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Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Narenare -Cheer for you!-
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MartinWisse
 Posts: 34 |
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Two corrections to the review to be polite:
1) there have been at least two anime about cheerleading before this: Anima Yell (2018) about girls starting a cheerleading club together and Cheers Danshi (2016) about a couple of boys doing the same in college. 2) Kanata did not injure Megumi: Megumi was diagnosed with an unspecified illness in middle school and Kanata and her team won that year's nationals for her. She is in rehab because of that illness still, not because of an accident. The accident in episode one happened early in Kanata's first year in high school, at the Gunma prefectural competition and was not her fault. This is what is shown at the start of episode 1. You see Kanata is launched successfully by her support team while the team next to her gets in trouble. Why she was traumatised by this is still unclear but from episode two it does look like the problem is mental, not physical. All this happened only weeks or at most a few months ago; it's still early in the school year and she's still a first year. |
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YackDe
 Posts: 197 |
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It got a little better in the second episode, but the show so far feels overcooked, with too many threads they're trying to develop that are largely disconnected from Kanata and the cheerleading aspect of the show.
But I'm really digging the color choices from Naomi Nakano as always, it gives the show a nice pop feel that helps it stand out. |
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darkchibi07
 Posts: 5518 |
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Yeah, that is the part that holding this show back somewhat where we have all these plot threads going on. If somehow the 3rd episode manages to tie a lot of it together in a satisfying manner, then I wonder if the producers should have pushed this for a triple-episode premiere similar to MyGO. |
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Terraziel
Posts: 78 |
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Well that was a hell of a lot clearer than the show has been, much obliged. |
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Divineking
 Posts: 1299 |
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Thanks for pointing that out. I missed the context surrounding the accident when I was going through the first episode, and assumed the two were connected so I'll be sure to address that in my next review |
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Regalli
Posts: 113 |
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It was mentioned that Megumi's normally the one to catch her, wasn't it? I wonder if that has something to do with Kanata's trauma. At the very least, they're clearly close, and it wouldn't surprise me if Megumi was injured in addition to her unspecified illness. |
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CrowLia
 Posts: 5530 Location: Mexico |
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The Opening and the starting scene got me super hyped but there's two glaring issues that have someone mellowed my excitement
1) As others mention, there's way too much going on. I think these first two episodes should've focused on Kanata and Megumi and establishing the status quo before throwing us in eight different directions with Anna and her friend, parkour girl, their new cheer youtube venture?? I'm not even sure if all these girls go to the same school, and there's a character (or a couple of characters??) that I can't really tell whether it's all the same girl or different ones. 2) Consequence of the first one, the show so far has ended up very confusing. Count me in as another person who's not entirely clear what the accident was and how that related to Kanata's reluctance. From the opening sequence it looked like Megumi had an accident and was left bedridden which made Kanata feel guilty about continuing, but then it turns out Megumi is bedridden because of an unrelated sickness? The camera angle doesn't even make it clear if Megumi was on the same tower as Kanata, but it sounds like she was because she says she was Kanata's spotter? In episode 2 it seems Kanata is struggling to jump/tumble but again I'm not sure if it's because she herself had a freak accident and is psychologically traumatized or physically injured. At least I don't feel as dumb now, knowing I'm not the only one who was confused about it The TL;DR is they really need to slow down and let these characters develop more organically because the meeting at Megumi's place with Anna and her friend and parkour girl felt very rushed and unnatural; I'm not even entirely sold on why Kanata came around so quickly in regards to their honestly weird proposition |
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I_Am_Vain_Vision
 Posts: 21 Location: Italy |
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I can answer this based on the uniforms: they do not /all/ go to the same school. Nonoka and Anna go to school 1 (can't remember if any names where given) Shion and Suzuha go to school 2. Kanata attends school 3, where Megumi wanted to enroll but apparently couldn't due to her current situation. But she does want to transfer/go there when she'll be better. |
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YackDe
Posts: 197 |
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And this goes to show the current issues with the show, possibly stemming from Kakimoto's lack of experience in full-on series composition. Having all these characters go to different schools makes the narrative unnecessarily decentralized, and as seen in the reaction here makes things way more confusing than they need to be. |
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bassgs435
 Posts: 377 |
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The show tells and shows everything necessary. People need to just pay attention (There IS a problem in episode 2, but it's CR's fault: The accident that traumatized Kanata (the first scene of the show) wasn't "last year", it was prefectural competition a few months ago, they translated wrong)
Seriously, having watched both episodes: everything you need is perfectly clear |
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Yuvelir
 Posts: 1629 |
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This feels like many P.A. Works originals in that it looks fantastic but the storytelling feels somewhat dull.
... and confusing this time. I had to rewatch several scenes several times to get a grasp on some events because they sure as hell do love throwing lots of plot points while being as vague as they can't get away with them. The idiosincracies of the show didn't make easy telling apart the black-haired bedridden cheerleader and the black-haired cheerleader that fell, specially since the shots they repeated so many times had her be tiny and low on detail... and they omitted what happened after and they were vague with Megumi and they focused on her physical rehabilitation so much.
