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):
Tribe Cool Crew’s been dancing it’s butt off for the last few weeks, but it scales things back a bit with a couple of character episodes. These have a tendency to be something of a mixed bag when it comes to this show depending on how much a joke it wants to make out of them, but these are fairly solid. However while one helps to flesh out a previously flat character the other doesn’t really do much in the grand scheme of things.
So the first of these two focuses on Yuji, who up to this point has been pretty much been defined by his one-note jokes of hitting on girls and disliking Haneru. This time around though we learn a bit more about him when Haneru ends up running into his brother, Satoshi. Their parents divorced a few years ago leaving the two separated, and Satoshi wants to live with Yuji and their dad. However, Yuji turns him away in order to fulfill a promise they made about him becoming the best dancer in the world, and coming for Satoshi once he’s achieved that promise. Although there is the implication that Yuji’s relationship with his dad isn’t exactly the best either, which was a nice little touch to the whole situation beyond the usual cliches
Speaking of cliches, Yuji challenges Haneru to a dance battle to prove himself, which to be honest feels a bit out of nowhere since it seems sudden for them to suddenly face off now and not at Dance Road. We do get a pretty decent dance sequence out of it so it works out, although it’s not one of the show’s best. Haneru ends up losing the battle (though Kanon was the only one to root for him which was kind of adorable) but decides to settle the score for good at Dance Road. It’s a pretty nice episode, and it certainly helps in getting to know Yuji a bit better as his relationship with his brother does explain certain aspects of him the show briefly touched on before.
The other episode however is less than successful in that area. It’s Mizuki centered episode and the basic plot focuses on her being taken advantage of by other people, and being run ragged trying to solve their problems. The real problem here though is that while it doesn’t necessarily contradict anything we’ve seen of Mizuki’s character so far, it doesn’t exactly mesh with it either. There’s never been any real indication up to this point that she was ever something of a doormat, and if anything this plot would seem like something more in line with a Yuzuru focused episode as that would feel a lot more consistent given his nice guy persona.
Although this isn’t to say that there’s nothing gained here, as we do actually learn a little something about her when Kanon decides to intervene. Mizuki tells Kanon that when she first decided to get into dance she was fairly insecure about it, and decided to change herself by adopting a more take-charge personality, and one more willing to do things. This aspect of the episode frankly feels a lot more consistent with what’s been established about her than the rest of it does, and works as it’s saving grace. That and it helps to add a bit more to Kanon and Mizuki’s friendship since Mizuki decides to take Kanon’s worries to heart and stops letting others run her around. It’s an okay episode for what it is though it would have been a lot nicer if the plot actually meshed better with the character it was focusing on. Ah well, at least there’s a Yuzuru episode coming next.
In Summary:
This pair of character episodes is something of a two-sided coin on how to do them as Yuji’s feels pretty genuine, but Mizuki’s kinda doesn’t. Both make for another couple solid entries into the show though, but the show’s a lot more fun when it’s just the characters dancing along to R&B. In the meantime however it looks like there’s another one or two of these to get through.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll