Anime

Six girls from different schools and backgrounds come together to do cheerleading and make videos. It should be relatively simple to make a series about this, but why does Na Nare Hana Nare feel so disappointing? Even when it ended with such a great performance?

Way back in the first episode we met Kanata, who is in her high school’s cheerleading club but sidelined because of some issue and her friend Megumi, who also did cheerleading in middle school but who got ill and had to stop while she recovered and went through rehabilitation. Her other friend is Shion, from a very posh school, famed for her gymnastic ability. Shion is classmates with the fourth girl, Suzuha, a small, silent girl who parkours her way to school every day. Chasing her is how Kanata meets Anna, half Brazilian and aspiring Youtuber and her friend Nodoka, a yoga enthusiast. Anna wants to feature Suzuha in her Youtube channel; Suzuha doesn’t want. Some hijinks and misunderstandings later and by the second episode we got our cheerleading group.

From there on you expect to see the story revolve around these girls with their different backgrounds and abilities to learn to do cheer together, while they’re also looking for opportunities to actually perform, both to cheer up people and to help Anna grow her channel. Interspersed with that there should also be episodes in which each of the girls gets a bit of the spotlight, in typical (school) club anime style. Plenty material in this to fill a series, if that what it wants to do. Unfortunately it’s not the only thing Na Nare Hana Nare wants to do.

The other approach this series could’ve taken, the approach it seems to settle on at first, is to treat it as a serious sports anime. After all, we start off with Kanata and her school cheerleading team at a regional competition, in which an accident happens during their routine. An accident that was so serious that it stopped Kanata from participating anymore. Not because she was hurt herself, or because like Megumi she was physically incabable, but for purely psychological reasons, suffering from something similar to what Simone Biles suffered from in real life. Lacking the confidence to keep doing cheer, Kanata is aimless; her encounter with Suzuha and Anna int hat first episode gives her a bit of her confidence back. Na Nare Hana Nare therefore could be the story of how Kanata regained her confidence and came back to competitive cheerleading. This could be contrasted with how Megumi is struggling with her purely physical rehabilitation and as well with how her cheer club mates will respond to seeing her do cheerleading, but not for them.

Slice of life focused story on how cheerleading can lift up the spirits of your neighbourhood and town, a very P.A. Works sort of thing, or a sports orientated show about coming back from psychological and physical setbacks. Both are interesting and could’ve led to a good series. The problem was that Na Nare Hana Nare didn’t want to choose either approach and therefore half assed both, giving short shift to either.

Honestly, this mixture could have worked, but not in a one cour, twelve episode series. With a main cast of six girls and four or five more supporting characters drawn from the school cheerlead club, there are too many people to give everybody the attention they need. Because of the need to keep both storylines going and little room to stuff them in, plot points from one get dropped when the focus is on the other, most noticably seen in episodes 4-5, which is all about Anna trying to save her beloved local records shop, her second home, from closing through the power of cheerleading and Youtube. Not only cuts that short Kanata’s entire story when it just started, the resolution to it had little to do with what the girls themselves did. It all felt messy and rushed. Had this been a two cour show, with twentyfour episodes, there would have been room for an A and a B-plot in each episodes, swapping focus when necessary but still keeping the other story going. There would’ve been more room to get to know all the characters, when now Nodoka e.g. barely got any attention.

It would have also meant that the whole plot revolving around Kanata, her fears and what exactly happened during that incident, what that incident meant for the confidence of the team as a whole could have been better handled. Because now it was confusing to understand even what happened. Plenty of people thought e.g. that it was this incident that led to Megumi getting hurt to the point of needing a wheelchair, rather than having been ill and requiring surgery for it.

Episode by episode this was a decent show still; the quality of animation and character acting was what you’d expect from P.A. Works, but as a whole this was a failure.

In alphabetical order here are the shows from this season I’ve kept watching weekly. Which ones are you watching?

2.5 Jigen no Ririsa is your most basic of otaku bait romcom shows. Our protagonist is only interested in fictional woman until a girl enters his manga club who loves cosplaying his favourite character so he becomes her photographer. Not only that, there’s also a famous teenage model who is his childhood friend and is in love with him. Very much a lesser sort of My Dress-Up Darling.

