- For the unrelated novel by Chris Claremont, see Shadow Star (novel).
Shadow Star, known in Japan in full as Mukuro Naru Hoshi Tama Taru Ko (骸なる星･珠たる子, Mukuro Naru Hoshi·Tama Taru Ko, The Star That Died And the Jewel Of A Girl) and abbreviated as Narutaru (なるたる), is the name of a Japanese manga and of the anime series which was based on the manga. The series was created by Mohiro Kitoh and the Japanese version was released in the magazine Afternoon. In the United States, it was licensed by Dark Horse and serialized in Super Manga Blast!.
| Shadow Star | |
| File:Narutaru.jpg Shīna and Hoshimaru | |
| Genre | Horror, Supernatural |
|---|---|
| Manga | |
| Written by | Mohiro Kitoh |
| Published by |  Kodansha |
| Demographic | Seinen |
| Anime | |
| Directed by | Toshiaki Iino |
The anime broadcast was in 2003 on the Japanese television station Kids Station. It consists of 13 episodes of 24 minutes each. The anime has been licensed by Central Park Media and as of 2007 runs on the Illusion on Demand television network.
The protagonist of the series is a young girl called Shiina Tamai. She bonds with a starfish-shaped "dragonchild" (baby "shadow dragon") whom she calls Hoshimaru. The series is mainly about the interaction between Shiina and other young people who have also bonded with dragons.
The manga, especially the original Japanese versions, contains gruesome material and images particularly towards its later volumes. Despite the young main characters, cute aliens, and initial look of a shōjo or magical girl series, the story quickly transforms into one filled with very graphic sexual and violent themes. The English-language [1] and German-language [2] versions of the manga have some edited scenes; entire pages of content were removed from the English-language version of the manga.
Anime
Episodes
Characters
Characters with SPOILERs
Shiina Tamai (玉依 秕[3] / 玉依 シイナ Tamai Shiina): The protagonist of Shadow Star. She acts very maturely for her age, and though she does not get the best grades, she is talented at cooking and athletics. She always tries her hardest to become stronger, often facing newer and more difficult challenges. While outwardly cheerful and optimistic about everything, on the inside the protagonist's hurt stems back as far as her name; in her dream in the first episode she says, "Are you calling me? That name, Shiina... I don't like it. So next time you want to call me, do me a favor and don't use that name." Using heart-thumping music of the same three piano keys to further the idea of death, Shiina asks, "Am I going to be gone from this world?" She fears losing those closest to her, but must endure. After the anime ends, she obtains a scholarship to Banda Academy and moves in with Takeo and Norio after her father's plane was attacked by dragons a second time. In an attempt to save Takeo and herself from a United States military attack on a nearby escaped dragon, she gets hit by a missile and caught in a nuclear explosion which completely destroys her body. Soon after, she is reborn off the shore of her grandparents' island and it is revealed that her (and Mamiko Kuri's) dragons are, in fact, the whole world. The child of Shiina and Takeo becomes the new Eve when Mamiko destroys and recreates the planet. Shiina and her friends usually write her given name with katakana (sometimes as シイナ and sometimes as シーナ); Shiina's mother, Misono Tamai (玉依 美笙園 Tamai Misono), prefers the kanji rendering of her given name, which means "a lifeless shell" or "an empty husk."
![[3]](http://www.centralparkmedia.com/shadowstar/gallery/gall01.jpg){kind=link}
Hoshimaru (ホシ丸): Shiina's companion. He does what Shiina unconsciously wants to do or have happen. This means that in reality she does not wish to casually speak with him, and that everything he does is actually Shiina's will - whether for good or for bad. In the anime it is not stated, but later in the manga it becomes known that Hoshimaru is Takeo Tsurumaru's dragon, not Shiina's, which explains why she could not link with the creature. When Takeo dies, Hoshimaru attempts to turn his bearer into an otohime, but somehow fails.
