History Manga / TheFiveStarStories

* AllPlanetsAreEarthlike: Mostly averted. Though most of the habitable planets are fairly earthlike, either naturally or through terraforming, some are hotter or colder than others on average. There are also two habitable {{Single Biome Planet}}s: Juno, a jungle planet currently in the middle of its [[EverythingsBetterWithDinosaurs Mesozoic Era]] and Pestako, a city world that was originally an airless mining planet. Also, each star has numerous uninhabitable planets not unlike our own solar system.

Nagano's distinctive visual and storytelling style, [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters a cast of thousands]] of truly unique and bizarre personalities and extensive WorldBuilding combine to create a truly unforgettable experience, epic in scope and yet peppered with many familiar, domestic touches that draw the reader into a strange and fascinating alien world that may not be so far from their own. Once you've seen it you'll never confuse it for anything else.

** Interestingly, even the Mechs get in on it. Because of Nagano's signature "Movable Frame" designs wherein every MH has a fully articulated skeletal frame overlayed with armor, many headdliners disguise them by by swapping out the external armor and other equipment for the sake of PlausibleDeniability. Most notable are the Boowray Battalion, a group of alleged PrivateMilitaryContractors who are actually members of the Fillmore Empire's elite Kneue Syltiss Knights acting as deniable assets in conflicts that would be politically inconvenient for the empire to officially commit its forces to. They use Fillmore's signature MH, the Siren, with bulky armor gun turrets attached to obscure the Siren frame's distinctive outline.

!!FSS has examples of...

*** If you mean Bosjathfort, then he a) claims that he's a sorcerer, and b) claims that he knows the secrets of [[ThePrecursors Farrus Di Kannarn Empire]]. Apparently, some of these claims ''aren't'' bogus.

Mortar Headds (MH for short) are not like other RealRobot-type mechs. Rather than mass-produced, expendable military vehicles like tanks or fighter planes, an MH is considered a work of art. Each one is an exquisite display of its nation's wealth and craftsmanship that is passed down from pilot to pilot for generations. (The setup will seem familiar to fans of ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' or ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'').

* CharClone: Vralgo "Testarossa" Kentauri fits this trope perfectly. Appropriately enough, his MH, Boowray (actually a Siren frame with different armor and weapons) is based on a rejected design Mamoru Nagano did for ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamCharsCounterattack'''s Sazabi before his infamous split with Tomino.

* CharClone: Vralgo "Testarossa" Kentauri fits this trope perfectly.

* TakeThat: The entire reason Nagano made Five Star Stories was because he was enraged that Tomino would not let him usurp Tomino's role as creator and director of L-Gaim, so he decided to just write his OWN L-Gaim and use ripoffs of the designs he submitted for L-Gaim. He admitted this at a convention.
** In-Universe, Ballanche's Theata and Koop's Sayucha and Paracha were this to Mordard's Est and Sakurako's Nijihime to Balanche's Chadanna.

* Bowdlerized: The cover of US vols. 21-23 used Green and Gold artwork because the original cover (the one from JP Vol.9) contained frontal nudity of a Fatima.

* Retcon: Starting JP Vol. 13, in which featured everything related to Gothicmade.

The basics of this epic SpaceOpera are as follows: somewhere in space there is a region known as"Joker. It is made up of four stars named after the cardinal directions (North, South, East and West) and a fifth called Stant on an orbit that takes it within traveling distance of the other four every 1500 years, hence the title. The main four stars all have one or two habitable planets populated by many different nations and peoples. And, being different nations and peoples, they often find an excuse to go to war.

But it is the way war is waged that makes things really interesting. The people of Joker learned long ago that weapons of mass destruction were a bad idea, so instead they developed a device that could deploy massive amounts of firepower without the indiscriminate collateral damage of a nuke or planetary bombardment.

Mortar Headds (MH for short) are not like other RealRobot-type mechs. Rather than mass-produced, expendable military vehicles like tanks or fighter planes, an MH is considered a work of art. Each one is an exquisite display of its nation's wealth and craftsmanship that is passed down from pilot to pilot for generations (a setup that may seem familiar to fans of ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' or ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'').

