"Lord, please, when the song is over...
Please save me."
Please save me."
— "Sweet Dream"
Alien Stage is an ongoing series of animations by the creator VIVINOS, also known for her Pink Bitch Club series. So far a prologue and six episodes have been released, as well as two additional shorts.
After the Earth was invaded by aliens and human autonomy has long since disappeared, a reality audition program called Alien Stage becomes a hit among aliens. Another season begins, the number of which you don't know, and humans with different stories gather and sing on stage of their own volition. Meanwhile, a girl emerges who will break the fate of humans being ruled by aliens.
Watch the series here
, and visit the official website here.
Alien Stage contains examples of:
- Aliens Are Bastards: Not only have the aliens destroyed Earth and enslaved humanity, but they actively cheer as the losers of each round are killed off. They still care for their kin though, as their reactions to Freddie (Till's sentient guitar) being killed in Round 2 shows.
- All Love Is Unrequited: With the exception of Mizi and Sua's love, which seemed to be reciprocal until Sua died. Ivan loves Till, who only has eyes for Mizi, who isn't interested in him because she only loves Sua.
- Animesque: Per the norm for a VIVINOS work, Alien Stage is Anime inspired.
- Arc Words: "My God, My Universe".
- Artificial Outdoors Display: The humans on the show attend Anakt Garden — a "music kindergarten" in a room that displays the sky on the walls, complete with a day cycle and robot fish in a river.
- Breather Episode: Round 3 doesn't feature any on-screen deaths or plot twists, and has a much calmer tone than the previous rounds.
- Hyuna's debut episode, All-In, while does feature some violence, is much less tense and somewhat more lighthearted due to some of Hyuna's onscreen antics and goofy expressions. The fact it comes right between drama-filled Rounds 5 and 6 also helps.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: An interview with Mizi and Sua reveals that the children of Anakt Garden are brought up with the belief that dying on stage while singing is an honor and that even when they die, they will brought back to some place called Great Anakt. Seems like it isn't enough to cancel out the grief of loss though.
- Bury Your Gays: Zig-zagged. Sua and Ivan, who love Mizi and Till, respectively, are killed off in Round 1 and Round 6 in what were implied to be deliberate sacrifices to save the object of their affection. Mizi is (probably) a lesbian and lives on thanks to Sua dying in Round 1 and being saved by Hyuna in Round 5, while Till, who is one-sidedly in love with Mizi survives his first due to his popularity with the voters and his second round due to Ivan's sacrifice.
- Crapsack World: Boy is it ever. Humans are a slave race to what may be the entire rest of the galaxy and are routinely abused at worst and treated as entertaining pets at best. Either way, humans are still disposable as can be seen with the losers of the titular Alien Stage show. There are some like Mizi who had good alien parents but that doesn't shield them from seeing the person they care for the most die right in front of them for said aliens' entertainment.
- Creator Thumbprint: Quite a few for VIVINOS appear in this work, such as a lesbian couple being at the center of the story, the story being darker than it appears to be on the surface, and a character being Axe-Crazy.
- Crush Filter: Till sees Mizi through one in Round 2.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Till's opponent in Round 2 doesn't even get a word in while Till completely dominates the stage.
- Dark Reprise: Round 1 ends with Mizi singing the chorus by herself while grieving over Sua's death.
- Deadly Game: The series is about a group of humans competing in a singing competition where the loser of each round is killed at the end. From what has been shown, it seems both contestants sing one single song with each one singing some assigned parts of it and is given a score at the end.
- Downer Beginning: Downer might be too weak a word. Tragic is more appropriate. To wit, we learn that the Earth has been taken over by cruel aliens that have enslaved the human race and turned them into pets. The lovely duet the two characters were singing? The two characters shown through flashbacks to mean the world to each other? One of them dies and it's technically the fault of the other one. It only gets worse for our characters from there.
- Even Evil Has Standards:
- The alien onlookers look horrified when Till smashes his guitar at the end of Round 2, spilling guts all over the stage. This is because the guitar is actually a sentient lower-class alien named Freddie, meaning that despite all the misery they put all the humans through for their own entertainment, they still have empathy for one of their own.
