Skate-Leading☆Stars

Child figure skating prodigy Kensei Maeshima abruptly quits the sport after his one-sided rival, Reo Shinozaki, refuses to acknowledge his skill. Now, as a student at Inodai High School, Kensei uses his athletic skills to assist the other sports teams, but he never officially joins one. One day, Reo announces his switch from singles figure skating into team-based skate-leading and joins St. Clavis Gakuin High School—last year's Grand Prix champions. Hayato Sasugai, a classmate with a mysterious connection to Reo, convinces Kensei to switch to skate-leading in order to finally defeat his rival in a competition.

Kensei's sudden entry into the Inodai Skate-Leading Club is met with backlash from the current members. Although he is a very strong singles skater, Kensei lacks the teamwork skills required to perform well in skate-leading. Factoring in his hot-headed, impatient attitude, inconsistent skating performances, and a complicated history with some of the members, Kensei's teammates do not believe he is a good fit to be their "Lead." The team must work together to resolve these issues, however, if they wish to qualify for the Grand Prix Finals and even stand a chance at defeating St. Clavis Gakuin.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Sasugai, Hayato Main

Furukawa, Makoto Japanese

Maeshima, Kensei Main

Uchida, Yuuma Japanese

Shinozaki, Reo Supporting

Kamiya, Hiroshi Japanese

Mochizuki, Akimitsu Supporting

Tsuchida, Reiou Japanese

Mochizuki, Yukimitsu Supporting

Hanae, Natsuki Japanese

Kiriyama, Itsuki Supporting

Maeno, Tomoaki Japanese

Ishikawa, Susumu Supporting

Nojima, Kenji Japanese

Himekawa, Izumi Supporting

Umehara, Yuuichirou Japanese

Kuonji, Noa Supporting

Saitou, Souma Japanese

Kubota, Tomoyuki Supporting

Satou, Gen Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Okada, Kouji Producer

Shiraishi, Youko Producer

Endou, Naoko Producer

Reviews

Mar 14, 2021

NexTheUndertaker

Recommended

While watching this anime , I checked many reviews and many of them were from people that only watched 4 episodes , which i find dumb because you only watched 33% of the anime..
Anyways , this anime is overall good , its the basic story of a childhood "war" between the main character and a support/main character, the art is good and the characters were differentiated , the sound was fair tho it was many times repeated the same song, mostly on the first few episodes.
The anime had everything to be better if it wasn't rushed and didnt end the way it did , and ... of course if it had more episodes.

I feel like this winter it came out alot of good animes with alot of potential , tho I liked this anime , I don't think there's that big of a fandom willing to watch the next season.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Mar 17, 2021

devildice

Mixed Feelings

No. This is not Yuri!!! On Ice.

I have seen so many comparisons and expectations online about SLS contrasting it with YOI. Believe me, it has its own merits that it managed to present its own identity as ice skating sports anime. From the premise, it's a group sports, thus, it heightens more spirit and soul as sports genre.

There is an immense difference in the plot narrative, however, you can sense the quick phasing of the competition to the extent that it needed to compromise most of the skating performances. For a 12-episode anime, it lacked so much in sports action. Hence, in compensation, ... it focused on another domain which is characterization.

Since it is group sports, the names and faces to be remembered doubled. Nonetheless, most of the characters are written good. You can at least distinguish which is which. The characterization is far from perfect also, there is no really astounding with these boys. Nothing remarkable. They seemed like normal high school teens flared with their courage to win, and they have different cores clashing, and whoever wins will be the best. That's it, nothing more.

But things get better until the end, I was a bit sleeping from the early episodes but when the Grand Prix Final ticked, you just can't leave the screen. The last episodes finally manifested what a sports genre should be-- the thrill, excitement, and nerve-wracking moments. The questions of, "Will they gonna make it?" "Can they actually beat them as underdogs?". As I questioned myself about this, it finally hit me that it is actually getting good for a sports genre. Maybe a bit late, but at least, it managed to embody the expectations that I have.

I have to admit, it is mediocre but you will remember the characters for sure. It is best to watch when you thirst for good-looking hot boys, I'm not kidding because they really put much budget to them (lol)

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Aug 3, 2022

Sakoori

Not Recommended

After watching the rest of the series, I still stand by my original review. I don't even know what the point of this show is. As someone who shamelessly loves watching terrible sports anime for the sake of pretty boys/fujo bait, this show somehow managed to offer me none of that.

