Have you ever heard of selective mutism? It’s a condition wherein a person “freezes up” and becomes unable to speak in certain social situations, despite the fact that they can talk normally at other times. When you combine tendencies of selective mutism with a stammer (also known as a stutter) you have someone like Umika Konohoshi, the main character of the 2023 anime Stardust Telepath.
Umika never connects well with others, and this is largely due to her speech problems. She stammers whenever she speaks. Sometimes, in school, she becomes completely unable to get a word out. Others mock or misunderstand her because of these issues.
By the time she was in highschool, Umika had given up on connecting to other humans. Her dream was instead to build rockets and explore space in the hopes of someday meeting an alien. Surely, an alien would be able to connect with her without the shackles of human speech problems. This may sound like a naïve dream for highschooler, but it kept Umika going.
If you want to know the story of Umika – a sci-fi lover with speech impediments – you should check out Stardust Telepath. It’s the tale of Umika’s fateful meeting with Yuu Akeuchi, a self-proclaimed alien who shows up at her highschool as a transfer student. This meeting will help Umika begin to tackle her speech issues and connect to others in a significant way for the very first time. The following review will cover five components of Stardust Telepath and how it performs as a series overall.
Article Contents
Story
Score: 6/10
Yuu Akeuchi woke up in a lighthouse with no memories and a mysterious notebook documenting her time on a spaceship. She claims to be an alien who forgot why she came to Earth. Umika believes Akeuchi and tries to connect with her, but has trouble saying anything. That’s when Akeuchi leans in so that their foreheads touch for a few seconds. She then claims to have understood Umika’s true feelings and sincere desire to connect. Akeuchi is a telepath whose power is activated by proximity and touch.
The premise of the series is that Umika and her “alien friend” are learning to communicate while building sophisticated bottle rockets to prepare for future engineering. Along the way, the two girls make several other friends. This anime is also unabashedly a light Shoujo Ai (Girl’s Love) story that focuses on the relationships of the female characters. Let’s talk a bit about the Shoujo Ai elements before we discuss the the story on a broader scale.
This is not the type of Shoujo Ai that actually explores interesting LGBT+ themes. That being said, you can easily argue that Umika and Akeuchi are queer and have feelings for each other. Their physical interactions include hand-holding, hugging, and touching foreheads for their “telepathy.” This anime rarely sexualized the characters outright. For the most part, it’s about their feelings for each other, and doesn’t use sexual pandering. Therefore, I think it’s possible to watch this Shoujo Ai without feeling like a creep.
The story was fairly standard in structure and execution. It wasn’t bad at all. There were several key emotional moments that hit home at the right times. The story themes were also wholesome and enjoyable. These themes included hard work, teamwork, developing good communication, embracing your dreams, and pressing on even when you fail. Ultimately, it’s about reaching out to others. The main problem with the story category was that it had a rather weak conclusion compared to what I was expecting.
I was expecting that, in the last few episodes, the truth would come to light that Akeuchi is a human who ran away from home or something like that. Umika would at first be devastated, but eventually conclude that she still loved Akeuchi and wants to continue studying space. However, that’s not the direction the story took. Instead it was an arc about Umika and the girls dealing with the failure of losing an interschool rocket-building competition.
The conclusion was only satisfactory if we assume it’s the end of season one and not the entire story. We still have to learn that Akeuchi isn’t really an alien, right? That is, assuming I have read between the lines correctly. It’s possible this anime is purely fanciful. Maybe Akeuchi is actually an alien like she says. If that were the case, I would lose my interest in this anime, unable to take it seriously. For now, I just hope there’s a continuing story in which Umika eventually sees the truth.
Visuals
Score: 8/10
The visuals in Stardust Telepath struck me as high-quality for an anime that wasn’t a widely marketed, big-budget deal. The art style makes the characters look incredibly cute, with large heads, detailed highlights, and unique color gradients and combos for the hair and eyes. The studio that created this anime – studio Gokumi – did a great job producing an adorable art style. You’ll probably like it if you enjoy cutesy characters.
The character designs are bold and memorable. I’m quite fond of them all. Umika has unkempt but beautiful hair that goes in a long gradient from bright purple to deep blue. Her eyes are pinkish-red, which is an unusual choice for a main character. Yuu Akeuchi is tall and slender, with exuberant features and light pink hair. Her strange buns do look sort of alien. Haruno with her ribbons and Raimon with her goggles are also extremely cute, though less colorful. I loved the design for Kei as well.
I mentioned the colors a few times now, but they really are worth noting. I love how bright and yet soft everything looks. The color pallet contains a lot of pinks, purples, and blues, with rainbow pastel shades here and there. It’s not exactly a neon anime, but the colors still stand out in unusual and pretty ways. Last of all, the face expressions in Stardust Telepath are great. Umika has so many cute and silly ones. Of course, there are plenty of serious ones, as well.