They are controlled by two operators: a "Headdliner," a SchizoTech KnightInShiningArmor, born with superhuman strength and speed as a result of genes passed down from genetically altered SuperSoldiers in the distant past who are the only ones with the proper reflexes to control the machine's incredibly complex movements and their partner, a "Fatima", an ArtificialHuman, usually female, who controls the mech's other functions and has been programmed to obey the Headdliner completely.

The main characters of ''The Five Star Stories'', more or less, are Amaterasu, the [[AmbiguousGender androgynous]] god-king of the planet Delta Belune and his Fatima/wife Lachesis, who, along with their loyal order of Mirage Knights are destined to change the face of the Five Stars forever.

The manga has been collected into several large-format paperbacks, at least ten of which are currently available in English, though these are difficult to find. (Also, in English each volume is split up into two or three books, which comes out to about 25 or so released so far, really). It has also spawned an animated OAV film, a fairly faithful adaptation of the first volume which inexplicably changed the colors of some of the Mortar Headds and a few character designs were tweaked to be more animation-friendly. Nagano has even produced a handful of {{Concept Album}}s based on the series with vocals by his wife, voice actress Creator/MariaKawamura.

** What's unusual is that not only are elements of the BackStory like this, but the future of the story as well, as each volume is printed with a tentative timeline of the series that goes all the way up to the year 7777 and the character notes often describe things they will do in the future. This may seem odd, but it actually underscores the true purpose of the manga quite well: FSS is an ''experience''. It's not about knowing what's going to happen next, but about actually seeing it happen.
* AllLoveIsUnrequited: A frequent motif in the series:
** Aisha Codante loved Amaterasu for all her life, [[EveryoneCanSeeIt and he knew it]], but just never felt anything back.

* AlternateUniverse: We sometimes get brief glimpses of a strange alternate reality known as the Taika Universe during various points in its history, mostly revolving around visitations by Amaterasu and friends after his [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence final ascension]]. The equivalent of humans apparently evolved from Cheetahs, there are many other alien races and Rogner apparently has a Cheetahman counterpart there, or at least somebody with the same name.

** Jokerians also age somewhat differently. A 100-year person in Joker would be around thirty Earth years old, but their physical age would correspond to a ~20-25 years old Earthling.
* AnachronicOrder: The first volume opens in JC 3960, then shifts back to 2989 and the story proceeds more or less linearly from there for the next volume or so, but at the end of book three it jumps ahead to an even further time briefly before snapping back to the main story in the 2990s, and this sort of thing keeps on happening for most of the series.
* AncestralWeapon: Many of the Mortar Headds and Fatimas have been in the service of the same order of knights for generations.
** And let's not even get started on ''[[TimeAbyss Kaienken]]''. Or KOG.

* AuthorAppeal: FSS is filled to the brim with things Mamoru Nagano loves. Giant robots, genderqueers, motorcycles, rock music references, bizarre fashions, it's all here. He even admits most of the Fatimas are designed after his tastes in women.

** Also, Jagd qualifies just as of itself, not only its EyeBeams. For all the engineering marvel that it is, it's still fully possible to create a mobile artillery platform capable of carrying the ''Twin Towers'' for a fraction of the mass and cost. After all, both Jagds ever built were used to their full power exactly ''once'', and a couple of much cheaper ''[[OldSchoolDogfight Prowlers]]'' could've arguably do it better -- busters of these caliber being their standard weaponry. It seems that Amaterasu designed and built Jagd Mirages simply because he ''could''... and AKD was able to afford them.

* BlueAndOrangeMorality: Amaterasu's decisions can seem pretty bizarre for the average person at times, such as the whole affair with Bosjathforth, which basically started with what looked like a [[NiceJobBreakingItHero kid throwing a tantrum]] ([[OmniscientMoralityLicense but probably wasn't]]), and draggged for a number of centuries and several wars.

''The Five Star Stories'' (FSS for short) is a long running (began serialization in the venerable ''Newtype Magazine'' in 1986) cult manga series created by Mamoru Nagano, who is best known for his collaborations with Creator/YoshiyukiTomino, especially ''[[Anime/MobileSuitZetaGundam Zeta Gundam]]''. While not quite his solo debut (that would be ''Fool for the City'', a short story mostly about rock music that was also serialized in Newtype the year before FSS began) FSS has arguably become Nagano's most distinctive work and his career-defining Magnum Opus.

