Narenare -Cheer for you!-

Episode 12

Well, I'll give the show credit for one thing: this was a much less irritating finale than I was expecting. Sure, it still involves narrative beats that feel a little wonky if you think about them too hard, and it attempts to wrap up character arcs that don't really feel like they were earned, but I didn't have to spend a ton extra time combing back over previous episodes to make sure I wasn't off about how and why some of those things were handled so badly, so it's at least an improvement over the last couple of episodes. Of course, the fact the bar has been sunk that low really does speak to how far off the rails the show has gotten, and any diminished stress might just be because I'm happy to have finally reached the end of this ride.

Mari's sudden disappearance leaves both the PomPoms and the cheerleading club feeling worried about her, and they all begin a desperate search to find her. It's nice I guess, but it does feel a little strange hearing Anna once again going on about how the PomPoms are a family and how that includes Mari when they've only known each other for a few days and she spent most of that time being mad at her. That's mostly just me nitpicking, though, because the real problems come when they eventually find Mari at her family's home in the countryside and she starts going on about how she feels like she doesn't deserve to do cheer after everything she's done. While it's pretty understandable for her to feel guilty about the internet post, the guilt still feels a bit too one-sided when we never saw Kanata expressing any guilt towards her regarding her injury, even if it was an accident. To add more fuel to the fire there, we also learn that the accident only happened to begin with because the club captain was pushing the girls too hard with their routines, and while we at least see her apologize to Mari for that, it still feels iffy seeing Mari being the one who talks the most about needing to make amends when she's done the least wrong here comparatively.

Eventually the other girls are able to coax Mari into admitting that she still really wants to do cheer, and she's welcomed back into the PomPoms, but we also discover that her current condition isn't too far from Kanata's. In order to help her, the PomPoms and the cheer club girls all come together in order to come up with a routine that can lift her spirits. It's clear that this whole thing is the show's way of trying to put a neat little bow on everything as the PomPom girls start talking about having faced some of their fears, but considering how much the show has bent over backwards to ensure they've never had to learn much of anything from their experiences, it just ends up ringing hollow. I feel the same way about Mari's decision to try redoing the cheer routine that caused her accident, since while it would be a pretty decent way of bringing everything full circle (so long as you ignore everything leading up to it), the direction of that scene doesn't have a whole lot visual impact for what's theoretically meant to be the emotional climax of the show, and almost made me feel like I missed something when we saw a couple of quick flips before the girls started laughing about how they pulled it off.

So yeah, not exactly a stellar conclusion. But compared to what the show has given us the past few weeks, it could have been a lot messier. Or at least that's what I'd like to say, because after all this happens, we learn that Suzuha has decided to become an idol and the girls all agree to split up. We did see that Suzuha was contemplating something or other in the background during the last couple of episodes so this didn't come totally out of nowhere, but it's more than a little weird to hear her go on about how this was her lifelong dream and something she's always aspired to when this is literally the first she's ever mentioned it (okay, I lied earlier about not needing to double check anything, I did need to comb back over some stuff to confirm that, yes, this is the first time she's ever brought this up). It feels like this was tossed in almost purely because the show's staff realized that she was the only one of the girls who wasn't really given anything major to do during the rest of the story, and this was their attempt to course correct, but it only really highlights how bad the show has been at handling its cast, and in execution it nearly came off as a last-minute twist rather than a natural evolution of her character.

For as much else as I probably could complain about with this episode, though, at this point I'm just happy the show is over with. It had a promising start, and the PomPom girls all seemed like they'd make for a pretty fun ensemble, but its combination of lackluster character writing and tendency to resolve anything and everything as neatly as possible caused it to fall off pretty hard, and it feels like it hit every single branch on its tumble to the bottom. PA Works might generally be pretty reliable, but this is definitely the worst thing they've put out in a while, and while it hasn't shaken my confidence in them altogether (you can thank the fun and excellence of Mayonaka Punch for that), it's curbed my enthusiasm enough that I'm probably gonna be looking at their next few shows with a lot more scrutiny.

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Narenare -Cheer for you!- is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.