Mar 22, 2016
Before you go on watching this anime, be warned, this is a very typical sports anime to say the least.
I have just wrapped up the series today, and overall... I'm pretty pleased with it.
Story: For those of you who have not looked into this anime at all, it is basically a story centered around a group of guys involved in a made-up sport called Stride, which from simple assumptions after watching the show, is basically a sport where a team of 5 runners race against another team relay-style, and are coordinated by another person called a Relationer. A lot of people have complained that
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the anime does not really go into detail about what Stride REALLY is and the technical details regarding it, and I can understand why that is a bit frustrating, but it being only 12 episodes and based off of a game, I wouldn't worry too much about it.
Aside from that, the story is just a mediocre sport anime story: A once great team for said sport, somehow loses all their reputation from an incident among the players, and the spunky freshman characters are the ones who bring everyone together in the pursuit of rebuilding the team. Overall, nothing bad, but nothing good either. I mostly just watched it for the racing.
Side note: I have heard people complain about the fact that the actual races do not have much running shown in them, and more jumping and flipping over obstacles. You CAN say that they only do that for the racing scenes to look cool and actiony, but I think it's the fact that Stride isn't supposed to be your regular track&field type race. I think Stride was intended to be a sport that fused traditional relay racing and free-running/parkour. If you have seen free-runners, the way they run is pretty close to how they run in the show. High steps and very powerful arm movement, and of course, running through obstacles. This isn't really something too important, but I just thought I'd mention it before anyone might criticize that aspect of the show.
Art: The art I thought was very good! The colors are very bright and vibrant, and it can even be a little overwhelming, but the characters were drawn pretty and the animations of the running were also very well made.
Sound: Like the art, the sound also caught my attention. I really liked the opening of this anime. It had a very "get pumped" kind of feeling when listening to it, very similar to openings like from Haikyuu or Hajime no Ippo. Sports animes tend to do a pretty good job with that. Overall sound effects and BGMs were good. Nothing to complain about. They did a good job simulating the sounds of the runners.
Characters: Much like Free, the characters seemed kind of one dimensional so to speak, but were good looking! Each of them held their own personalities, following classic tropes (i.e. the Strong type, silent type, cute/loli type, etc.). I don't want to give too much away, but the characters do have very brief backstories and drama that adds a little bit more substance, but there wasn't too much depth to the characters. They're likable. Nothing too special.
Enjoyment: Honestly, I really enjoyed watching this anime every week. As mediocre as it may be, I'm a sucker for awesome action/sports scenes, and I thought the idea of free-running relay races was really cool too!
Overall: I would recommend this to someone who is just looking for an anime where they can enjoy more so the action than the story. There isn't all that much character development, but it does have great art and sound. Like I said before, I mainly just watched it for the racing. I'm very basic when it comes to enjoying anime, but if you're looking for something exciting, it wouldn't hurt to give this a try!
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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