New from Japan: Anime Film Reviews  Posted In | Columns: Anime
Crest of the Stars. V.1, To the Stars. V.2, The Politics of War.
V.3, Wayward Soldiers. V.4, Into the Unknown. TV series (13
episodes), 1999. Director: Yasuchika Nagaoka. V.1, 4
episodes/100 minutes; V.2 — V.4, 3 episodes/75 minutes. Price &
format: DVD bilingual $29.98. Distributor: Bandai Entertainment.
This interstellar sci-fi TV serial, animated by the Sunrise
studio, is an adaptation of a popular novel by Hiroyuki Morioka;
the first of three (so far). Judging from English-language
reviews (the novels have not been published in English), most of
the praise is going toward the in-depth background that Morioka
has created for his Abh galactic empire. Both the animation and
the DVD emphasize this, with many signs and captions (including
the DVD menu) in the Abh alphabet. The DVD extras include a
brief history of the Abh empire, a genealogy of its royal
dynasty, the technology of its spaceships' faster-than-light
drive, etc.  Without these, and