I can’t believe Ayumu fucking died.
I should have also said that for Daichi in my Haikyuu!! review because he really looked dead. I got the injury episodes in my sports anime this week, something I didn’t expect for either.
Every week I watch this, it’s every week I have to remind myself that this is an adaptation from an otome game because things get progressively more and more gay and I’m just sitting here like
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I think Madhouse is a strong studio. They’re one of my favorite studios, producing top-notch anime like One Punch Man, Hunter x Hunter (2011), Death Note, Kobato, Parasyte, Death Parade, and others. But there are some rare times where the studio makes lackluster anime such as Photokano, Overlord, Mahouka Koukou no Rettosei, and others. For the most part, they’ve made a lot of great stuff, but with Prince of Stride, with the way it’s going…it might fall under the lackluster list. It’s not terrible, but it’s predicatable. But even so it’s still pretty entertaining. I can certainly say that this isn’t my favorite sports anime, but I wouldn’t say I hate it. I just feel like something’s missing from making this anime great. Because right now…it’s just something to pass the time with me. I sort of felt that last week, and I still did with this episode. Is it that it’s only going to be 12 episodes, while other sports anime are longer? So things seem a little rushed? Maybe.
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This episode, the team got their first race for the Trial Tour, the green team from the opening, Mihashi High School. Since Heath is a third year, this is his last chance to go to the End of Summer tournament so the team is training hard for the race. Ayumu, not doing well with the parkour aspect of this sport, asks Hozumi to help him out. Ayumu still feels guilty for making them lose in their last race so he’s trying really hard to better himself. He practices with Hozumi, and when they made it to Saitama for the race, he studied the course they would be racing on, as well as its shortcut. You could say that Ayumu was the star of this as we spent a lot of time on him. Before the race starts he gets super nervous of the guy he’s going to race against so he fakes this dumb “my little sister is sick in the hospital” story, to which the guy believes and says he’ll give it his all…which Ayumu didn’t want. Anyway, we saw him struggle when it was his turn to run. The course for this race was tougher and there were a lot of uphill slopes which he wasn’t used to. Because he studied the course the night before he took a shortcut where he had to jump off a ledge to the other side. We didn’t see what exactly happened to him, but we saw his face get scratched by tree branches. We heard a crash and Nana lost communication with him for a bit. We then see him later bleeding everywhere, passing out on the street before tagging Hozumi. In the end, Ayumu leaves the place in an ambulance in bandages.
The rest of the episode I feel like I don’t need to go into too much detail. They take a bath the night before the race. Then we get the race, and they win. Honestly they were doing horribly, way worse than how they raced against the idol team. Nana was having difficulty against Mihashi’s relationer. She was being discouraged throughout, not understanding how he was Realationing such as the timing and such, that she was messing up her times too. Riku and Takeru almost slammed into each other, and the others were either too late or too early. Honestly it was a miracle that they even won. I think if Ayumu didn’t go through with the shortcut, they would have lost.
And with the rival team…well, we’re never going to see them again. The Relationer for the team was the older brother, a third year, of the team’s captain, his little brother, who was the one who was really giving the orders because the other brother wasn’t doing his job well. That’s why he said he was only the figurehead. The little brother wanted to win because this was his brother’s last chance, but…oh well.
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When Ayumu jumped off that ledge, I knew something bad was going to happen. Someone last week gave a possibility that Ayumu might take Nana’s Relationer spot, and then she would take the manager job, and then the silver-haired guy in the end would join (though it seems he doesn’t want to be associated with Stride anymore). But…aha. Well…with this turn of events, I’m not sure? I think the same might happen, but it’s not because Ayumu doesn’t think he’ll be good enough for the team, IT’S BECAUSE HE’S HURT AS HELL. We didn’t see him crash, but it sounded really bad. So I’m pretty sure because of his injuries, Ayumu is going to back out of the team (at least running), so that means they have one less person, which means they can’t compete, WHICH MEANS DRAMA.
