfully, the studio also was able to supplement its second-hand Japanese identity with some interesting ideas, consistently high production quality and, for the most part, compelling stories.

After the second Sunrider game was completed (and after the backlash from its controversial conclusion was partially mended with an alternate-timeline DLC), Love in Space decided to double down in their turbo-Japanese formula, announcing Shining Song Starnova – a game about a Japanese idol producer trying to turn a team of misfits into major stars of the entertainment business. Funded both through a large Kickstarter campaign and substantial Patreon support, it became the studio’s most ambitious project by far, promising, among other things, seven heroine routes, partial VA by a cast of experienced eroge seiyuu and a high-quality soundtrack appropriate for the game’s music-related main theme. After long development and delays caused by Steam policy changes, SSS was finally released in July 2018, to quite a lot of fanfare, and sparked genuine interest from the VN community. But, was it able to deliver on its ambitious goals?

Unlike the Sunrider games, SSS is all about the heroines and their personal stories, making even the most unassuming of the seven girls Starnova reasonably interesting and appealing in their respective routes

Shining Song Starnova is a large and in many ways impressive game, not just by the EVN standards. 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. 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”. 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. 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.

From 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 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. 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). 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. 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.

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. 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. 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. It’s a Hell on Earth, hidden under a thin veil of marketing and girls’ on-stage personas. 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. 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 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).

The Japanese mannerisms and weeb writing tropes are sometimes borderline unbearable, but there’s enough substance under this rather obnoxious surface to make SSS a worthwhile experience

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. Surprisingly enough, it also does a really good job of developing all members of the main cast, even those which I initially didn’t find interesting. What at first seems like kitsch and silly characterization, like Aki’s “shit loli” persona or Nemu being a yandere always carrying around a huge knife, is both elaborated upon within the routes and at least partially presented as the girls playing out their “appeal points”, in a self-aware and playful manner, rather than genuinely having these over-the-top, caricatural personalities. As they all start as underdogs, (re)entering the idol industry as either failures or troubled amateurs, it’s easy to empathize with their struggle and develop a genuine appreciation for each of them. But, most importantly, the game really succeeds in turning the heroines into believable characters, for the most part genuinely talented and driven, but also with plenty of personal problems, flaws and insecurities they have to fight through on their way to stardom. In most routes, Starnova’s rise to the position of a top idol group might be a bit too quick and smooth to be truly believable, but it didn’t prevent me from “buying” the girls themselves, each of their individual stories, and their blooming relationships with the Producer. The routes are also all properly conclusive and offer extensive epilogues, making SSS, story-wise, a much more compelling and complete experience than the Sunrider games.

The final route, Sasami’s, is a proper culmination of Starnova’s story, combining elements from all the “secondary” heroine arcs, but focusing on the aforementioned central theme of the game: Producer’s choices between the ruthless logic of the idol business and his financial responsibilities to the company on the one hand, and the Starnova’s girls’ best interest and his loyalty to them as people, rather than marketable commodities on the other. Everything we learn about crucial characters and the state of the idol industry up to this point is combined to create an intense intrigue around the most innocent and likeable member of the unit, underlining the message that there are prices that should never be paid for the sake of success. It also does a rather praiseworthy thing by not ignoring the girl’s problems shown in other routes, but hinting at how the heroines managed to overcome them without Producer’s involvement (or at least without him intervening as much as he did in their respective routes). It seems that at least in this case, not every girl the protagonist didn’t choose stayed forever alone and unhappy, and there is at least some basic worldbuilding consistency between the alternative scenarios. Everything adds up to a truly satisfying conclusion, worthy of its immense build-up.

SSS is not shy about its fanservice but just like other Love in Space games, keep it very vanilla and makes the actual h-scenes rare and fairly meaningful

The visual side of experience should feel familiar to all Sunrider fans – the sprites and CGs are rather average-looking and very similar to Love in Space’s previous titles (to the point some of the character designs, especially Nemu’s, might feel overly-familiar to people following their work), but also very consistent in style and quality, and decently varied. While I was never genuinely impressed with what I was looking at even when the more elaborate CGs appeared on the screen, there’s also little to complain about. What’s a bit more noteworthy about SSS is both music, including the J-pop theme song by the game’s impressive seiyuu cast and the partial voice acting by the same, relatively high-profile talents. Partial voiceover is something I usually don’t like, as I find mixing voiced and unvoiced lines distracting and the constantly-reused voice cues annoying, and I can’t say Starnova changed my opinion. However, the voice actors undeniably did a good job, playing into the over-the-top facades of the girls. If you don’t share my biases, you’ll probably enjoy their work quite a lot, especially in some more intense and memorable moments in which VA usually kicks in. Another element that the dev team definitely gave a lo t of attention to was the music, which managed to surprise me in a positive way. While the game’s aforementioned opening song is the kind of cute and bombastic idol tune the overall theme of the story would make you expect, the orchestral background music is much more serene and Western-feeling. It’s also genuinely pleasant to listen to, definitely being among the best OSTs I’ve seen in EVNs – maybe not as memorable as some of the melodies from Heart of the Woods or Sakura Dungeon (yes, I know how it sounds, but that game not being worthy of Zack Parrish’s soundtrack doesn’t make it any less spectacular), but still excellent.

Another part of the Shining Song Starnova experience that will likely be important to many readers is fanservice and h-scenes – there’s quite a lot of both, but the game also doesn’t go overboard with either to the point they would get into the way of telling the story. Fanservice shows up in more casual and comedy-oriented moments, for example in the form of hot spring scenes – these are admittedly less forced and random than many things that the studio did in Sunrider. The h-scenes are very vanilla and mostly appear in fitting moments, usually closer to the end of every route, with each heroine having two or three in her arc – apart from a few outliers, like the weird spanking scene in Yulia’s route, I quite liked how they were implemented, popping up naturally along with the story and romance progression of each route, rather than disturbing the flow of the game for the sake of inserting random fapping material. They are slightly more varied and elaborate than in something like Sunrider Academy, up to including partial animations, but considering they’re all done with the same, not very detailed and average-looking artstyle, they can’t really compete with high-budget eroge – while decently enjoyable if you like relatively tame, romantic hentai scenes, they can hardly be counted among the game’s unique selling point.

In the end, Shining Song Starnova is one of the most ambitious and interesting EVNs released last year, despite its over-the-top, cynical climate and questionable stylistic choices. It’s a wild ride through and through – one that definitely won’t be to everyone’s taste (at times, even I could barely stand it), but will provide you tons of entertainment if you buy into its story and characters. On the other hand, its production values and writing do not rise beyond slightly-above-average levels (the prose often lacked polish to a disappointing degree, with awkward phrasing and word repetition), in pretty much any aspect outside of the excellent soundtrack – it’s a very competent game, but the things that make it stand out, like the partial VA, are gimmicks more than genuine improvement over Love in Space’s previous projects, or higher-end EVNs in general. The kind of title that I’m pretty confident in recommending, but one that I’d never consider great, even by the non-JP VN standards. Still, if "just good" is enough for you, and you think you can get past Starnova’s particularly aggressive, pseudo-Japanese stylization, there are definitely many worse things to spend your time and money on.

Final Score: 3,5/5

Pros:

+ A varied, interesting set of heroines

+ Consistently engaging and satisfying routes

+ Tons of meaningful content

+ Great soundtrack

Cons:

- Average visuals

- Borderline unbearable, pseudo-Japanese feel

- Over-the-top and cynical writing