To be honest, the only reason I'm writing this review is because somehow no one has written one for Five Star Stories on AniList yet. I'm sure other people more well-versed in the mecha genre or the manga version of this film have some more interesting or more accurate things to say about it, but I will do my best.
The Five Star Stories is a manga by Mamoru Nagano, known for his work as mecha designer on Heavy Metal L-Gaim. The manga has been publishing on and off since the 80s, but in 1989 parts of the first volume were adapted into this hour-long film. Now I have not read the manga, so I can't say exactly what it is that is missing from this movie or what sort of larger story this leads towards, but even as someone with no knowledge of the source material it's clear that this is nowhere near a completed story. It's also clear that it's not intended to be completed in any way. The best way to describe Five Star Stories is as Episode 0 of an anime that was never made, or simply an animated trailer for the manga. The base for a really fascinating and captivating story is here, but an hour is simply not long enough to explain everything about this wide, wide world and the many characters pulling its story in different directions.
This is not to say, though, that this movie is bad in any way. If you take it for what it is, it's actually really engaging. As to be expected from Sunrise in the 80s, the animation is incredible. Despite the truncated story you can tell that the staff really poured their hearts into making it look as good as possible. It helps that the character and mecha designs are so unique (I really don't think I've seen another mecha like the Knight of Gold). Complimenting the animation is the soundtrack, which I must say might be one of the best anime OSTs I've ever heard. The orchestral sound of the film really adds to the epic feel of the story and the grand, fantastical worldbuilding that it tries to establish.
To summarize the movie without giving too much away, Five Star Stories takes place in the Joker Star Cluster in what seems to be sprawling mass of warring interstellar empires and kingdoms, where there are mechas called Mortarr Heads and genetically engineered female humanoids called Fatimas who help to pilot them. The story of this movie is about man named Ladios Sopp (who is, as the AniList description will tell you, actually the god of light Amaterasu) trying to save two Fatimas created by Dr. Balanche, Lachesis and Clotho. Along the way we're introduced to an interesting cast of side characters, including a slick, Han Solo-ish man named Viewlard, the villainous Lord Juba, Coluss, a king from another land, and another "Emperor Amaterasu", all of whom really help flesh out the political side of the world. There is, of course, a mecha fight near the end, and I appreciate how the Knight of Gold is presented as an incredible, larger-than-life beast of a machine (it reminds me a bit of Gunbuster in this way).
Again, without reading the manga it's hard to say how good of a job the film does at laying the foundation of the rest of the story. Other than some comments from the narrator at the beginning and end of the movie, we really aren't given much to go on. All we have are the interactions between the characters that drop little hints about how this universe and its science fiction/fantasy elements operate, how the Mortarr Heads and the Fatimas work, how the politics of the Joker Star System function. For some, this might be frustrating if not outright annoying, but I actually liked it. I appreciate how the film just drops you into the middle of a fully-developed world and just lets you go. Despite being unclear at points, by the end of it I was still pretty invested in Ladios and Lachesis and the broader story that they are surely a part of in the manga. It might not work for you, and I can definitely see how a manga reader might be put off if there is some crucial information or story beats missing that someone who just watched the movie wouldn't be aware of. Nevertheless, I thought it was pretty enjoyable. I won't lie and say it was some masterpiece, but the movie feels like the basis for a really fascinating story, and I think I'll definitely be checking out the manga at some point to see what else can be done with this world.
At the end of the day, Five Star Stories isn't really going to scratch your itch for a grand, epic space opera of cosmic proportions, though the pieces for one are all here. The real story, the internet tells me, is in the manga, which is apparently getting an English re-release next year. Still, this movie is pretty cool, if only for the stellar animation and soundtrack (or, if you want to know where the sample from the new ILLIT song came from).
