Revue Starlight brings us to meet with Karen Aijo, student at Seisho Music Academy, where the students have just recently completed their 99th annual major revue -- a play called "Starlight" -- and are preparing for the 100th, Karen's graduation year, in which they will once again perform "Starlight". Karen is talented but your fairly typical shojo-protagonist lovable goofball in many ways.

The story begins with the return of Karen's childhood friend, Hikari Kagura, from several years of study abroad. Hikari is cold and aloof from her old friend, resisting Karen's attempts to rekindle their friendship (although not entirely successful, it doesn't take long for Karen to arrange for them to become roommates.)

Then Karen follows Hikari's secret late-night trip back to campus, where an elevator ride tumbles her into the middle of a secret underground "Revue Tournament", where participants are expected to sing, dance, and, yes, fight, for the status of Top Star. Seeing Hikari about to be defeated, a shocked Karen hurls herself into the fight, and from then on... well, everything changes.

From there, things proceed in most interesting fashion. The storytelling is right on target, every moment of screen-time is packed with symbolism and importance to the storyline, the fights are beautifully choreographed, and the ending is truly magnificent.

And if you're seeing parallels to a certain other anime that is well-reputed here, yes, there's a lot of that. I've seen it described as "Utena for Theatre Majors", and "the spiritual love-child of Shojou Kakumei Utena and Sakura Taisen", and so on. (The latter is not a coincidence, Bushiroad poached practically the entire creative team behind Sakura Taisen shortly before starting this project.)

This is going right up there with Princess Principal on my list of Strongest Anime of The Decade.