Ambition’s not totally evil for once
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):
After a couple of episodes of Dance Road and the whole “is Jey El really dead” mystery. we’re back to dealing with the Crowd High stuff. Though despite what the name of the episode implies, it’s not too different from the previous episodes that focused on the upcoming craze. Instead it throws a bit of a twist at the end that should shake things up a little for the next episode where Haneru’s concerned.
While the gang waits around to hear what the theme of Dance Road’s final round is going to be, the Crowd High craze continues to grow more and more in popularity. Now, even kids at Haneru’s school are beginning to imitate it, though Haneru himself still doesn’t approve of the dance, even if it’s not quite sure of the reason why himself. Hiroto however, tells him a theory he found about how Crowd High has the power to manipulate people through subliminal effects and while the others don’t quite buy it, much like with the Jey El theory, it’s pretty clear at least that the audience is supposed to assume it’s true, which while somewhat obvious feels a bit like a cop-out.
The next day at Haneru’s school, Crowd High ends up getting banned due to a kid getting injured and it’s enough for Haneru to go and confront Lui and Moe about it directly. However while talking to them about it does reveal to him that they picked it up from someone else, they don’t seem particularly concerned with it’s aftereffects so long as it can get to the top, and surpassing Jey El. Of course since Haneru is a massive Jey El fanboy himself, the idea of them brazenly try to one-up him seems blasphemous, and by that point he’s realized that Jey El’s own seeming lack of interest in Crowd High (because we all know the real reason) is the reason why he’s so dismissive of it.
Lui and Moe extend the opportunity for Haneru to try out Crowd High for himself, but he can’t quite decide what to do. During this, he ends up running into Kumo who thankfully tells him that there’s nothing really wrong with Lui and Moe’s point of view. It’s perfectly okay if they just want to use dancing as a stepping stone, and it there’s really no such thing as an invalid motive for dancing to begin with. It’s much appreciated because fiction, and kids’ shows in particular tend to view any form of ambition as evil or ingenuine concerning whatever it’s being directed towards, even when that’s a perfectly valid reason to get behind certain things and people do it pretty much all the time. At any rate, it’s enough to have Haneru somewhat second guessing if just staying behind Jey’s shadow is a good idea and he decides to give Crowd High a shot. Though going by Kanon “catching him in the act” in a sense and the preview for the next episode, just because the show doesn’t think Lui and Moe’s ambitions are necessarily a bad thing doesn’t mean Crowd High isn’t so it should be interesting to see how it ends up affecting Haneru going forward.
In Summary:
Tribe Cool Crew returns to the Crowd High subplot with this episode, and it mostly follows the same beats as the others in that regard. However this one does differ in that it both doesn’t paint Lui and Moe’s ambitions as completely negative as well as finally allowing Haneru to second guess his obsession with Jey El a bit. The latter in particular is something the show’s needed to happen for quite a while now so I’m hoping it decides to follow through on it.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