The main issues with Skate Leading Stars stem from the fact that the "sport" it's centered around isn't real. Skate Leading doesn't exist in real life. The writers tried to create some hybrid form of team figure skating with elements from single Men's Free Skate/Short Program, but you quickly find out that the writers didn't ... bother to expand on it afterwards. You get some sad excuse of an explanation at the very beginning of the series and then you never see/hear about it ever again. I'm not saying that the "sport" in a sports anime needs to be realistic, but if you're going to add that as an element, at least give it more attention than what you gave it in this show. The anime itself doesn't even show much of the sport in general. If you've seen other sports anime (Prince of Tennis, Slam Dunk, Kuroko's Backetball, Ace of Diamonds, Haikyuu, etc.), you know that one of the major points of animation is the actual sport itself. You can see that the animators show the movements and the game actually play out in those series. You don't get that with Skate Leading Stars. You get a shot of the five-man team spin around for 3 seconds at a time and random frame cuts to stills or scenes where there's minimal movement.

It's almost as if the point of the show isn't about the sport, but the relationship building that happens between the characters. That's also not what happens in this show either. The show does a terrible job of building any of the characters and their motivations for trying to win the Grand Prix. The main character, Maeshima Kensei, gives up solo figure skating because his rival, Shinozaki Reo, doesn't acknowledge him or his skill because Maeshima could never beat him in a competition. Somehow, between quitting his solo career and being in high school, he gets convinced by a classmate, Sasugai Hayato, that he should take up skate leading in order to beat Shinozaki, who also just happened to quit his solo career and join skate leading at a rival school. There's no rhyme or reason for any of these events to happen and you don't understand why any of this happens, other than for convenience. You get introduced to a bunch of "rivals" that have 0 background and are very 1-dimensional and boring. The relationships shown between Maeshima and his other teammates are also poorly developed. No one on his team liked him, but somehow, the very next episode shows that they're fine with him being on the team with no context/development in between. There's one episode where one of Maeshima's teammates transfers schools and they try to convince him to come back, but then the very next episode, all of the characters forget he even exists. The continuity is all over the place with random time skips. I'm honestly not even sure what the time is currently in the story because it jumped all over the place and skipped seasons in the universe.

I can't fault the art. The art is fine. It's inoffensive. It's competent. The character designs are quite boring. They also all have no personalities, so it's hard for you to become attached to any of them. Even as fujo bait, there's nothing that really draws you to any of them, since none of them have any attractive/interesting features. Looks are one thing, but if there's no personality, you're not going to be attracting the same people who like other sports anime for the sake of pretty boys with some personality.

I see this anime get compared to Yuri on Ice a lot and most people who are disappointed in it are the same people who thought it would be like Yuri on Ice. Skate Leading Stars is not supposed to be another Yuri on Ice. It's a sad excuse of combining Prince of Tennis/Kuroko's Basketball elements with a fake team figure skating sport. Do not watch this anime if your main intention is to fill a Yuri on Ice void because it's nothing like it. If anything, compare this anime with other team-based sports anime and you'll quickly see that it fails on so many different levels.

Overall, this anime is just poorly done, story-wise. It fails as a sports anime because the sport isn't real, the writers made the sport irrelevant to the story and there's next to no animation related to the sport itself. It fails as a fujo bait anime because the characters have the most boring, inoffensive designs with 0 personality. It wouldn't even matter if this anime came out during a different season because it's still bad. The 12 episodes it's getting is not enough to tell a decent story with sports as the main focus. If you tried to condense any other sports manga/anime into a 12 episode standalone series, it would be just as bad as Skate Leading Stars. If this show spanned 2 seasons, there's a chance that it would have a better story than what it currently has. As it stands, this is an anime you should skip if you like the sports genre or pretty boys. There's so many better shows out there for either category.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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	Poll: Skate-Leading☆Stars Episode 12 Discussion KANLen09 - Mar 14, 2021	30 replies	by _MushiRock11_ »» Jul 11, 1:21 AM
	Poll: Skate-Leading☆Stars Episode 6 Discussion KANLen09 - Jan 31, 2021	8 replies	by shah7398 »» Mar 8, 4:43 AM
	Poll: Skate-Leading☆Stars Episode 11 Discussion KANLen09 - Mar 7, 2021	16 replies	by shah7398 »» Feb 1, 4:06 AM
	As a figure skating fan... Bell_cz - Mar 14, 2021	10 replies	by acrylic7 »» Mar 29, 2023 7:26 AM
	Is this BL tease fujoshi bait or is it a normal sports anime? FrozenDevilz - Jul 1, 2021	15 replies	by -Flaky- »» Sep 20, 2022 11:33 PM