Bye Bye, Earth: Lablac Belle is the only one of her species in a world of intelligent animals, lacking fur, scales or fangs unlike everybody else. She wants to find her roots but has to overcome all kind of challenges to even be able to start her journey. While the plot is a standard sort of ‘hero’s journey, what sets this apart is how dense and interesting the world is as well as how uninterested the series is in explaining it to you. A breath of fresh air after years of (pseudo-)isekai shows insisting to tell you what an adventure guilt is and how the ranking system works in their very first episode.

Dungeon no Naka no Hito. As Clay is busy conquering the dungeon her father disappeared in, she accidentally breaks one of its walls revealing a bed room? Turns out the monsters in the dungeon are its employees and the dungeon’s caretaker is eager to recruit Clay to help her run the dungeon. This is basically Dungeon Keeper: the workplace comedy.

Elf-san wa Yaserarenai.. Various fantasyland creatures have moved to our world and are now having trouble keeping their figure amid all the temptations of modern Japan. Luckily diet expert and massage therapist Naoe-kun is there to help. A half length fetish show with half naked elf and orc women trying to lose weight and failing. The manga is better but I’m not proud.

Giji Harem. Rin is the star actress of her high school drama club. Eiji is her senpai, working behind the scenes doing the set design and building. They quickly become friends and one day as Eiji bemoans his lack of a harem, Rin starts acting out various harem anime archetypes for him. That’s the hook but what keeps me watching is the gradual deepening of their relationship and Rin’s giggles of pleasure when she’s having fun with her senpai.

Gimai Seikatsu. Yuuta and Saki are classmates but then their parents remarry to each other, leaving them siblings. Warning signs usually start flashing at this point as you’re preparing fro some thrashy pseudo-incest, but instead this sofar has been a thoughtful, interesting series about two strangers learning to live together. I fully expect some sort of romance between them before the series is over, but it will be earned.

Hazure Waku no “Joutai Ijou Skill” de Saikyou ni Natta Ore ga Subete o Juurin Suru made. Just from the title you know it’s another thrash isekai show and you are right. Protag-kun’s whole class is summoned to another world to play hero for a manipulative goddess but he’s thrown into a dungeon from which no escape is possible for his thrash powers. Go to the head of the class if you already knew he’s actually overpowered and emerges from the dungeon out for revenge. I liked the manga version of this and the anime is decent enough to follow, though done in a weird mixture of 2D and 3D animation.

Katsute Mahou Shoujo to Aku wa Tekitai shiteita: the sub boss of an evil organisation falls in love with the magical girl opposing them. Hilarity ensues. By Studio Bones, this is a gorgeous looking half length show.

Koi wa Futago de Warikirenai: Jun is childhood friends with twin sisters Rumi (sporty, romantic) and Naori (intellectual, nerdy). After Rumi dates, then dumps him at the end of the first episode it’s Naori’s turn for the second episode, after which the series settles in a deliberately manipulated romantic triangle between the three of them. Fun little show and it won my respect when in an earlt episode Naori’s skirt was blown open by the wind, Jun got a handful but we as viewers did not.

Madougushi Dahlia wa Utsumukanai. Reincarnated after dying of overwork, Dahlia is a magical tools engineer now, having started her own business after her father passed away and her fiancee broke off their engagement. Slightly stiff animation but a beautiful setting and the promise of romance makes this worth watching even if the setup is a bit cliched.

Make Heroine ga Oosugiru!: an ordinary boy gets involved with various losers of a romcom love triangle as they struggle with what to do now. Funny but also suprisingly touching at times. Also one of the most gorgeous looking and animated series this season.

Mayonaka Punch: cancelled Youtuber teams up with a vampire coven to get famous again, after which the head vampire gets to drink her blood. Great characters, great animation and great sense of humour.

Na Nare Hana Nare: six girls from different high schools come together to do cheerleading together. A bit uneven and eight episodes in it’s still unclear where this is heading, but on an episode by episode base this always puts a smile on my face.

Shikanoko Nokonoko Koshitantan. The most hyped series of the season but this is isn’t as good or funny as the hype would have it. It relies a bit too much on SHOUTING as humour.