Akira Sakura (佐倉 明 Sakura Akira): A ninth grade student who always seems out-of-place. She likes to hide in the shadows where she can feel protected from the outside world, nervous of others around her and afraid to trust nearly anyone. Living above her family's restaurant, her parents wish her to try harder in school and not skip day after day. When she does go to school, due to the fact that she is linked with a dragon she named Ensof (エンソフ), she often relives visions of falling from the sky - her constant passing out and vomiting in the middle of class makes her a serious outcast to the other students. Instead of trying to free herself of her timidity, she creates further barriers, with the exception of befriending Shiina. During her and Shiina's frightful battle with Komori, he told Akira that she had beautiful hair, and as soon as the battle was over she locked herself in her room and cut off her long hair in fear. As a young child, Akira was very friendly and outgoing, but quickly transformed into a hopelessly shy and insecure person after being sexually abused by her father. She keeps all of her pain inside, and tries at first to free herself of that pain by slitting her wrists and later on pointing a gun to her head, but ends up unleashing her rage on her abusive father by killing him with a dagger that Komori gave her. She spends the rest of the manga in a juvenile detention center, but when injured by a dragon battle and sent to a local hospital, she finally ends all of her suffering by jumping out the window.
Shunji Tamai (玉依 俊二 Tamai Shunji): Shiina's father and a pilot for a small aviation company. He and his wife separated years ago, and he lives with Shiina. Once a sensational ace pilot for the National Defense Force, his abilities have diminished since an undisclosed incident involving a dragon. He loves his daughter dearly and wants always to protect her, even though she is often the one who ends up protecting him.
Otohime (乙姫): Appearing on a large dragon, the virgin princess is equivalent to a goddess of dragons. She rarely makes appearances, thus seeing her even once in a lifetime is a rare and treasured event. The otohime is a replica of its owner's body whose soul has been absorbed by his or her baby dragon, thus becoming an adult dragon. There is more than one otohime, and they may be male or nonhuman, but the one who most often makes an appearance and saves Shiina many times over is revealed to be Misho Tamai (玉依 美笙 Tamai Mishō), Shiina's deceased sister.
Tomonori Komori (小森 朋典 Komori Tomonori): While to the outside world Komori appears to be a polite and popular boy who wants to become a doctor, in reality he wants to change the world by sacrificing the educated. He tells Akira that he is going to build an everlasting empire, and that he will be king and she will be his queen. He dies at the hands of Hoshimaru after introducing immense fear into Akira and Shiina's hearts. His friends and living family do not know of his death; they believe he has simply gone missing. His disabled mother, unable to live on her own, died soon after Komori's death. When Komori dies, everyone but Shiina and Akira believes that he went missing, and therefore the people do not know the truth about his situation. Komori's dragon, Push Dagger, begins absorbing his body in attempt to become an otohime, but the two are discovered by a team of medical researchers and the half-boy-half-dragon corpse was brought to their underground laboratory and hooked up to machines in attempt to stop the absorption. It is unknown whether or not they were successful, though it is obvious that they were at least able to slow down the process. In English-language Central Park Media anime, his name is Akinori Komori [4].
Satomi Ozawa (小沢 さとみ Ozawa Satomi): A haughty, stubborn girl who goes to an exclusive all-girls' school called Banda Academy. Flower-shaped Amapora is her dragonet companion, and she befriends Shiina, who does not know of her evil intentions. She wishes to kill people, but lacks the strength until she finally unleashes her power on civilians, creating a city of corpses. She did a favor for Naozumi by kidnapping Akira, who was believed to have a dragon. She used to have a romantic relationship with Bungo, but for some reason her priorities moved to the dragons. Satomi holds a particularly strong grudge against Shiina for both killing Komori and attempting to stop her malicious plans, and often discusses with Kazuyuki her desire to kill Shiina. Satomi's fate at the end of the series is never determined.
Bungo Takano (高野 文吾 Takano Bungo): A high school student and one of the friends of Komori. He is usually very cheerful and carefree, though serious and supportive of his teammates in battle. He has a great fondness for guns and cannons, and handilly supplies them when his human allies are most in need. His dragon, whose named has several variants including Hainuwere and Einvelle, resembles an angel with talons and attacks Shiina's father while flying a jet plane. Though a member of his high school's track team, he often skips practice to spend time with Satomi, whom he still has strong feelings for despite an apparent past break-up. He is often puzzled by Sudo's plans, though they work together. During his second attack on Shiina's father, his dragon gets sucked into a jet turbine and crushed. He is shown unconscious soon after, and though it is not revealed whether or not he mat his death in that incident, he most likely did due to the excruciating pain he must have endured. In the English-language manga, Kazuyuki Takano is his name.