Audio
Score: 6/10
The audio category isn’t something I usually criticize, since I love listening to Japanese voice-acting and I like the majority of Japaense songs I hear in anime. However, the audio category of Stardust Telepath was a little weak. The instrumental music was entirely forgettable. I didn’t like the songs much personally.
The opening song (“Ten to Sen” by Miku Itou) as well as the ending song (“Tentaizu” by SoundOrion) are both upbeat J-pop songs with light female vocals. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not really my style. The melodies do not stick in my mind. More variety would have been nice, too.
As for the voice-acting, it’s fine, but it can be tiring to hear nothing but high-pitched voices the entire time. There are no male characters to balance out all the girly voices. I also didn’t recognize any of the lead cast, meaning I don’t have much to comment on.
Umika was voiced by Yurie Funato. She did a fair job making it sound like she had a slight stammer. The voice actress playing Akeuchi was Seria Fukagawa. I liked her lively acting. Shiki Aoki was the voice of Raimon, and Moe Nagamuta played Haruno. I don’t recognize any of these voices off the top of my head, but I think they all did great.
Characters
Score: 7/10
The characters category earns a solid 7/10 for presenting creative characters with diverse personalities, each of whom experience growth and maturation. The cast is small, which I think is appropriate for a 12-episode anime, giving us time to get a grasp on each character. Personally, I wish there were some male characters, even if they were only supporting background people like teachers and fathers. Ideally, we would have also seen a bit more depth and detail to the main characters.
There’s something to be said about the unusual nature of the protagonist, Umika. She is a rare example of an anime character with a stammer and possibly selective mutism. It’s refreshing to see realistic and positive depictions of characters with these kinds of unique struggles. I’m always happy to find examples of anime characters who are neurodivergent, so I appreciate Umika as a girl with serious social anxiety and a speech impediment. (She’s also so adorable I want to scoop her up and hug her!)
Besides Umika herself, Matataki Raimon was my favorite character in Stardust Telepath. I think she was the most well-developed of the characters, as she had the most to learn about friendship and perseverance. Raimon is naturally intelligent, understanding the mechanics of small gunpowder engines and the physics needed for launching bottle rockets. In terms of personality, she’s grumpy and mean. Her moodiness stems from her insecurities and perfectionistic nature. Raimon slowly improves as she lets Umika reach out to her softer side.
On a final note about characters, here are the MBTI types for the four main girls.
Haruno Takaragi: ENFJ (The Selfless Giver)
Matataki Raimon: ISTP (The Stubborn Mechanic)
Umika Konohoshi: INFP (The Quiet Idealist)
Yuu Akeuchi: ENFP (The Energetic Champion!)
Personal Enjoyment
Score: 7/10
There were a few moments that I didn’t like because they were either too boring or they had some title-card visuals that were too sexual for these underage characters. But other than that, I really did have fun with Stardust Telepath. I enjoyed the cute characters and unusual, colorful visuals. I also felt happy when I started to interpret Akeuchi and Umika as young queer characters in what might become a lesbian relationship.
One of the main themes of the show was dealing with disappointment and failure. Raimon’s personal struggle to enjoy things while they last was a closely related idea. I enjoyed both major themes. Like Raimon, I once wrestled with the pain of accepting that good things will never last forever. But if you don’t invest in them while they’re in front of you, will you ever be happy at all? I don’t think so. Raimon eventually comes around, too.
Lastly, I enjoyed imagining the future of this anime and these characters. I’m hoping the story continues and that the drama becomes more intense and interesting. I haven’t looked into the source material, and I’m unlikely to read whatever it is, since manga and light novels rarely do it for me. So, for now, all I can do is hope for a second season that will improve on the first.
Overall Score
Score: 6.8 / 10.0
The overall score is calculated by taking the average of the five scores for the categories explored above. My honest rating for an anime series tends to be the personal enjoyment score, but the overall score provides a more balanced take that factors in elements like audio-visual quality.
The score I arrived at is a little lower than what I see online. The current rating on MAL is 7.16 and the arithmetic mean of the ratings on ANN is 7.19. As you can see, Stardust Telepath was relatively well-received by a small audience – I suspect it was mostly those already interested in Shoujo Ai anime.
You should consider checking out Stardust Telepath only if you enjoy slow-paced shows, cutesy characters, and Girl’s Love. (Also characters with speech impediments.) Otherwise, skip this one, or it will just bore you. If you do end up watching Stardust Telepath, I suspect you will appreciate the themes of learning to connect with others and having the courage to reach out.
~Thanks for reading~
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