Pretty fly for a drunk guy
What They Say:
Haneru is a kid who’s always been into dancing and dreams of becoming a famous dancer like his idol Jey-El. One day while he’s practicing his moves at his usual spot he finds out it’s the same place where a girl named Kanon also practices and she’s secretly a famous dancer known as Rhythm who’s well known on the internet. After being impressed by her moves and finding out she’s been watching his, he decides to form a dance team with her.
The Review:
Content (warning as portions of this review may contain spoilers):
Dance fever continues in these two episodes of Tribe Cool Crew and it’s pretty great. The series is managing to maintain the groove it had finally won back with the last two episodes and it’s very much appreciated here. They also features some of the strangest material yet, with the second of these potentially being one of the goofiest thing this show’s ever done, and given the general standard that says a lot.
Continuing from where things left off with the last episode, the crew finds themselves pitted against Master T, and the challenge this time is to watch him dance once and then mimic his moves perfectly. As expected this pretty much goes off without a hitch for them although the dance itself comes off as a bit goofier than it’s probably supposed to. What’s not so expected though is that while the Machine Guns and the twins also pass the test, Lui and Moe do not. Their constant desire to show off their own style backfired on them as it lead to them adding their own moves to Master T’s dance and disqualifies them.
It’s frankly kind of weird given that dance is pretty much about expression but given the actual theme of the contest it’s somewhat understandable and sometimes that does have to be supressed depending on the audience. All’s not lost for those two though as they end up getting recruited by a mysterious man who’s interested in their dancing talents. Of course we don’t actually get to see who this guy is or what he looks like but it’s possible he could be someone who’s against Jey-El which would definitely make for something interesting given how much everyone else obsesses over him. Speaking of which, this episode caps off with the twins doing such as Jey-El appears before them in another hologram and it inspires them to do a special dance. The dance ends up captivating the others, especially Yuji who seems to have decided to stop fawning over Kanon and move onto those two. It’s a bit of a strange ending but a nice cap to one of the most fun parts of Dance Road the show’s shown so far.
The other episode though, is even stranger. For the most part the show’s kind of fallen into a pattern of pulling out all the stops for the Dance Road stuff and slogging through the other portions of with draggy filler. This episode looked to be another such thing but thankfully manages to be really fun. The gang decides to have a Cherry Blossom viewing party and while Haneru gets stuck with the duty of camping out a spot to picnic in, Master T appears and tells him to make the most of things by making his own stage there. Haneru takes that advice to heart and starts showing off his dance moves in front of the parkgoers.
Most of the episode is gleeful ridiculous dancing and even more than the Dance Road episode that proceeded it. As Haneru struts his stuff he gets Kanon in on the fun too and even learns a few moves from a drunk guy (nope you heard that right) on how to make a dance out of a drunken stagger. The show even brings out the best variation of the “Can You Feel” routine it’s had in a while, where instead of playing it straight, the entire crew does the dance imitating a drunken stagger in order to help get an old man in on the groove. It’s all really silly but it’s hard to expect anything less from this series when it comes to that and it makes a small little side episode one of the most fun entries in the series to date. Though it doesn’t look like it’ll take too long for things to get back on the somewhat more serious side of things…well about as serious as a Yuji-centered episode can be since it looks like that’s what’s coming for the next time.
In Summary:
Tribe Cool Crew continues it’s rekindled streak of fun with these two episodes and also gets the chance to be at it’s goofiest. This series is at it’s best when it’s having fun being dance crazy and these deliver that in spades. Hopefully the show can keep this up for a while longer with the side stuff, as it appears the next part of Dance Road could be a long ways away.
Grade: B+