Naozumi Sudo (須藤 直角 Sudō Naozumi): One of Komori's friends, he is very calm, yet extreme enough to commit grand theft auto and even murder. Sudo himself claims that he has surpassed a human level of emotional discomfort and desire. He sees himself as someone who protects Earth, even though he sends Satomi Ozawa to kidnap Akira to discover whether she has a dragon. He believes he can change the world, releasing it of its bonds to tradition, custom, and common sense by means of a society based on one's abilities. He claims that only those who have an impact on the world truly deserve to live, and that the human race is wasting the limited amount of resources available to them. Eventually, he, Satomi, and Bungo begin their plan to destroy the world by means of a nuclear winter, but he starves himself to death whilst endlessly plotting how to select the master race of this new world he would have created.
Hiroko Kaizuka (貝塚 ひろ子 (manga), 貝塚 ひろこ [5] (anime) Kaizuka Hiroko): Hiroko, nicknamed "Hiro" (Hiro-chan) is an extremely intelligent girl, dragon bearer, and Shiina's friend. Bullies torture her when she does not get low scores on exams; the book reveals an occasion where bullies force Hiroko to ingest a beaker with worms and a separate occasion where the same bullies shove a test tube up Hiroko's vagina. In addition, Hiroko's parents scold her for not receiving better marks, unaware that their daughter's poor grades are the price to pay for the bullies to leave her alone. Only finding solace from Shiina, she cannot approach Shiina about the bullying, but must live with it - until the day she snaps. After experiencing the unfairness in Japanese society, she wishes that everything would disappear and kills and severely injures all of the bullies and her parents with her shadow dragon. Hoshimaru chokes her to death when she threatens to kill Shunji Tamai, Shiina's father.
Jyun Ezumi (江角ジュン Ezumi Jun): A calm, collected girl a little older than Shiina. The dragon Nendo, which she travels with, looks like a broomstick, so when Shiina first meets her she is mistaken for a witch. She appears briefly and apparently died in a car crash two years before she meets Shiina. Nendo, who turns out to belong to Jyun's friend Kyoji Fukayama, has an ability that allowed her Kyoji to take her physical form when his own body died in an accident. Jyun's fake body and Kyoji's soul merge with the dragon, causing them to evolve into a full dragon and otohime.
Mamiko Kuri (涅 見子 Kuri Mamiko): Mamiko is a mysterious girl with cold eyes who Naozumi took under his wing when he found out she had a shadow dragon, though it is never clear how he discovered her. She does not like to wear clothing and often considers everyone around her inferior. Sudo eventually enrolls her at Banda Academy with Shiina and Satomi. She explains to Shiina late in the story that they possess the same shadow dragon; it is the earth itself, and they must make the choice of what kind of world there will be. It is also noted that she has no family, and seems to have been created by the earth to serve as Shiina's dark side. With her tremendous power, at the end of the series she goes berserk, destroying everyone and everything in the world except Shiina and herself. They begin the world over again. Several gang members, who kill Norio in Volume 10 and Tsurumaru in Volume 12, rape and impregnate Mamiko in volume 11. Mamiko kills the gang members, and her son becomes the new Adam when the world is reborn.
Takeo Tsurumaru (鶴丸 丈夫 Tsurumaru Takeo): One of the passengers who disappeared from Shiina's plane flight, whom she confuses with the writer of a threatening note. He helps Shiina and Akira many times, although he does not always understand where his responsibilities should stand. He is quite lecherous, having five illegitimate children and three girls pregnant during the course of the series. Eventually he impregnates Shiina too, who taught him that there is a difference between love and procreation. In volume 10 Takeo gets caught in a nuclear explosion while trying to escape the hellfire of U.S. soldiers attacking an escaped dragon, and later shows obvious side effects of radiation poisoning, including severe scars and complete hair loss. A group of city thugs - the same ones who kill Norio in Volume 10 and rape Mamiko in Volume 11 - shoot him to death, though for unexplained reasons Hoshimaru (his dragonchild, not Shiina's as many thought) cannot manage to transform him into an otohime.
Norio Koga (古賀 のり夫 Koga Norio): The other missing passenger from the plane flight, as well as Takeo's roommate and friend. Norio has long hair, earrings, large eyes, and other feminine features so many characters throughout the series mistake him for a woman. He possesses a high-level shadow dragon that often follows Takeo, and crafts new shadow dragons as a sort of hobby. Norio is very aloof and rude around other people, and it is touched on a few times that he is angry at the human race. But he actually has fierce loyalty for Takeo, and his deepest, darkest wish is to have a child. His death is a messay affair: a gang of street punks/city thugs approaches his and Takeo's house. Norio comes outside when he hears a noise, and collapses after a blow to the stomach. The thugs drag Norio into the house and ask for Takeo's whereabouts. When Norio stated that he is not there, a thug slices Norio's ear with a sword, causing an earring to fall to the floor. When Norio tries to run away, a sword slices his leg deeply and he falls to the ground. One of the thugs then rapes and knifes the lower parts of Norio before giving him a dose of lethal injection; the other thugs vomit outside during the torture. Norio dies, as does his dragon V-Dentata, from which a fetus develops - an expression of his love for Takeo and secret dream.
