Kaleido Star enters its second season following Kaleido Star hopeful Sora Naegino as she faces every challenge set before her to become the biggest star of the Cirque Du Soleil performance art troupe. There will be competitors bent on unseating her rise, friends who help her along the way, and of course the spirit of the stage, The Fool. Can she overcome all of the obstacles in her way and make her mentor and Kaleido Star legend Layla Hamilton proud or will the pressure of competition break her spirit?

There have been many an anime series that pit young women against the struggle of competitiveness and trials that have done well. Princess Nine was an excellent anime series and Bamboo Blade was a lot of fun. What kills this show is the amount of drama and shrieking that the characters do over the 650 minute runtime. Mind you there are breaks in the all girl cast with characters like The Fool, Ken, and male characters that pop up from time to time and take over the plotline but a majority of the show is an all female front. If your familiar with anime you know all about the high pitched scream fests that can take place when female characters get angry but nothing quite prepares you for the amount of high pitched arguments and drama flooded plotlines that go on here. Mind you its all beneficial to the overall plot but at times its more then one poor critic handle.

The shows saving grace is the overall theme that with hard work, friendship, and perseverance there is no goal that cannot be reached, no feat to unimaginable to be accomplished. As I watched, slowly lowering my hunched shoulders and unplugging my ears, the plot began to take shape in a way that made sense. Characters began to realize their lack of strengths they could only find in one another, the abilities they had all along once they realized the true meaning behind the performance art of the acrobatics involved, and the sentimental flood of positivity that effected the crowd when they stopped thinking about themselves and started thinking about the dreams they were creating for others. Mind you it wasn't all level dialogue from this point on but once it catches your imagination and invests you in what’s happening with the characters the shrieking fights didn’t sound so harsh anymore. By the final episode I was committed and when it was over I felt, well, happy. I’ll give you that the show requires a bit of patience but the jackpot at the end is well worth the wait.

Bonus features included on the disc include Commentaries, the usual Textless Songs, Trailers (check out The Wallflower. That looks good), Two OVA’s.

OVA: The Amazing Princess Without A Smile (runs your average episode length)
OVA: The Layla Hamilton Story (50 minutes). This OVA is presented in Japanese and really tips you on the whole shriek fest thing. The original voice over actors from Japan do a much better job at conveying emotion then the American voice over actors in my opinion.

A Day With Kaleido Star Serena Varghese (the voice of Rosetta). We follow her around for five minutes. Kind of like a condensed day in the life featurette.    

*The second season begins with two episodes titled Amazing Prologue To Stardom Parts 1 & 2.  Its basically a two part episode recap of what went on in the first season of Kaleido Star. I really feel like this should have gone in the bonus features section. When I first popped the DVD in I was wondering if the show was simply a Cliff's Notes type of deal. I kept thinking, "Show me, don't tell me." When I finally picked up the case and saw that these were recap episodes I felt both stupid and annoyed that they weren't presented as bonus features. I can see the strategy but still feel they'd make better bonus features.