Just your regular middle-school anime.
Shingu: Secret of the Stellar Wars is a science fiction anime produced by Madhouse under director Tatsuo Sato, aired on the NHK network. The series consists of 26 episodes released between May 8th, 2001 and December 4th, 2001. On March 3, 2008, the series made its North American television debut on the Funimation Channel.The premise revolves around an alien invasion of Tokyo being repelled by a mysterious giant being which is almost a monster in itself. The attack and giant creature are witnessed by many of those at a highschool. Shortly after, highschool student Murata Hajime witnesses fellow classmates using psychic abilities and is drawn into the mysteries of the apparent psychic powers and the alien attack.
This work shows examples of:
- Adults Are Useless: Played with: Adults are not useless per se, but have there hands tied. Key members of the team being dead also prevents them from being helpful.
- Absurdly Powerful Student Council: More like a highly responsible student council than anything.
- All Your Powers Combined: Nayuta's powers combined with Shun, Hachiyou and Kyouichi's allow Nayuta to travel through space.
- Audience Surrogate: Hajime Murata, who narrates everything that happens to him so the viewers will understand what's going on.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Hajime Murata occasionally turns to the audience and comments. Of course, other characters ask who he is talking to and think he is strange. Kazuo Murata, Hajime's father, also does this when he first shows up. "Like father, like son".
- Character Narrator: Hajime Murata, who explains everything that happens in Tokyo.
- Comes Great Responsibility: An oft-seen characteristic.
- Cool Starship: seen in the last episodes.
- Expy: Fans of Tatsuo's previous work Martian Successor Nadesico can recognize some elaborations on character designs and names:
- Hikaru Inagaki is an aged-down Hikaru Amano.
- Misumaru Middle School shares its name with the Nadesico's captain Yurika Misumaru and her father Admiral Kouichiro Misumaru.
- The 70s inspired-setting can be seen as a massive elaboration of the 70s-inspired anime-with-in-an-anime Gekigangar III.
- Great Offscreen War: 10,000 years ago. That only ends after galactic physical annihilation.
- High School: Misumaru Middle School.
- Let's You and Him Fight: Between Muryou Subaru and Kyouichi Moriguchi.
- Human Aliens: You can be forgiven if you can not tell the alien and humans apart just by looking.
- Japanese School Club: Hajime and Muryou start a festival club.
- New Transfer Student: Subaru.
- Next Sunday A.D.: It's 2070, but that is not important.
- Our Ancestors Are Superheroes: The founders of Tenmo.
- Rock Beats Laser: Some well-thrown rocks stop a cyborg.
- School Clubs Are Serious Business: Plenty of Extracurricular Enthusiasts in the future, it seems.
- School Festival: Hajime and Muryou have a festival skit.
- School Newspaper Newshound: Hikaru who runs Misumaru Middle School Close Circuit News Channel bulletins and chronicles much of the social events in the school.
- Sliding Scale of Leadership Responsibility: Everyone falls pretty high on the scale.
- Superpowerful Genetics: Most if not all the locals, but more prominent in the chosen.
- Tokyo Is The Centre Of The Universe: Tenmo specifically.
- Town with a Dark Secret: The older residents know about the power of Shingu and have kept it a secret from the rest of the humans and other aliens. This explains why, when they saw the White Giant fighting the Aliens, they didn't react with shock and awe. Plus, there's a village where Muryou and Setsuna Subaru grew up that not even other members of the dark secret know about.
- Translator Microbes: is required that visitors speak the native language.
- Two Girls to a Team: Naiyuta and Harumi are the only girls in the main student cast.
- Two-Teacher School: Yamamoto-sensei and Isozaki-sensei are the only two prominent teachers we see.
- Tsundere: Nayuta and Kyouichi.