The basics of this epic SpaceOpera are as follows: Somewhere in space there is a region known as "Joker." It is made up of four stars named after the cardinal directions (North, South, East and West) and a 5th called Stant on an orbit that takes it within traveling distance of the other four every 1500 years, hence the title. The main four stars all have one or two habitable planets populated by many different nations and peoples. And, being different nations and peoples, they often find an excuse to go to war.

Mortar Headds are controlled by two operators: a "Headdliner," a SchizoTech KnightInShiningArmor, born with superhuman strength and speed as a result of genes passed down from genetically altered SuperSoldiers in the distant past who are the only ones with the proper reflexes to control the machine's incredibly complex movements and their partner, a "Fatima", an ArtificialHuman, usually female, who controls the mech's other functions and has been programmed to obey the Headdliner completely.

The main characters of The Five Star Stories, more or less, are Amaterasu, the [[AmbiguousGender androgynous]] god-king of the planet Delta Belune and his Fatima/wife Lachesis, who, along with their loyal order of Mirage Knights are destined to change the face of the Five Stars forever.

Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Maybe even a little cliche? Well just take a look and prepare to be blown away.

The manga has been collected into several large-format paperbacks, at least 10 of which are currently available in English (though these are somewhat difficult to find. Also, in English each volume is split up into two or three books, which comes out to about 25 or so released so far, really). It has also spawned an animated OAV film, a fairly faithful adaptation of the first volume which inexplicably changed the colors of some of the Mortar Headds and a few character designs were tweaked to be more animation-friendly. Nagano has even produced a handful of {{Concept Album}}s based on the series with vocals by his wife, the voice actress Creator/MariaKawamura.

* Bowdelization: The cover of US vols. 21-23 used Green and Gold artwork because the original cover (the one from JP Vol.9) contained frontal nudity of a Fatima.

* ClusterFBomb: Palthenon even used it when complaining why was the eye part of her MH burned off after doing its EyeBeams attack.

* OffWithYourHead: Prince Krakenbeal Mejojo did this to Ananda, who was in the brothel after his master, Iler the Bishop, was killed, after the later refused to leak information about the now destroyed Ashura Temple.

* PedophilePriest: Iler the Bishop,the antagonist of the Traffics arc, is a 7' tall guy dressed in psuedo-Catholic bishop's regalia and has a young boy Fatima named Ananda.

* PedophilePriest: Ananda, the cute boy Fatima. Disturbingly, his master is Bishop Iler, a 7' tall guy dressed in psuedo-Catholic bishop's regalia and after Iler bites it, the poor kid is sold to a brothel.

* WithThisHerring: The entirety of the Emperor's Rescue Mission. Because of the whole Float Temple SNAFU [[note]]Seals in the Tower of Demon, locking the [=SATANs=] out of Jocker, acting up, which has thrown the castle's power sources out of whack, Sarion and Green Left's uprising, most of the Mirages being out of town, their [=MHs=] in maintenance or rendered inoperable by the aforementioned power surges, etc.[[/note]] [[EnsignNewbie Mishalu]] [[YouAreInCommandNow Ha Lonn]] took off to Both with only one cruiser, her own half-assembled MH, and one (very inexperienced) combined arms division to take on the much, much heavier Di Barrow forces. Even when she was reinforced by an [[TheBattlestar assault carrier]] of the AKD's Both protectorate, and her MH was finally readied to battle, she still had just four [=MHs=] (three of them being of a RedShirt Temple model) against Di Barrow's nine, most of which were of much better Blue Armor type. It was so bad that they had to resort to the desperation tactic of using tanks against Mortar Headds at one point, which didn't turn into CurbStompBattle only because of an exceptional skill and, eventually, HeroicSacrifice of Col. Vasyuchenko, the AKD forces tank commander. Though they've managed to hold long enough for TheCavalry to arrive, [[BigDamnHeroes with Schaft and Aisha coming just in the nick of time]], and [[ButtMonkey Allen Braford]] deciding to desert Di Barrow and join the AKD's side after meeting with Sopp personally.