Come and save the day, mysterious silver-haired guy.
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You scared me with your sub title. I thought I missed this info while watching the episode. I know I’m not really clever but still. I was like ” wuuuuut? But… I saw him alive in the preview :0″
As for the characters that’s what I was afraid of. Goodbye team brothers that was nice not knowing you.
I agree on the point that everything feels rushed and I find the whole show really, really average.
Oh well, we’ll see next week, if something interesting happens. But I’m not looking forward to the siver hair guy drama. Please, I don’t want a “join the club” “no I can’t, I’m not worthy of striding anymore” ” silver hair do you remember how fun striding was ? Don’t let UR DREAMS B DREAMS. Just do it ! ” episode.
LOL sorry. xD Just making things dramatic. But imagine, a sports anime actually having a character death. Now wouldn’t that be something!
It’s not like we’re ever going to be seeing those brothers anymore so I didn’t even bother getting attached to them, though their story was a little touching. But they’re gone.
Mmm…I have a feeling that’s going to happen. I just hope his reason for not wanting to be in Stride anymore is a good reason, because apparently he was one of the best players and it looked like he loved it. Buuut…yeah, it’s probably going to end up like that. I wonder how Riku’s brother is going to tie in all of this.
Don’t worry, that was actually pretty funny, nice troll 😀
A sport Anime where a main character dies will be a 10/10 Animu I’ll watch it for sure. I love when people die (that sounded better in my head). That might be why I like Shingeki no Kyojin. I love when there’s no plot armor. Although if my favorite character dies I’ll be pretty pissed :3
The Silver Hair dude reminds me too much of Otoori from STARMYU last season. I don’t want to see the same kind of plot another time. PLZ Anime… Ayumu being injured was quite surprising, so please do the same thing with next episode.
Apparently the source game had a minigame where you paired up each runner so their strength matched their respective opponents, which affected how your race performance would go. For example, if an opponent’s good at parkour Gimmicks, then you pair him off against Hozumi because he’s good at Gimmicks. Wrong pairings pull down your race performance, much like what happened this episode.
How would you compare this to Free!, though? Free! could get rather gay, although most of that came from the character interactions. I don’t recall Haruka boldly fondling his teammates like in Stride.
Atami’s also an actual seaside resort town in Japan, famous for its hot springs. Plus, it’s about 50 mins from Tokyo by bullet train.
http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/08/d2/7a/19/atami-castle.jpg
Two landmarks appearing in this episode include the harbourfront, where part of the race was held; http://www.panoramio.com/photo/6355816
and the local castle, where Nana was Relationing from. (Actually a modern tourist trap/lookout point built to look like a castle.) http://www.panoramio.com/photo/6356233
Aha you’re making me want to go there on vacation with those pictures.
Oh I see. Though that didn’t seem that obvious because we didn’t really focus on the rival runners. I mean the reason why Riku screwed up in the beginning is because he was running too fast. They probably should have made that more obvious.
Hmm….I think Free! is the more stronger series. Free! had its weirdly homo moments, but honestly Haru would rather jump in water naked than rub his teammates. I think Gou would be the one rubbing them, admiring their muscles the way Takeru does. Anyway, I think Free! was more character driven. We spent a lot of time getting to know the main cast and the the problems with Rin, but that also meant sacrificing the actual sport aspect of the show, which I did have a problem with but I still really liked the show because of the characters. Of course with the second season we got way more swimming. With Prince of Stride, it’s the opposite where we really get the sports aspect, but it sacrifices the characters. So far we’re spending more time with the races, which is fine, but it means we have static characters each with their own quirks that get old quick. Why does Nana like Stride, why does Takeru LOVE Stride, what else about these characters is interesting so I can care about them?
I can see why people would compare Free! with Prince of Stride as they both have the same amount of episodes. Right now I want to say that Free! is a lot better, but I need to wait until Prince of Stride finishes and impresses me in some way.