Narenare -Cheer for you!-

Episode 6

After last week's fiasco, my expectations for the show have been lowered considerably, so this seems like a perfectly good time for a hot springs episode. Thankfully the episode doesn't spin its wheels quite as much as that would imply but that doesn't make it feel any less like fluff. Under normal circumstances that wouldn't bother me too much, but given the trajectory of the last couple of episodes, it's hard to know what direction the rest of the show is going in—and I can't say that this one provided a whole lot of clarity.

With the record store escapades behind them, Anna decides to give their YouTube channel a much-needed rebrand and create a subchannel dedicated to the PomPoms. When the girls also find themselves winning tickets to a local hot spring, they do some channel promotion by going around and cheering for random people (and cats). Much as I get the need to do what they can to mine for content, I imagine it had to be at least a little awkward for the couple involved when they decided to cheer for a guy who wanted to bungee jump for his marriage proposal. I could only hope that their presence didn't pressure his girlfriend into accepting. Social boundaries aside though, it was at least kind of funny on its own and it was probably the most fun I had with the episode so I can't be too hard on it.

When it comes time for the obligatory hot springs part of this hot springs episode, the girls find themselves running into the members of Kanata's old cheerleading team. Considering how the subject of Kanata's yips condition hadn't really been brought up at all during the last two episodes, I was wondering how all of this ended up playing out but surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly), the subject is barely brought up at all. While the team members do tell Kanata that she needs to let go of the past—and Kanata does vaguely mention after the fact that she hasn't totally recovered yet—it doesn't really come up during the actual conversation at all. Not only that but she even helps one of the other girls work on her cheer routine, which just makes it even weirder considering that the last time we saw them interact was Kanata biting it at tryouts. I guess it's always possible that she mentioned her recovery to them before this run-in but even then that does feel like a conversation that we should have seen play out rather than happen off-screen.

Speaking of things happening off-screen, I should probably also mention the post-credits scene which is odd, to say the least. Once everything settles down, Suzuha decides to bathe in the hot springs by herself only to be joined by Shion. After Suzuha mentions that she still feels a bit awkward around Shion, she mentions that she feels the same and asks if she can make an embarrassing request. Smash cut to the next morning and the two of them are talking to each other way more casually and calling each other by first name while the other girls are left completely baffled. Given that this doesn't feel like the kind of show that would commit to actually being gay—and the last couple of episodes haven't instilled much confidence in me that it could handle that well if it tried—between the mood of the scene and everything else, it's hard to see how that could have been anything else but a love confession and the two of them are dating now. I'm sure the show will be happy to prove me wrong next week but until it says otherwise I'm rolling with that and no one can stop me. Still, even if it does just turn out to have been them deciding to become closer friends or something, then doing that off-screen feels like an odd choice—and it's even weirder to do it as a post-credits scene for an episode where the two of them barely got any focus. Hopefully, there's some clarification one way or the other but regardless of how it actually pans out, doing it this ambiguously doesn't really feel like a great writing choice.

Aside from all that though, there isn't too much else to talk about with this episode. We do learn a little bit more about Megumi's condition and how she used to lead another cheer team called the Bellflowers before she started having heart problems and ended up in a wheelchair. But she doesn't get a lot of focus in this episode either, so it seems like a setup for some future drama more than anything else. The only other big thing here is the girls decided that their new plan for the channel is to pivot toward making cheer videos for people requesting them—and that does seem like a good way for the show to find a little more balance between the character drama and the cheerleading routines. At the same time though, it also feels like something that probably should have been established much earlier in the show rather than midway through it. So if that does end up being the formula for the rest of the show, it makes me worry about how well it could handle that setup. For all those fears though, I can at least say that as far as this episode goes, it was a lot less frustrating than anything that happened last week. So I'm at least willing to take that as an improvement. I still can't say I'm fully back on board with it, though. While I'm still hoping for the best, I'll probably keep treading cautiously for a bit.

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