Interstella 5555

Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem is an anime-style visualization of the Daft Punk album Discovery. A group of blue-skinned extraterrestrial musicians are kidnapped, Brainwashed, and altered, mind and body, to be identical to ordinary humans. Under the control of their abductors, they become rock stars on Earth, playing their music and skyrocketing to massive fame. Can an alien pilot rescue the band, return their memories and get them home? Or will they be forced to play their part in the scheme of the evil, greedy Earl de Darkwood?

This film features no dialogue, yet the animation is expertly synced with music, making for an easily followed yet captivating film.

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The music tracks are the same as the Discovery album:

1. "One More Time"
2. "Aerodynamic"
3. "Digital Love"
4. "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger"
5. "Crescendolls"
6. "Nightvision"
7. "Superheroes"
8. "High Life"
9. "Something About Us"
10. "Voyager"
11. "Veridis Quo"
12. "Short Circuit"
13. "Face to Face"
14. "Too Long"

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Interstella 5555 provides examples of:

• Adorkable: Baryl the drummer.
• Alien Abduction: Inverted Trope.
• Alien Blood: It's golden yellow, even though their skin is blue and Shep blushes red.
• All Just a Dream: The last scene implies that the whole movie may be what some kid imagined his toys were doing while he listened to a Daft Punk record.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Aside from those with blue skin, other aliens on the planet are shown to be green, purple, pink or orange.
• Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: Hyperspace
• America Saves the Day: America helped start the plan to send the aliens back home.
• And You Were There: Though it's a rather subtle take on the trope.
• Animated Music Video: The whole movie is essentially a glorified one.
• Ascended Fanboy
  • Quite literally in the case of Shep. Saves his favorite band, dies, then comes back in spirit form to save them One More Time.
  • In a sense, Daft Punk themselves, working with their favorite anime director to create the movie.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Musician: The story implies that Mozart, Ella Fitzgerald, and Janis Joplin among others were previous alien victims of the Big Bad.
• Biting the Hat: Baryl when Shep is dying.
• Brainwashed
• The Cameo: Daft Punk show up in animated form at the Gold Record Awards. They're nominees in the same category as the Crescendolls... and lose. They don't seem unhappy about it though, and somewhat pleasantly surprised they were nominated in the first place.
  • Well, Bangalter is quite happy about it, anyway. As for Homem-Christo, when he finds out they lost to The Crescendolls, he claps politely, but still has a "heartbreak" symbol on his helmet.
• Canis Latinicus: "Veridis Quo" ("Very Disco")
• Car Chase
• Cool Shades: Subverted; they're part of the brainwashing process (that's why they're screwed into place). If they break, it wears off.
• Cosplay: In one scene during "Crescendolls", you can see two little kids dressed up as Octave and Stella. Shortly afterwards a kid dressed like Arpegius gets an autograph from the man himself.
• Cleavage Window: Stella's alien dress has one.
• Crap Saccharine World
  • Earth; all of the Crescendolls' fans hear great music, and have no idea about the brainwashing.
  • Arguably, their homeworld; everyone was too busy enjoying the concert to worry about planetary security in the first place.
• Cross-Cultural Handshake: Happened in the later half between Arpegius and the Crescendolls' human manager.
• Deal with the Devil: Earl de Darkwood made a deal with an unidentified supernatural entity during his childhood, in which he gives 5,555 award-winning musicians to it in exchange for cosmic powers. The main characters will be #5,555 if he isn't stopped.
• Decoy Protagonist: Shep
• Disney Villain Death: See Load-Bearing Boss below.
• Distressed Damsel: Stella
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: Baryl as an alien, but not as a human.
• Dying Declaration of Love: Shep to Stella.
• E.T. Gave Us Music
• False Memories
• Fan Service: The entirety of "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger".
• Fanservice Extra: A Brazilian dancer during "Crescendolls".
• Fashion Show: While Stella is still captured, the rest of the band sees her attend one.
• Fingerless Gloves: Baryl has them.
• Five-Man Band
  • The Hero: Shep
  • The Lancer: Arpegius
  • The Big Guy: Octave
  • The Smart Guy: Baryl
  • The Chick: Stella
• For Doom the Bell Tolls: In the song "Aerodynamic".
• Frozen Face: The brainwashed band and all of Earl de Darkwood's victims.
• Gas Mask Mooks: The band's kidnappers are an army of identically-dressed gas mask-wearing humanoids.
• Green-Skinned Space Babe: Well, teal.
• Heroic Sacrifice
• Her Heart Will Go On
• Hollywood Cyborg
• Hotblooded Sideburns: Shep!
• Humans Are Bastards: Seemingly played straight when it turns out the malevolent invaders are from Earth, then subverted when the rest of the population is informed to the Earl's plans and do everything they can to help the Crescendolls.
• Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: Or in this case, a very funky and psychedelic place with big shiny objects that can heavily damage your ship.
• Instant Sedation: The knockout gas subdues everyone within seconds.
• In the Hood: Shep's disguise while on Earth.
• Knockout Gas: The band is kidnapped with the aid of sleeping gas which somehow keeps them unconscious during the lengthy "processing" which turns them into the Crescendolls. Though the band's prolonged sleep may be due to the pods they were transported in.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Conducted not by just wiping the memories, but by rewriting them to take place on Earth.
• Load-Bearing Boss: Earl de Darkwood. Justified in that his falling into the lava beneath his mansion could conceivably... somehow... make it explode. Maybe.
• Lucky Charms Title
  • Letters 2 Numbers: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem
• Male Gaze: Stella gets tons of it; her first close-up is of her backside. And again in the finale, the camera lingers on her rump for several seconds before panning out.
• Manly Tears: Octave's, Arpegius', and Baryl's reactions when Shep is dying.
• Masquerade: Enforced by the Big Bad until near the end, where it gets crazy subverted.
• Mime-and-Music-Only Cartoon
• Mr. Fanservice: Arpegius; Shep; Octave
• Ms. Fanservice: Stella
• Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Earl de Darkwood
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Before the Crescendolls, Earl de Darkwood's previous victims were famous musicians who look an awful lot like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Jimi Hendrix, Ella Fitzgerald, Janis Joplin and Jimmy Page.
• No Name Given: We only know the band by their names as the Crescendolls. Their names are only momentarily given during brief moments in the "Crescendolls" section.
• Non Standard Character Design: Baryl is shorter than the other characters and has dots for eyes. This is a staple of Leiji Matsumoto's style.
• The Nudifier: The lasers cutting off the aliens' clothes during the processing.
• Older Than They Look: Baryl looks like a teenager or a little kid. He's actually 20.
• One-Winged Angel: The Earl comes back from the dead as an Eldritch Abomination to thwart the Crescendolls' return to their planet.
• Our Wormholes Are Different: The characters travel between their galaxy and the Milky Way by means of a warp of some kind.
• The Power of Daft Punk
• Pimped-Out Dress: Stella's dress for the "Gold Record Awards".
• Rock Opera
• Rousseau Was Right: After humanity learns the true identity of the Crescendolls, they spare no expense in setting things right. Although they also get access to the Earl's tech that's still working, plus possibly some of the tech from repairing and relaunching Shep's starship.
• Save the Villain: Attempted by Arpegius with the Big Bad. See Disney Villain Death and Load-Bearing Boss above.
• Self-Deprecation: Daft Punk appear as themselves in a cameo at the music awards ceremony, where they lose to the main characters. In case you don't get the significance of that, in a 65 minute video (opening and credits included), they have a five-second cameo, and then they lose to a fake band playing their music.
• Shoot Him! He Has a Wallet!: Octave, when sneaking into the record company is confronted by security guards and gets tasered when he reaches into his jacket for the papers about the memory disks he's trying to retrieve.
• The Short Guy with Glasses: Baryl
• Shout-Out
  • The guards at the record company watch a soccer game between France and Japan. This is a subtle nod to the cross-cultural cooperation that produced a Japanese anime set to the music of the French Daft Punk. (Note the score: 2-1 for the French — the Daft Punk duo and the one Leiji Matsumoto.)
  • Several shout outs to Leiji Matsumoto's works:
    • The hand-on-heart salute of the alien is similar to the one in Uchuu Senkan Yamato.
    • During the music award, Baryl's disguise includes Captain Harlock's coat and hat.
    • Toward the end, Shep's ship uses a lengthy trail to take off, a reference to Galaxy Express 999.
  • Several allusions to 2001: A Space Odyssey with Shep's space walk and the psychedelic wormhole. Discovery was released in 2001.
  • The "Crescendolls" logo is inspired by Coca-Cola's.
  • When "One More Time" climbs to #2 on the charts, #1 is "High Anxiety" by Mel "Bean" Brooks — High Anxiety being the title of an actual Mel Brooks film.
  • The cyborgs' car is crushed by a truck, and when emerging from it, the damaged cyborg has a red eye behind sunglasses, like in Terminator.
  • Darkwood Manor looks an awful like a certain vampire's castle.
  • The arrival of the band in a van during the night is reminiscent of many Scooby Doo episodes.
• Showgirl Skirt: The fancy dress Stella wears to watch the fashion show.
• Surveillance Station Slacker: The 3 soldiers watching the "One More Time" concert rather than paying attention to planetary defense.
• Token Black: Octave as a human.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: The Earl drops a business card with some plot info on it. Stella's the only one in the room and she's wearing a cleavage-heavy dress. Down it goes.
• World Tree: Where Shep is buried.