Review: Star Darlings “Becoming Star Darlings”

Disney is pulling out all the stops on this one. In September 2015, Star Darlings started out as a book series. It quickly added an online animated series in October 2015. Now Disney has compiled some of the currently released animated episodes into a special. This explains a lot about the unevenness of the show.

The special begins with an introduction by a little robot named MO-J4. Throughout the special, the little robot will appear to introduce the next segment. It’s Disney’s attempt to piece all of the unrelated episodes together.

Star Darlings takes place on a planet called Starland. (It’s possible that Starland is the name of the city. I’m not really sure.) The people of Starland grant the wishes that humans on Earth make whenever they blow out birthday candles or toss a penny in a fountain. For some reason, negative wishes have been getting into the wish system, almost destroying Starland. Lady Stella, the headmistress of Starling Academy found a prophecy stating that twelve Starlings will be able to grant special wishes that will save Starland from the negative energy. She gathers together twelve students from the Academy to make up the Star Darling team. Together, these girls will train to fight the negative wishes and learn how to grant positive wishes.

To be honest, it was a little difficult to keep track of what was going on in the show. Each of the online episodes is a stand-alone story and, when they are forced together, they don’t meld well enough to make a coherent story. Of the twelve girls, we only see five or six of them. The rest just disappear. Every time I thought we were getting into a good story, the little robot would show up and we’d get whisked away to another story. It might have been better if there were little intro cards for each individual episode instead of throwing us into the next one unarmed.

While I didn’t particularly enjoy the rapid succession of plots, I did think the animation was very pretty. The girls are all actual individuals with different hair and faces, not just carbon copies with different color schemes. I also liked the sparkles in their hair. It gave the show a little extra pizzazz.

Overall, this special was lacking. Disney either should have kept the mini-episode format or written brand new material for the 30-minute timeslot. Trying to force smaller episodes into one larger episode just doesn’t work. Especially since this show is aimed at tweens. It might keep the attention of young children but the lack of a solid storyline will confuse and bore tweens. Sorry, Disney, you dropped the ball here.