Shinmai Ossan Boukensha, Saikyou Party ni Shinu Hodo Kitaerarete Muteki ni Naru: Rick used to be a clerk for the Adventurers Guild but two years ago quit to become an adventurer himself, despite his low innate abilities. Having been trained by the most powerful team in the world, he has taken his license exam and is now on a fetch quest with them for a certain set of jewels. One of the series where the initial premise is quickly made irrelevant for a more generic plot. I do like that one of the stereotypical early bullies he needed to defeat to become a real adventurer returns to be an ally in his quest, having realised his strength.

Shoushimin Series: Kobato and Osanai want to be normal teenagers, but keep getting dragged into mundane mysteries nevertheless. Based on novels by the same author as Hyouka. None of the characters in this really convince as actual people and the various mysteries are incredibly dull but somehow it works. The care and attention given to the animation here by CloverWorks helps.

Shy: Tokyo Dakkan-hen: second season about the superheroine who is indeed as shy as her name implies. If you liked the first one you’ll like this as well.

Tokidoki Bosotto Rossiya-go de Dereru Tonari no Alya-san. Alya likes Kuze but is embarrassed to show it, so only says it in Russian. Little does she know Kuze can actually understand her. A fairly straightforward romance series that also wants to say something about the pressures family can put you under, Kuze having noped out of being the heir to his prestigious maternal family, leaving his little sister to take up the burden. She’s also in his school, masquerading as his childhood friend. Cue misplaced rivalry with Alya. I would like this better if Alya, supposedly highly capable, was allowed to do more and not had to be rescued every time by Kuze.

VTuber Nanda ga Haishin Kiriwasuretara Densetsu ni Natteta: when vtuber Kokorone Awayuki accidentally forgets to turn off her stream after she signs off and proceeds to get drunk and rant while still streaming, it becomes the breakthrough in her career she needed. The gap between her usual polite, sweet persona and foul mouthed ‘real’ nature proves to be irresistible. Fun for everybody who, like me, fell in the vtuber rabbit hole during the Covid pandemic.

Mayonaka Punch, just like Na Nare Hana Nare, is another original series done by P.A. Works airing this season. Starring Masaki, a once popular streamer who fell from grace after she punched one of her co-hosts and friends live on air. The first episode saw her stumble across an actual vampire when she went back to the abandoned hospital where she and her friends had recorded their first viral video. Said vampire thought she was the woman of her dreams (having just literally woken up from a twenty year long erotic dream starring a girl that indeed looked a lot like Masaki) so agrees to help her get a million subscribers to her new channel if she can suck her blood afterwards. The first three episodes were mostly about Masaki and her desire to make a quick success of her new vampire friends, while we got to know them as well, but it’s the forth episode I want to talk about.

This episode stars Fu, the shy, green haired vampire girl who hides behind her bangs. She had been in the background until this episode as the other four, much more manic vampires took the spotlight. Masaki, still desparate for a hook to establish her new channel on, discovers that Fuu is actually a good singer when she listens to a decades old cassette tape of her. When she tries to get Fuu to sing for her videos, Fuu refuses and gets angry, saying she doesn’t deserve to sing anymore. Through flashbacks at the start of the episode we know that she used to have a friend called Aya, with whom she would sing and record songs together. Aya wanted to go pro but of course Fuu being a vampire, this wasn’t possible for her. Once Masaki leanrs of this, she and the others attempt to track Aya down and learn that the last time she was seen was two years ago, in New York. Fuu immediately sets out there to find her, but as you may have guessed, the news is not good…

With the first three episodes having been firmly on the comedic side of things, with a large dose of slapstick thrown in, this far more serious episode hit like a brick. The pastiche titles on the mixtape Aya gave her at the start firmly show that the flashback took place somewhere in 1979 or 1980, so Aya being a teenager then meant she should be in her early sixties now. What exactly happened to her isn’t told, but this isn’t a case of the mortal friend of the immortal vampire just dying of old age. A real bittersweet episode as Fuu finds closure on the biggest regret of her life, enabling to move on and start singing again, but still with that knowledge that if only…