- They almost executed Mizi for assaulting Luka, although she was rescued by Hyuna before they could go through with it. According to ALIEN STAGE MAGAZINE, they launched a full scale investigation into the incident as well, mentioning that they were concerned about Luka and claiming that they intend to tighten security so that these incidents don't happen again, though it's unclear if they actually care about the safety of their human slaves or if they were more bothered by the disruption in general.
- Both Ivan and Till are extremely popular as competitors in Alien Stage, but the aliens don't hesitate to execute Ivan after he started choking Till in Round 6, with this likely being as a result of the previous incident with Luka and Mizi.
- Final Love Duet: My Clematis.
- Fire and Ice Love Triangle: Both Sua (the ice) and Till (the fire) are interested in Mizi.
- First-Episode Twist: Round 1 reveals that the show is a Deadly Game where the loser of each round is killed by the aliens.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: A very cruel one indeed. Just before Sua dies in round 1, we see the scores of both her and Mizi. Mizi is one point above her and so she's soon shot for losing despite the fact that the two of them were performing a duet. Additionally, Sua is seen sweating, possibly out of fear of her imending death.
- Flaming Meteor: The falling stars shown throughout Round 3 become a shower of flaming meteors in one of the flashbacks.
- Flower Motifs:
- The song in Round 1 centers around the clematis flower, which symbolizes mischief, artifice, and ingenuity.
- Round 2 features the edelweiss, which symbolizes devoted love and purity, and according to folklore, is used to prove a lover's devotion due to how hard they are to obtain.
- Flying Saucer: The stage is shaped like one in Round 1 and 2.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: Pausing on one of the flashbacks in Round 6 reveals that the song Till was being forced to sing at the bar was My Clematis.
- Gender-Equal Ensemble: The main focus of the show is on three girls (Sua, Mizi, and Hyuna) and three guys (Till, Ivan, and Luka).
- Gory Discretion Shot: Sua's death is only shown through blood splattering on Mizi.
- Gray Rain of Depression: It starts pouring on the stage midway through Round 6, reflecting how bleak the circumstances have become for both contestants.
- Hate Sink: The titular aliens. Not a single one of them seem to regard humanity as anything more than entertainment and they are frequently shown abusing our characters. A prime example is when Sua is killed in Round 1, several of the aliens can be seen cheering.
- Heartbeat Soundtrack: Heartbeat can be heard at the beginning of Round 6.
- Hologram Projection Imperfection: Anakt Garden seems to be prone to these:
- At the start of Round 1, one of the leaves flying by Sua glitches out, foreshadowing the nature of their environment.
- In Round 3, the hallway Till runs into suffers from this.
- Human Pet: On the official Alien Stage website, humans are explicitly referred to as pets of the aliens and sold like animals. There are even instructions on how to raise them.
- Implied Rape: In the flashbacks of the bar in Round 6, Till attacks his alien abusers, injuring one of them in the eye. They easily overpower him and possibly put him on some kind of drug to sedate him. Moments later, the same alien Till attacked is seen naked with a bandaged eye, its large hand gripping and roughly stroking the head of a weakened Till who has lost all strength to fight back. We can only imagine the horrors that he endured.
- Long Runner: In-universe, the show has been going on a long time by the time the viewers meet the current contestants. It's eventually revealed that it's on it's 50th season, with Luka having been the winner of the previous season.
- Love Hurts: A common theme throughout the series. Every hardship that the characters go through can be traced back to their love for another character. Though that comes with the cavet of their alien overlords putting them through brutal conditions just for their entertainment.
- Red Filter of Doom: This happens at the end of Round 2 right after Till smashes his guitar. Till's guitar is actually a lower-class alien named Freddie, so him smashing it into pieces in front of the aliens must be comparable to killing a dog in front of a group of people.
- Also happens in Round 5 when Mizi attacks Luka.
- Rockers Smash Guitars: Played straight at the end of Round 2.
- Side-Story Bonus Art: VIVINOS and QMENG occasionally post art of the Alien Stage characters on their respective social media accounts, mainly Instagram, though some were posted on their official Twitter accounts before they were deleted. VIVINOS also occasionally streams herself drawing fan art of the cast.
- Torch Song: Both Black Sorrow and CURE count as this.
- White Shirt of Death: Sua and Ivan both die in the round they wear white in.
