*siiiiiiiiigggggggghhhhh*…
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 having a couple of major episodes with the appeareance of Jey-El, the last few episodes have been a bit of a slow burn. Not particularly bad mind you but a bit of a step down in terms of material and in fun, with even the best of the three using the plot device I dreaded it would. Needless to say, there were some problems.
The first of these episodes features Haneru and Kanon having a falling out over…squid snacks. Yep that’s a thing. The show at least has enough self awareness for the characters to point out how dumb the whole thing is, but it plays out pretty predictably. They eventually patch things up through their love of dance (of course), and there’s a few good jokes mixed in but it’s mostly forgettable stuff. Tribe Cool Crew has generally been pretty good about cleverly tip-toeing it’s way around it’s obligatory kid’s show trappings so it’s kind of depressing seeing them played straight here (and much more so in the third of these episodes).
The second one is a little less straightforward and focuses on Haneru having accidentally created a new kind of moonwalk called the “Galaxy Walk”. Unfortunately he has trouble pulling it off a second time and struggles trying to figure it out. There’s a few really nice moments here with the gang meeting Haneru’s parents for the first time, but the real highlight is when Haneru finds out that Mr. Wakui used to do the moonwalk, and at discos of all things.
It’s the first time I’ve frankly ever seen anime actually reference disco and it’s such an odd moment in the show it’s spectacular. It’s made all the better when Haneru takes it as a lesson about naturally applying his dance to everyday things to figure out the move and it leads to him doing a hilarious disco dance sequence. There’s actually no real lesson to be had here as the whole thing turns out to not only be pointless (he pulls off the move but forgets how to do it again) but the characters actually point out how “regressive” his disco dancing is. The show’s not going quite that retro on us anytime soon but it’s a nice nod.
This leaves the last of these three episodes which is simultaneously the best and worst of them for me. Kanon gets scouted by an agent for her dancing moves and wants to make her into a idol which leads into a plotline I was dreading: her parents’ “reaction” to finding out about her dancing. Given how the show had handled everything related to the subject so far I was honestly kinda hoping it would do some kind of clever work around for when it was eventually forced to address this and it looked like it might have been headed that way for a while. Sadly it plays out annoyingly straight at first as her mother immediately tries to forbid her from dancing, forcing Kanon to try and win her over. It’s a really worn out story trope and as it does here, it pretty much always results in unnecessarily forced drama so it’s a shame the show felt the need to do things this way.
Thankfully the remainder of the execution mostly works as it turns out Kanon’s mother was a former idol herself. However rather than her dreams having been crushed as the excuse for here behavior towards Kanon it turns out to actually be because her status as a former idol made it difficult to raise her kids in public view. Of course it’s still as invalid an excuse but it bit less cliche of one and it makes for a more believable resolution as she realizes she can’t get in the way of her dreams. With that Kanon’s character arc seems to be mostly completed for the time being and it looks like Haneru’s is next
In Summary:
These three episodes of Tribe Cool Crew are a bit mundane compared to the Jey-El ones but there’s some solid material thrown in. The random disco reference was pretty fun (and also really out there) and it’s good to see Kanon mostly get some proper closure even if it was a bit more overdramatic than I’d have liked it to be. Hopefully Haneru’s sticks the landing better and the show gets back to Dancing Road sooner rather than later.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
