スター

Star is the story of two friendly (?) rival directors, Kou and Shougo, on their way to fame. Some time before the story takes place, they collaborated on a movie together and won a film festival's grand prize. Needless to say, expectations for them both are very high, with others around them commenting, "It's a competition between the two of them of who is gonna be famous first". Shougo takes the more traditional route towards fame, becoming an apprentice for a famous director. Kou on the other hand takes the more modern approach--he becomes an editor for a YouTuber.

I appreciated a lot of the conversation in this book. There is a lot of talk of what makes art "good", of following or betraying expectations, of keeping to tradition or adapting modern approaches and which is "better", what has value and merit, etc. I especially found Kou's storyline and Chisa (Shougo's girlfriend)'s storyline interesting. This is a book filled with value and character in a world that is constantly tripping over itself trying to keep up with the digital age. The main message of the book it's better not to compare yourself to others is something many people need to hear in this age of social media. Star is a thought-provoking read. It's easy to understand why it's rated so highly.

For me, it's about a 3.5~ star rating. I loved the conversation in Star. But this might have been a case of expectations vs reality--when I read the tagline, I thought this would be a fast-paced story of two rivals constantly trying to one-up each other, and it's not. It's a very real story, which also means it's slow-moving and not a lot happens... like, at all. Almost all of the big plost progression points are told after the fact, like Shougo getting to work on the celebrity's movie or Kou's Road to Last Fight YouTube documentary going viral. I would recommend it if you are interested in a slow-paced read that makes you think. I'm interested in picking up more by Asai in the future.