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):
We’re finally to the main event…well kinda. Sadly, there’s one more entry into the show’s lengthy pile of filler to plow through, and it’s kind of getting tiresome at this point. Thankfully it’s followed up by a pretty major episode, and one that not only offers a few big revelations but also helps to set the stage (literally) for a dance-filled finale.
So first up is a filler episode and one so forgettable I can summarize it in a few sentences: Haneru’s dad wants him to help play the drums at a festival and Haneru refuses because he’s busy with dance. The two get into a fight over it and start to lose focus on their separate goals because of it. Eventually, Haneru sees the errors of his ways after realizing how much it meant to his dad and they resolve their differences through, you guessed it, dance. They makeup and all is well so aside from one good visual gag and some brief acknowledgment by the other characters about how dumb this plot is it’s just another one for the backburner. Moving on.
Next up the gang heads to Jey El’s Bright Island for the final stage of Dance Road, but end up arriving at quite a few bombshells once they get there. The Jey-El conspiracy comes out in full and while it turns out that he’s actually in a coma, rather than straight up dead, it’s made all the crazier by the fact that his double is a dancing robot programmed with his moves. In fact, the whole point of the competition was to find dancers good enough to have their moves copied by the robot so it can evolve and keep Jey-El’s legacy unchallenged. Why? Because Jey’s image is just that important to world peace, and without it his dissenters would take the opportunity to throw things into chaos. Of course it’s a stretch to imagine this at all being feasible in real life, and especially no one the wiser with how popular icons are tracked these days but it’s kind of fun to imagine an icon’s image being used from beyond the grave (well kinda in this case) to such a ridiculous extent with how much corporations are fond of such things these days.
Needless to say that Haneru and the other dancers don’t take this revelation very well and aren’t certain about whether or not to continue in the competition. Oddly enough, the voice of reason here turns out to be none other than Kanon as she tells the others that these revelations don’t negate everything they’ve done up till now and that it’s important to show everyone their dance. It’s another nice little acknowledgment to how much she’s grown out of her shell compared to the start of the show, and it’s good to see it referenced every now and then. Though while her feelings on the matter are enough to make them decide it’s probably best to go forward with it, they feel they still need to see Jey-El’s predicament for themselves.
After seeing him, Master T tells them about Jey’s history before becoming a dancer. He was born into poverty and used to commit crimes before discovering dance and reinventing himself in the hopes that he could use his influence to help those in similar situations. It’s pretty standard stuff, but it does a decent enough job of giving us an idea of why they’d go to such lengths to preserve his legacy, and it helps in convincing the others that it’s worth preserving too.
With that, the last round is set to begin but before things can quite get to that, the competition gets hijacked by Gallagher and his Crowd High lackeys, setting things up for a final showdown. Obviously there will be much dancing involved and I for one can’t wait to see what comes of that. Hopefully, it’ll at least be enough to help the show go out on a bang.
In Summary:
After one last slow burning filler, the show finally brings us to the main event with the final stage of Dance Road. The Jey-El revelations aren’t terribly surprising, but they’re certainly enough to keep things entertaining and it leads to a couple of quality moments here and there. It also helps to get things ready for the final battle against Crowd High, and I’m looking forward to both seeing how it goes, and how many crazy dance sequences it leads to.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll, Hulu