Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match, find me a find, catch me a catch.
What They Say:
At Korakuen Hall, Tatara runs into a classmate who called ballroom dancing “lame.” Why did she come to watch a dance competition? She approaches him the next day, but not about dance. She seems to be more interested in the “aura of the dancers” on Sengoku’s team. She even follows him to Ogasawara Dance Studio to get their autographs. Chinatsu Hiyama is driving Tatara crazy…!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
If her appearances in the previous episode didn’t give it away, the OP and ED certainly did: Chinatsu is Tatara’s first real partner, and that becomes apparent very early in this episode. Chinatsu is a mystery to Tatara, even more than a popular girl might normally seem to a loser boy starting high school. She bounces back and forth between putting down dance and all involved with it and fangirling about Sengoku and Chizuru’s dancing. She seems to be acting purely to spite Tatara, acting like a potential friend with a shared passion when he keeps to himself and switching to harsh attack mode when he tries to engage. From Tatara’s perspective she’s somewhere in between infuriating and strangely enticing; her tsundere manifests more like a cat than a person, much as other anime protagonists have noted about surrounding females, whether a romantic interest or simply an example of why such pursuits are futile. Taking in the whole of the episode with the varied scenes featuring her with and without Tatara and inside each of their minds, however, paints a greater picture of her complexities as a human being, and she’s more than just the anime archetype that we’re likely to be all too tired of having to deal with these days.
For a character who probably hadn’t appeared for more than a collective minute prior, it might seem a little overwhelming to spend an entire episode focused almost exclusively on her, but there’s a good reason for it. Being able to see so many different sides of her within a single episode is important to understanding where she comes from. Naturally there’s not enough time to fully explore the details of this, or even more than the tiniest fraction of her background, and that’s fine; we want good character development for her throughout the next cour, after all. But had this initial profile been more fragmented or less comprehensive, we likely would’ve come away feeling like Tatara after his first few interactions with her, and it wouldn’t have inspired a great deal of confidence in her inevitable position as his future partner and therefore one of the foremost characters of the rest of the series. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with leaving us with an opinion that will surely change before long, but there are enough attempts in anime and manga to make you hate a character you’ll eventually be forced to love; this can be different.
An interesting note that we’re left off on is that Chinatsu is far better at leading than following. Conversely, this also requires Tatara to be able to follow at least close to as well as he leads, which serves to further build on his worth as an unusually intuitive dancer. But since we’ve been reminded plenty of times how amazing Tatara is, the takeaway from this is more that the roles each gender is assigned for this sport aren’t necessarily a reflection of any inherent quality of either gender by any means, and it’s a good place to leave us curious about Chinatsu’s history.
In Summary:
After having just been introduced, Chinatsu is suddenly Tatara’s costar, and she’s quickly becoming his destined partner. While first impressions may not paint her as the most welcome new lead, this level of focus reveals that she’s one of the most complex characters in the series.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Anime Strike
Review Equipment:
Roku 3, Sceptre X425BV-FHD 42″ Class LCD HDTV.
