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Mar 20, 2017
I've been looking for an sports anime, but not an usual one about soccer or baseball. In the end I collided with "Prince of Stride: Alternative" and gave it a shot. As far as I know stride is a fictional sport, mostly comparable to a mix of relay and parcour.
All protagonists have their own little background stories, which result in the slice_of_life part of this anime. Not extremely deep but still good enough to create likeable figures. And let's be honest: With a basis of only twelve episodes it would have been almost impossible to draw out more of the main characters.
Same case concerning the
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story: not worldshaking but still interesting by revealing a few twists towards the end. Moreover the story doesn't appear rushed and fills the little amount of episodes perfectly. Watching the stride-races was undoubtedly exciting and enjoyable.
The lovely animations and character designs are the main strength of this anime. Very smooth and dynamic movements plus unusual strong, sometimes cartoonlike colors express an unique charm.
By using powerful music the overall atmosphere of the anime is mirrored pretty good. While I liked the opening best because it set me in the right mood for the episode following, the ending rather appeared to be average and didn't really stand out.
The main topics of "Prince of Stride: Alternative" are quite similar to most of sports anime, since it's all about team spirit and faith and I think those topics are quite well implented. Another important part of the plot is "running" and "running away", which should be considered on different levels.
What we deal with here in the end is an overall solid anime that is able to tell its story within only a few episodes. Nevertheless it has potential which could habe been used better if there were more than just twelve episodes. After all most of sports anime usually need more room for character development due to numerous characters.
I recommend this series, which I believe to be slightly underrated considering its good overall quality, to every sports anime fan.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Mar 7, 2017
Although this sports-manga was interesting from the very beginning, it only really started catching my interest to the fullest from approximately chapter ten onwards. The story takes some time to unfold, but once it did you'll be glad to have had a little patience.
Of course the plot seems to follow the usual shounen-pace to a certain extend, since having a main character (Fujita Tatara) who starts from zero and keeps practicing to become a full-fledged dancer. But this doesn't mean the story is flat. On the contrary it's full of exciting ups and downs, getting more exciting chapter by chapter.
This is thanks to the realistic
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characters we are introduced to and we can easily symphathize with right away. We get to know Fujita's feelings as he desperately tries to set foot in the world of dancing, struggles through competitions, makes important acquaintances and has to face qruel truths concerning dancing but also himself.
However, this story certainly isn't pure drama. In fact, humor plays a key role here. May it be due to hilarious situations or to the naive but innocent behavior of Fujita itself, the manga often make me laugh like an idiot. At he same time there are countless sensitive moments, when I could really relate to the characters sadness. As the story moves on you can't help but taking the characters, who are all individuals without exception, into your heart.
The feelings of a person are very well expressed through the art here. Just taking a look at their face let's you know how they feel. The most important part of this manga, the dancing-scenes, also gives us a clear idea of how the characters 'sweep over the ballroom', though sometimes their moves aren't fully understandable due to too many speedlines.
Also striking as negative to me, from time to time when dancing is described, several technical terms are used without having previously been introduced to the reader. Sadly these often won't further explained to us as the story continues. So those who haven't dealt with dancing before probably can't experience these scenes to the fullest. However, this fact doesn't pull down the manga at all, since the overall dancemoves actually aren't that complicated and can easily interpreted without further knowledge of dance.
I recommend this sports-manga to everyone who is willing to give a chance to a story about ballroom dancing that is both funny and serious. The plot just unfolds slowly, but those who are patient will be rewarded for sure. Even if you don't know anything about dancing, just like me.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Mar 3, 2017
This Anime actually started quite well. The first episode had everything: Great animations, sympathical characters as it seemed and a neat story of fun an feeling. Unfortunately, from the beginning to the end, the overall quality tends to drop dramatically.
Of course you can't expect as much passion in every episode as in the first one, however, holding up an average of quality should have been possible. In the middle of the anime everything is thrown into disarry.
The quality of animation declines rapidly, characters often appear in a very reduced way, like chibi-style. This may supposed to be fun and it certainly is at some
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point, but this rather gave me the impression that the staff wanted to save work instead. Sadly this becomes clear during the ice-skating scenes, which often appeared stiff to me, though most of the effort should have been put into these animations since ice-skating is the main topic of this sports-anime.
Alongside the animation, the story also suffers as time goes by due to vast amounts of new characters suddenly thrown into the anime. It is true that one tried to give those characters depth by using flashbacks to tell their backround storys, still I couldn't help feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of them and so unable to relate to their feelings. Several characters hardly have any screentime, though they seemed to be much more imprtant (like the best friend of the main character Yuri).
So I wonder: Was it really that difficult to put less characters into the anime in order to give the remaining ones more space to evolve? I mean even one of the main characters desperately needed some more screentime.
Naturally, a sports anime that includes a competiton needs many characters, but then one shouldn't have squashed them into mere twelve episodes. In any case all these ice-skaters make you loose the guiding thread, through I'm not sure if there is one to begin with.
Both the animation and story quality slightly increases towards the end of the anime, but it doesn't reach the touchstone of episode one, which is to be expected anyway. The last episode seemed pretty rushed so the anime left no good impression on me in the end.
The main tropic of this show, ice-skating, is quite unusual for an sports-anime. In fact I don't even know whether this topic ever came up before. It certainly isn't surprising that someone like me, who has absolutely no idea what ice-skating is all about, fails to understand what those ice-skaters are doing except carrying out one pirouette after another. So I can't really say if the sport itself is well presented in the anime.
The only thing of Yuri on ICE that striked positive to me was the music, which is outstanding in my opinion. Opening and ending songs are quite exceptional for an anime and also the piano piece during Yuri's ice-skating sessions is just beautiful, a true masterpiece.
If the overall quality of the anime would have been at least about half the music quality, this could have been a great anime. But due to the vast amount of characters entering the scene in the middle of the show, the anime clearly vastes its potential.
(note: I'm originally german, so bad grammar is to be expected^^)
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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