Welcome back to the block of episodes that is Tribe Cool filler time. That’s right. You know how this goes by now. There’ll be an episode or two of a round of Dance Road, then 3-4 episodes of filler, rinse, repeat. And we are ‘lucky’ enough to have another filler episode. So who are we focusing on today? Let’s see…it’s been a while since we did Yuzuru. Him? No? Okay….Kuma? No? Okay, I give up. Who gets the episode of development?
What the…really? The cup and ball guy? That dude from other dance team that goes up to the girls and gets on his knee and screams “My goddesses!”? THAT guy gets an episode? Pff….fine. Whatever. Okay, so….let’s do it I guess.
So the episode starts off with a little kid seeing Haneru do his crazy jump. He tries to copy it but Haneru stops him before he gets too hurt. The kid is hungry so Haneru takes him home.
Meanwhile Mizuki and Kanon are out clothes shopping where they bump into cup and ball guy. He decides to call up Haneru to challenge him to a dance off. And, surprise surprise, it turns out that the little kid is Cup and ball guy’s brother. (ain’t that a coinkidink!)
The two brothers meet up and talk. It turns out that their parents are divorced and live with each respective parents.
The guy in charge of their dance group explains that they haven’t spoken in years but made a promise to be together when Yuji (That’s cup and ball guy’s name) became the best dancer ever.
Wait…it’s been YEARS since they spoke? Look at this kid
I think a few YEARS ago this kid couldn’t even talk PERIOD. He says he’s in 2nd grade so to not have spoken in YEARS that means at the very least they would have had to have made this promise when he was in kindergarten at the LATEST. When your character’s EIGHT it’s kind of hard to talk about not having talked in years. Just saying.
Yuji tells his brother that they can’t live together right now so to basically fuck off and go home.
However he doesn’t want to go home because he wants to see the dance off between Haneru and Yuji. So to that extent he stays with Haneru for the night.
All I gotta say is, MAN is Japan different than America. This kid in second grade wanders off to the train station, gets on, walks around town, stays with a stranger overnight and has a bath with Haneru’s father.
Man Japan, you are some kind of different.
Anywho, the next day arrives and the battle begins. And….to be honest, for the first time in a while, I have absolutely no idea what i’m looking at. I mean normally when there’s dances I can see that they’re cool and see what they’re going for, but for this dance battle the two of them kind of just flail around and do….things. I don’t really think it’s cool, I kind of feel almost as if they’re having a seizure.
After the dance is over, the group (Minus Kanon because she wants in Haneru’s pants) arbitrarily decides that Yuji won. Seriously, when I was watching these two dance I had NO idea who was supposed to win. Like…it wasn’t obvious. I was sitting here going “oh….oh was I supposed to think something was obvious?” They say it was because that Haneru wasn’t fully paying attention but…I didn’t see it affect his dancing. But hell, who am I to judge a dance off. Besides, Kanon liked it.
Kanon: oh, never mind then
The little brother is happy that Yuji won and tells him that he’s off to go be an Artisan baker. And that’s where the episode ends.
Really, once again, this episode was entirely pointless. I mean, it gives us a bit of a look into why Yuji is dancing, but it doesn’t explain his fascination with “Goddesses” or give any backstory on the rest of the people in his group.
“Did I tell you that you could speak bitch?”
I suppose they felt they were running out of characters to give backstory to, but honestly, Yuji’s was not one I actually cared to know about. Basically the episode boiled down to “Our parents are divorced so i’m going to be the best dancer and make money so we can live together.” “k”.
That’s really the entire episode.
If I had skipped this episode….I really wouldn’t have cared. It wasn’t even a fun filler I could enjoy. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s no pickle episode, but it’s not endearing like the basketball one. It’s just kind of….there.
Episode 5.5/10
-Hideki
P.S. Oh my god, seriously guys. You’re 27 episodes in, HAVE ANOTHER GODDAMN OPENING.