* WithThisHerring: The entirety of the Emperor's Rescue Mission. Because of the whole Float Temple SNAFU [[note]]Seals in the Tower of Demon, locking the [=SATANs=] out of Jocker, acting up, which has thrown the castle's power sources out of whack, Sarion and Green Left's uprising, most of the Mirages being out of town, their [=MHs=] in maintenance or rendered inoperable by the aforementioned power surges, etc.[[/note]] [[EnsignNewbie Mishalu]] [[YouAreInCommandNow Ha Lonn]] took off to Both with only one cruiser, her own half-assembled MH, and one ([[TheNewMeat very inexperienced]]) combined arms division to take on the much, much heavier Di Barrow forces. Even when she was reinforced by an [[TheBattlestar assault carrier]] of the AKD's Both protectorate, and her MH was finally readied to battle, she still had just four [=MHs=] (three of them being of a RedShirt Temple model) against Di Barrow's nine, most of which were of much better Blue Armor type. It was so bad that they had to resort to the desperation tactic of using tanks against Mortar Headds at one point, which didn't turn into CurbStompBattle only because of an exceptional skill and, eventually, HeroicSacrifice of Col. Vasyuchenko, the AKD forces tank commander. Though they've managed to hold long enough for TheCavalry to arrive, [[BigDamnHeroes with Schaft and Aisha coming just in the nick of time]], and [[ButtMonkey Allen Braford]] deciding to desert Di Barrow and join the AKD's side after meeting with Sopp personally.

* ShotaCon: Ananda, the cute boy Fatima. Disturbingly, his master is Bishop Iler, a 7' tall guy dressed in psuedo-Catholic bishop's regalia and after Iler bites it, the poor kid is sold to a brothel.

* TheStraightWillAndGrace: Subverted with Decors Weissmel and his Fatima Est. Est is programmed to pair with a knight best suited to pilot her bonded MH Vattshu, who just happens to be [[JerkWithTheHeartOfAJerk Weissmel]], instead of her [[DidNotGetTheGirl would-be boyfriend Jhon Weinzel]]. So she does spend most of her story together with him, but while it is common for a knight and his/her Fatima to have a relationship, in this case both sides are thoroughly indifferent to each other. There isn't even friendship, much less attraction: Est still loves Jhon, while Weissmel... well, he just isn't attracted to Fatimas at all. In fact, he consistently complains about Joker's fashion in Fatimas, who are commonly made small, skinny and somewhat {{Lolicon}}ish, [[EvenEvilHasStandards which he finds disgusting]].

''The Five Star Stories'' (FSS for short) is a long running (began serialization in the venerable ''Newtype Magazine'' in 1986) cult manga series created by Mamoru Nagano, who is best known for his collaborations with YoshiyukiTomino, especially ''[[Anime/MobileSuitZetaGundam Zeta Gundam]]''. While not quite his solo debut (that would be ''Fool for the City'', a short story mostly about rock music that was also serialized in Newtype the year before FSS began) FSS has arguably become Nagano's most distinctive work and his career-defining Magnum Opus.

** The series also contains numerous references to ''Franchise/{{Dune}}'', most notably the Fatimas' similarity to mentats, with the blue contact lenses they wear resembling the solid blue eyes of the spice habituate, while the Etrimls resemble the mutated Navigators. Grand Duke Juba, main antagonist of the first story arc and his somewhat longer-lived step-nephew Decors Weissmel are pretty obviously based on Baron Vladimir and Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen (unsurprising, considering that Mamoru Nagano also based [[Anime/MobileSuitZetaGundam Yazan Gable]]'s character design on {{Sting}}'s portrayal of Feyd-Rautha in Creator/DavidLynch's movie version). Bosjathfort also bears some resemblance to Baron Harkonnen, being an evil, diseased mutant who later possesses a much younger body. Duke Rogner is partly based on Duncan Idaho, being a master swordsman who repeatedly dies and comes back to life. The Colus family resemble House Atreides, particularly Colus VI to Paul.