Aki Honda (本田亜希 Honda Aki): Undoubtedly the cruelest of the girls that bully Hiroko, and thus the group's unofficial leader. Yasuhito, who is her older brother in the Japanese manga and anime and boyfriend in the English manga, teaches her various methods to torture Hiroko. Aki is responsible for forcing Hiroko to ingest worms and take a test tube in her vagina. After the second incident, Aki, dressed only in a lingerie top in the manga (panties are added in the English and German versions) and a nightgown in the anime, and her brother, dressed in his trousers, sit in their house when Oni breaks through the wall. Hiroko's dragon instantly kills Yasuhito by caving in Yasuhito's head. After Yasuhito dies, Oni forces Aki to ingest worms. In the original Japanese manga, Oni shoves a clawed finger up Aki's vagina. The finger courses through Aki's organs and reappears through Aki's stomach. The finger then tears downward through Aki's torso; the final image of Aki shows her body cut in half. The English manga removes many of the pages in the scene and arranges the scene so that one instance of the dragon shoving a finger through Aki's stomach is seen. In the anime version, the torture of Aki after the worms is not clearly seen by the viewer.
Miyoko Shito (市東美代子 Shitō Miyoko): A friend of Shiina, she remains always nervous when she helps bully Hiroko because she fears Shiina's potential reaction. Her lack of confidence in her own strength undoubtedly leads to her involvement in the group that bullies Hiroko. Hiroko's dragon Oni appears at Shiina's school and rips Miyoko's left leg off of her body. Shiina prevents the dragon from killing Miyoko, and Miyoko is taken to the hospital.
Hiroka Takamura (高村宏華 Takamura Hiroka): One of the girls who bullies Hiroko, she joined their group out of jealousy for Hiroko's perfect test grades. Hiroko's dragon appears at Shiina's school and pushes Hiroka out of a window.
Mihaya Ozaki (尾崎三早 Ozaki Mihaya): A classmate of Shiina's, she bullies Hiroko along with other girls out of jealousy. She is killed by Hiroko's dragon Oni.
Manga
Note: The titles of the individual volumes refer to the English translation, which gave names to the individual volumes.
- 1: Starflight // Chapters 1-4 (Japanese 1-5)
- 2: Darkness Visible // Chapters 5-10 (Japanese 6-13)
- 3: Shadows Of The Past // Chapters 11-15 (Japanese 14-20)
- 4: Nothing But The Truth // Chapters 16-20 (Japanese 21-23)
- 5: A Flower's Fragrance // Chapters 21-23 (Japanese 24-28)
- 6: What Can I Do For You Now? // Chapters 24-28 (Japanese 29)
- 7: Victim's Eyes, Assailant's Hands // Chapter 29 (Japanese 30-38)
- 8: Japanese 39-44
- 9: Japanese 45-48
- 10: Japanese 49 & 50
- 11: Japanese 51-61
- 12: Japanese 62-68
There are twelve volumes total in the Japanese releases, of which the seven listed have been translated to English. The English volumes end at different spots than the Japanese volumes. This was a result of Dark Horse's arrangement of the manga's chapters, which were spaced differently in the Japanese and English releases. The same treatment was given to Oh My Goddess! in its initial distribution.
There have been no new announcements for future English releases. English volume eight (Japanese volume seven) and part of volume 9 (Japanese volume 8) have been translated in Super Manga Blast!, and starting with the magazine's 54th issue, the manga was translated in its original right-to-left reading format; this lasted until SMB was cancelled five issues later. These chapters have not been printed as stand-alone graphic novels as yet.
Reception of the anime
Sci Fi Channel described the series as "transformed" from "fascinatingly quirky" to "slow but expressive."[1]
References
External links
- Central Park Media website about Shadow Star
- Narutaru site at Kid's Station Template:Ja icon
- Shadowstar Official site on Illusion on Demand
- Shadow Star Narutaru ({{{type}}}) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia
- Shadow Star ({{{type}}}) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia
- ANIMEFringe article about Shadow Star