Cheer Danshi!! Episode 3: [The Seventh Squirrelurai]

The episode opens with a bath scene, quite pleasing I must admit, which reminded me of Binan Koukou Chikyuu Bouei-bu Love and its rather famous bath scenes where all the semi naked dudes talk about random bullshit while swimming in their own manly sweat.

So that’s exactly what happens in that first scene. All the cheerleading club is strengthening their friendship, taking a bath together while embarrassing poor Haru

The club have decided to create some message group thing which is a really exciting thing for Megane-kun, I’m sure he’s going to send loads of pictures. He looks like the dude who replies with stickers and send you pictures of stray cats he sees on the streets…. Like me, sadly I’m that type of annoying person.

Anyway, since they are now 6, they need only one other member to be an official club. Their choice is set on Sho Tokugawa, a guy who’s quite the ikemen according to everyone and I second that. According to Kazu his back flips are perfect [and I’m sure it’s not the only perfect thing this guy can do] so they decide to recruit him.

The girl who saw Haru practicing last episode sees him and comes talk to him. Both of them were cute but I cringed a bit while they were talking and blushing to each other. I’m sorry, I can’t do blushing romance very well, I find it more embarrassing than entertaining to watch. I’m quite surprised they decided to introduce a girl who is not going to be the manager of the team and a possible love interest for Haru though. It kind of ruins some obvious ships but heh, I don’t care. I don’t ship, I’m only here for the cheerleading… Obviously ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

However, Ikemen Sho has horrible fashion sense. He has a Squirrel named Rocky on his shirt and says about that squirrel, “I quite like him”. Dude, you have the phone case, the key holder and I’m sure a lot of plushies of him, you don’t quite like him, you adore him.

But Sho refuses the invitation to join the club because he thinks they suck too much. According to him, even the two lovers over there can’t do thumbing very well, so there’s no way they’ll ever have the a sufficient level to be a proper cheer leading team. He also calls them “amateurs” and “naive” which pisses Megane-kun off. The latter decides to prove Squirrel guy wrong by announcing that they’ll show him they can do it in one week, meaning, within on week, they’ll have to train a lot to be worth of Squirrel bishounen’s talent.
Kazu likes the idea and decides that at the end of the week, they’ll show him everyone can do a round-off backhandspring which is the thing Sho was doing during his gym class.

Megane, Tono and Haru have trouble doing it first but are really motivated. When Bug guy is a bit worried about Tono and Megane-kun, Haru takes their defense and shows that he is really motivated without anyone pushing him to do so, thing that Kazu remarks and seems to appreciate.
In three days they managed to learn how to do the round off, now they need to do the back handspring. I must say, I’m quite lost with all those gym terms. Everything looked like a back flip to me.

Sho sees them practicing and they refuse to give up in front of him. Hearing they are that motivated about cheerleading, Sho reacts by being a bit tsundere-ish. Of course, it is rather obvious at this point that Sho is going to be impressed not by their skills (although they are pretty damn great) but by the fact that they are persistent and over-motivated.

The fateful day arrives but Sho refuses to come and is sitting outside on a bench with another horrible outfit, a truly awful one this … This new abomination is shouting “Disco isn’t dead” and while I guess it might not be completely dead, I sometimes, occasionally wish it was. Gosh, I’m so mean, I need to stop bitching about his outfits…

Like expected, Sho is impressed by their willingness to do those damn backflips. the interesting thing to note is that, even if the previous night Megane-kun and Tono did manage to do the backflip thing, they still have trouble doing it in the gym. But I don’t think Sho ever cared about that in the first place. He just wanted to see if they were really motivated, like almost everyone in this anime.
Sho then, acts a bit tsundere-ish again but quickly drops the act when the two lover guys tell him to stop acting like one and to freaking join the team.

Fan-girl corner

I’m enjoying this. I really am. I think I got lucky this season and end up covering only shows that I like, which allows me to be more positive and to enjoy writing about those shows a lot more [thing that you can probably tell by looking the length of my posts. Guess I really like to write essays heh…I really need to be more concise].

Cheer Danshi!! continues to offer us some nice episodes on the same tone. Nothing is too serious nor exaggerated. Those guys might have issues or problems but none of those things are used to produce some cheap drama.  Sho having an horrible fashion sense and being a squirrel dork didn’t bring any jokes from the rest of the cast, neither from random characters. He is what he is and everybody seems a to have accepted that and nobody is making fun of him. Same with Tono, true is a bit over-weighted but thankfully he wasn’t bullied because of that, nor did we pass by the “Oh no, you’re fat, you can’t do cheerleading” route. So that’s cool. Thank you Cheer Danshi!!

Expect Megane-kun who’s quite the comic relief and maybe Tono, the sweet guy, none of the remaining characters seems to fallinto some over used characters tropes. Sho looks like your basic Tsundere Bishounen “tsss, do whatever you like” type of animu dude but he’s actually not. He’s a squirrel dork with horrible fashion sense. I don’t think we get to see that quite often nowadays.  More than “Cute guys doing Sports“, this anime is “Weirdly attractive dorks are jumping in the air, and it’s fabulous”. Sounds like the anime of the year.

Finally, that part where Megane-kun says he wants to become the squirrel king? Epic. Him doing an impression of a Squirrel eating nuts? Legendary. Megane-kun, I love you.
Speaking of weird guys I’m now waiting for the pink shota and the punks. Also I want to see the Afro guy, I’m sure he’s going to be fun.

Sorry for all the late posts, I got lost while playing Pokemon Go.