Already said in the first reply, but dang! 
It was a wholly different kind of show, but it was more... cheerful, and actually 2D-animated all of its routines. NareNare got way better scenes later, but that first scene with the blatant CGI abuse and the uncanny syncronization of all characters was one of the worst introductions this show could hope to get. |
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Florete
Posts: 384 |
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Maybe you got it, but it was not "perfectly clear." I was paying close attention, but this shit was confusing. |
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bassgs435
Posts: 377 |
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It is. It literally is, outside of CR's translation issue. I fail to see what's so confusing |
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Luna Amatista
Posts: 6 |
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Just passing by to try to clear up some people's confusion.
The opening scene from the first episode takes place during the Sukoyaka Cheerleading Contest in Gunma. This is where Kanata has a yet-unspecified accident while competing with the Hawk Wings, the cheerleading team from her high school, Takanosaki High School (鷹ノ咲高校). The fellow flyer she locks eyes with during this competition as she's falling - a black-and-red haired girl with a ponytail tied with a red ribbon - is NOT Megumi, who has black-and-pink hair. In fact, the other flyer is not even a named character so far; just another girl from the Hawk Wings. If you try to find her in other scenes, it becomes fairly obvious that she and Megumi have very distinct faces when they're not in shock. The last two images in this Tweet should work as a fairly decent comparison between both characters. Later in the first episode, after Shion helps Megumi return home from her rehabilitation and they sit in the latter's room for a bit, they talk about having found out about Megumi's illness in the middle of a cheerleading competition in middle school, when Megumi and Kanata were part of the Bell Lowers, which you can see in Megumi's uniform. Their team had then talked about winning Nationals together; then we see a close-up of the picture of the Bell Lowers gathered around Megumi, who's holding the Nationals trophy in her hospital bed. She also mentions at this point that her role was spotter - specifically for Kanata -, not flyer. Out of the six main girls shown in the opening, they would be split as follows (with some info from the website): Takanosaki High School (鷹ノ咲高校) (home of the Hawk Wings): • Kanata Misora: formerly flyer in school's Hawk Wings; formerly flyer in unnamed middle school's National winning Bell Lowers with Megumi. • Megumi Kaionji: not currently attending, but wishes to; formerly spotter in unnamed middle school's National winning Bell Lowers with Kanata. Oujou Girls Academy High School (桜城女学園): • Suzuha Obunai: somewhat of a social media sensation due to doing parkour during her school commute. • Shion Tanizaki: daughter of the next director of a general hospital and a former model; gymnast and aspiring singer-songwriter. Omaebashi High School (御前嘴高校): • Anna Aveiro: aspiring YouTuber born and raised in Brazil, with a Brazilian father and Japanese mother. • Nodoka Ohtani: Anna's childhood friend; her website description is hilarious but since the only hint at it was not obviously one I'll leave you to discover it later. Last edited by Luna Amatista on Mon Jul 22, 2024 12:23 am; edited 1 time in total |
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CrowLia
Posts: 5530 Location: Mexico |
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I think it was a horrible directorial choice to make the first scene about Kanata's mysterious accident, focusing the camera on the face of the not-Megumi ponytail girl and then the first scene immediately after is Kanata going to visit Megumi at her house. It causes an accidental Kuleshov effect that leads you to believe the two girls are the same and that Megumi was bedridden as consequence of the accident, which makes everything that comes afterwards confusing. This other ponytail girl, if I'm following you, hasn't even appeared again and isn't gonna be part of the team anyway so why make her so focal in the opening scene? Looking at the website, this second ponytail girl isn't even listed as a named character (unless she is Kushida Miyabi, who has dark grey hair with pink undertones and a similar eye color), so why, why on earth did they put so much camera attention on her? They could've put any of the other club members in that position but instead they chose to have a character that looks extremely similar to one of the main characters, to the point that a lot of people mistakenly believed them to be the same person!!! that's just insane!! (not yelling at you, just at the show) Also, now that I've seen the website, I guess there are indeed two grey-brown hair-with blue undertone girls, one of them being Shion and the other one being a member of Kanata's club??? I don't want to be a hater and I still think the show has potential once it gets its pieces in place (haven't watched episode 3), but that's just a monumental failure in character design. And since Shion isn't at the same school than Kanata or Megumi, how is she connected to Megumi in the first place, and got so close as to visit her at her house? Did they meet at the hospital? Was this explained and I missed it? While looking at the character list on MAL I found out that Anna's voice actor is actually also Brazilian-Japanese, which is a fun fact I wasn't aware of. I wish her character design actually portrayed that heritage instead of looking like every American/French stereotype in other anime.
Just a heads up but you repeated the kanji for Oujou Girls in the Omaebashi parenthesis. It should be 御前嘴高校 |
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