Episode 11:
In this week’s episode, moar sister drama. Haru initially wondered if his sister felt bad because he quit Judo and although he was trying to talk to her, she seemed to avoid him and any kind of discussion. Hopefully, things get better near the end of the episode, when Haru goes cheer on his sister at her Judo match. She then, manages to win and thus ends her losing streak. She also understands cheerleading might be what is best for Haru and that by doing so, he’s not abandoning her or anything.
However, if our young lad got the good ending with his sister, we can’t say the same for his “love interest”, you know, the girl who appeared twice in the show to say random things? Yup, this girl. Initially I labelled her as Haru’s love interest because it seemed that those two were bound to end with each other in the most cliché way possible but I was wrong. Oh boi, I was wrong. Cheer Danshi!! actually trolled me hard on this one. Indeed, that girl is already taken since she’s Ton’s girlfriend… Too bad Haru, no girlfriend for ya, but it’s okay, you still have Kazu.
Everyone feels down and has problems with their own family, which they will hopefully solve during next episode. So this episode wasn’t particularly great, I wouldn’t say it was bad, but it wasn’t amazing either. The sister drama feels a bit forced to me so I did not really care about its resolution. However, it looks like they’ve finally decided to give character development to every side character during this episode. Too bad it’s a bit late since there’s only one episode left.
Episode 12:
This is the last episode, thus, the boyz are doing their last rehearsal before the nationals. The coach has the clever idea to make them read everyone’s notebook, which is extremely embarrassing and kind of a irruption in someone’s private life but Heh… I guess she can do anything she wants as long as she has the “Coach” label right? Anyway, exchanging notebooks and discovering each other little secret somehow helped them to understand each other better and a long succession of characters saying things like ” thx to [insert name of a dude here]’s notebook, I understand myself better”, follows. It’s especially strange for Grumpy-kun case who, by looking at Sho’s notebook full of Squirrel stickers, understood that everyone can do cheerleading for different reasons. Wow, that squirrel must really have some sort of psychic powers..
At the Nationals, everyone is a bit tense but that’s fine, they deal with the pressure pretty well. However, the one who doesn’t manage to hold his feelings back is Chen. Surprisingly enough the directors decided to give him more than two lines of dialogue this episode and the young fellow actually steps up for Sho and defends him by confronting Domoto and Hair-Band-kun.
Then, we finally get our long awaited cheerleading sequence which was nice, but not amazing. I guess it’s a pretty cool way to end the season than to insert the credits and some parts where each boy self reflects on his experience and everything but it kind of broke the rhythm of the cheer sequence. So I wasn’t very amazed nor excited by this last part and dear lord I was looking forward to it. Don’t get me wrong, it was cool, but I was hoping for better, more dynamic, cheering dances.
Final Impressions:
To be perfectly honest, I think Cheer Danshi is average. It’s not the modern masterpiece I’ve been waiting for, but it’s not the personification of a rectal cleansing. I first learned about Cheer Danshi!! thanks to some gifs made about the first PV. Those gifs were sowing the colorful and dynamic cheerleading sequences and everyone got hyped about the show because of those. In that sense I think it didn’t serve the show well since after the first episode, people realized Cheer Danshii!! was more a slice of life type of anime rather than your classic sport show like Daiya no Ace or Slam Dunk. But if you can pass over this little disappointing news and continue to watch the show, is it enjoyable or, to be more direct, good?
Well, yeaaaaah… I guess.
Let’s get right into it by stating the obvious, the animation isn’t good. It’s not consistent, the faces of the characters change every time, their movements are sloppy and even if they put some extra- budget into the cheerleading sequences, you can see it’s still not really good. There, I said it. However, the sound is better, there’s some obvious reuse of certain tracks but considering the fact that Cheer Danshi!!’s production budget must not be very high, I’ll pass on this one.
What I liked the most about the show was the characters and their interactions with each other. If there’s one thing Cheer Danshi!! does right, it’s that. Their cheerleading team is believable, you can see there’s obvious connections between the members, that they like each other or not. The show spends a lot of time introducing and developing what I call “character drama” which is drama inherent to the characters and which almost sole purpose is to develop them. Which is what we got with Grumpy-kun being Grumpy, Sho does not want to do stunts, Kazu’s grandmother is ill, Haru’s sister is mad and so on. It’s in that sense that I qualify Cheer Danshi!! a Slice of Life than a sport one. Sport being only a pretext to put guyz together in a group and obverse what happens.
However, there’s too many members, and not enough time to develop them. While the show makes character development it priority, it fails to pay attention to the whole cast. Obviously more time is spent on the original members of the team but it leaves less room for the other characters, whose presence was already a bit erased by the main characters’ importance. More than that, not even every “main character” or at least ” original member” were given enough time to shine. Ton, Megane-kun and the two county boys, weren’t developed at all and we did not learn much things about their past. The show preferred to focus on Grumpy-kun for example, which wasn’t an original member of the team but who is, let me say it, Best Boi.
Finally, I’d like to mention that I adored the comedy in this show. They were a few twists (like that girl being Ton’s girlfriend) that surprised me and overall, I laughed quite a few times. So good poitn for the comedy. Although I still don’t understand how the brocoli joke works…
So overall, Cheer Danshi!! is flawed, it’s nothing near perfect, but it’s a pleasant show with some attaching characters but that’s it and I don’t think Cheer Danshi!! ever strove to be something else than that. If you’re looking for a show like Cheer Danshi!!, with a certain lack of quality animation, cute boys, and an apparent theme (cheerleading for Cheer Danshi!!) that is actually not the main focus of the show, I’d recommend Shounen Hollywood. Where it’s almost the same thing, although Shounen Hollywood involves boys wanting to become Idols. Beware, it’s not like Uta no Prince sama, it’s wayyy more realistic, so realistic that it’s a bit cringy. BUT HEH, who doesn’t like a little bit of cringe every once in a while?