Ah man. Episode 32 of Tribe Cool Crew. I’ve gotta laugh. That’s just too much. So yeah, this week has a little to do with the plot…but not much. What I mean by that, you’ll see in a minute. Let’s do this.
So this episode starts up with Momiji coming back to see Yuzuru. You remember Momiji, that girl who lives in the mountains with her grandpa who has the crush on Yuzuru? Yeah. Her. She comes back declaring that she wants to be a dancer. Everyone in the group kind of just shrugs and goes “Meh, sure, why not?” and ask Haneru to teach her.
He’s hesitant at first but then tries to teach her the basics. Unfortunately she acts exactly like Haneru did when he first started and doesn’t want to do the basics. In fact, she gets extremely frustrated over not being able to snap her fingers and goes on a crusade to try to snap her fingers. After a while of trying to train with her, Haneru comes back home exhausted.
At this point, Haneru’s a bit of an elitist and basically says how she doesn’t listen and is hard to work with. His parents are quick to point out that he was exactly the same way and to give her some patience, which he does take to heart.
We then see Momiji head to a random building at night due to sensing a strange aura and feels it through a building.
The next day Momiji is more determined than ever to learn how to dance and actually takes Haneru’s advice and learns how to do isolation. Remember that training? Like way back in the single digit episodes? The only thing is, Momiji catches on extremely quickly and learns to dance pretty well, with only isolation.
She then decides that she should join their dance group, but immediately after seeing Jey dance on a video she realizes she can’t be as good of a dancer as him and quits.
She then tells Yuzuru that she was worried about him because she felt a strange aura the other day and wanted to warn him about possible impending danger. Leaving to go back to the mountains, no one seems really that unnerved by her warning, that is, except for Kanon. And that’s where the episode ends.
This episode….had a good start. It had a good premise, and for the first while, it had a good execution. The problem is, it did some things stupid and wrong for no reason.
First off, Haneru really has been a bit of a jerk recently. Previously he was mad that Lui and Moe weren’t dancing EXACTLY the way HE thought they should and looked down on them for that. NOW he was looking down on Momiji for not being the ideal student (something he wasn’t). I don’t like what they’re doing with Haneru. Yeah, I know he was like “wow i like teaching!” at the end of this episode, but he has been VERY quick to be an elitist recently, and I don’t like it. Yeah he’s always been full of himself but this…I don’t know, it rubbed me the wrong way.
Now the biggest problem with this episode. For the entire time I saw Momiji dancing in this episode, I got excited, but not too excited. The reasoning for this being, I actually hoped maybe, just maybe, she’d become part of the crew. I know it was a long shot, but i’m beginning to see the problem with this show. These five are Tribe Cool Crew and nothing really changes with them. There’s no new member, there’s no real drama between them, there’s no real anything. They’re a complacent group of dancers where nothing, other than their dance moves, evolves.
Would it really have been so bad to just….LET Momiji be the newby dancer in Tribe Cool Crew? You know, introducing a character that is behind them in skill, but learns quickly. That could throw an entire new dynamic into the show. Maybe she costs them points in the Dance Road, or maybe there’s drama because they won’t allow her in Dance Road because she’s not ready and that causes drama or something. Not to mention, that would take care of the 2 to 3 girl ratio problem.
There was really no reason that Momiji couldn’t have become a mainstay with the group and the way they basically said “nope!” was so lazy, so last minute written that I was actually very disappointed with the show. Their writing is usually better than that. But no, they had to have their status quo “Five of us” crap and couldn’t be bothered to see a good thing that could have evolved their plot.
Momiji is a good solid character and she could have brought a LOT to the table with both charm and comedy, not to mention romance with Yuzuru. I’m actually very annoyed now.
The episode started off good, but the last five minutes completely ruined it for me. All in all, this would have been a great episode, except they ruined it at the end.
Episode if she would have joined permanently: 9
Episode the way they did it: 4
-Hideki