Prince of Stride: Alternative

"Stride"—an extreme sport that combines parkour, free running, relay, and sprinting—is what made first year high school student Nana Sakurai enroll in Honan Academy, after being captivated by the school's stride team. Sharing the mutual intention of joining the team is fellow first year and stride maniac, Takeru Fujiwara, and together they request to join. Much to their dismay, however, the stride club is no longer active due to lack of members, and they are now operating under the shogi club.

In order to revive the stride club, Nana and Takeru recruit first year Riku Yagami—a fast runner who is interested in almost every sport. With this new team, the club now aims high at a new goal: to win the prestigious End of Summer competition, and bring the Honan stride team back to their prime.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Adaptation:

Prince of Stride: Galaxy Rush

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Characters & Voice Actors

Yagami, Riku

Main

Kimura, Ryouhei
Japanese

Fujiwara, Takeru

Main

Okamoto, Nobuhiko
Japanese

Kohinata, Hozumi

Main

Ono, Kensho
Japanese

Kuga, Kyousuke

Main

Suwabe, Junichi
Japanese

Hasekura, Heath

Main

Ono, Daisuke
Japanese

Kadowaki, Ayumu

Main

Shimono, Hiro
Japanese

Sakurai, Nana

Main

Hanazawa, Kana
Japanese

Suwa, Reiji

Supporting

Miyano, Mamoru
Japanese

Hasekura, Diane

Supporting

Ohara, Sayaka
Japanese

Himemiya, Yuuri

Supporting

Yamashita, Daiki
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Cook, Justin

Producer

Ishizuka, Atsuko

Director

Aketagawa, Jin

Sound Director

Shiraishi, Michita

Episode Director

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Opening Theme

"Strider's High (ストライド)" by OxT (Masayoshi Oishi x Tom-H@ck)

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Ending Theme

	1: "Be My Steady" by Galaxy Standard [Reiji Suwa (Mamoru Miyano), Shizuma Mayuzumi (Daisuke Hirakawa), Bantarou Chiyomatsu (Takuya Eguchi), Tasuku Senoo (Tatsuhisa Suzuki), Asuma Mayuzumi (Yuuki Ono), Kaede Okumura (Toshiyuki Toyonaga)] (eps 2-7, 9, 10)
	2: "You're My Courage" by Galaxy Standard [Reiji Suwa (Mamoru Miyano), Shizuma Mayuzumi (Daisuke Hirakawa), Bantarou Chiyomatsu (Takuya Eguchi), Tasuku Senoo (Tatsuhisa Suzuki), Asuma Mayuzumi (Yuuki Ono), Kaede Okumura (Toshiyuki Toyonaga)] (eps 11)

Reviews

Sep 16, 2023

RESOLVING_POWER

Recommended

I watched Prince of Stride: Alternative, which is an otome-game adaptation by Madhouse. Here are my thoughts:

For context, this show revolves around an imaginary sport that is kind of like a relay-race version of parkour but with a leader who coordinates everyone. It is very entertaining to watch, actually.

The animation quality is good, but much more importantly the visual direction is absolutely terrific. I really like the way colour and brightness effects are used in this. It's difficult to explain but this anime was so bright during some scenes I felt like I needed to wear sunglasses just watching it. It was sort of like ... they played with the exposure settings on a camera or something like that. It looked great. Art style too I really liked. I liked the character designs. The visuals for this anime are a major strong point. I enjoyed them enormously. Especially for a sports anime, having awesome visuals like this really was a pleasure. Cinematography was also well done and made the sporty scenes enjoyable to watch. There are also lots of really cool sound effects that enhance the running scenes a lot. The running scenes look, feel, and sound AWESOME. Overall the production quality is excellent. The OST is good as well and enhances the mood of a variety of scenes.

In terms of characters, there is a self-inserty team-leader girl character and there are her male team members. You might anticipate that this would result in a typical reverse-harem situation, but actually shounen-ai between male team members is the only romantic subtext, and even that is mild. Apparently in the VN there is a lot more hetero romance involving the MC. The male characters are fairly likable, and each have unique personalities which mesh together for some good chemistry within the team. Takeru was my favourite character. Beyond the characters themselves, the drama is handled fairly well, which leads me to my next point.

This anime has great direction. They had to introduce an entirely new sport and do some world building, but I never felt like I was being forcefed information. Exposition was handled well. There's also a good balance between sporty scenes and slower, more dialogue-heavy scenes. There is some comedy, but it's sprinkled lightly and not used inappropriately. The anime actually has a consistently serious tone (and feels that way to the viewer). Maybe that was an artistic risk because someone might find the sport they're doing to be absurd, and it might be easier to just load up the comedy. I'm glad they didn't take that approach. The series feels competitive, dramatic and exciting. You could really feel the emotional highs and lows. I felt excited every time I queued up an episode to watch.

If I had to identify a weak point in Prince of Stride, I would say it's the plot. Although well executed, the story at its core is kind of mediocre. Sometimes it can be kind of 'melodramatic' as well, however this is hardly surprising for an otome-game adaptation.

Overall rating: 9/10
Shockingly underrated anime. Really well directed and exceptionally entertaining. I will definitely be rewatching this.

I really hope that someone makes a high-quality Blu-ray rip of this (I couldn't find one). It seems like this franchise got disproportionately less recognition in the West relative to its popularity in Japan. There is little evidence of any kind of western fanbase. I think the combination of sports and the otome aspect is a major reason for the anime's lukewarm reception. The average person watching it for the sport appeal was likely put off by the otome elements, and conversely the otome audience often didn't enjoy the sports focus. I think that the anime as a whole appealed to very few people — most people were probably only drawn in by specific aspects of the show, not the sum of its parts. This might explain the mixed feelings that so many people seem to have. I'm probably unusual in that I found most dimensions of the anime appealing. Hopefully the rumours about a second season are true.

UP UP SPEED UP

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Aug 23, 2021

Jeff_Spicoli

Mixed Feelings

I'll preface saying that I'm big into running, so it's likely that I got more enjoyment out of this show than just a general sports anime fan. That being said...it's not that great a show.

I think the parts where the characters are actually competing are quite nice, but most of the character development and whatnot in between is meh. The biggest detractor imo is Riku, as I find him incredibly annoying throughout at least 80% of the show. The rest of the cast are generally fine, but no one is really great.

Plot wise, just take what happens in almost every sports anime and change it ...

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Sep 30, 2018

Yuki-Nezu-Grimms

Not Recommended

Okay. Here we go.

Story - 3

So to start with the story. If you're a sports anime fan, you're probably used to all the cliches and have seen them a million times in all sorts of different sports anime, well let me tell you, Prince of Stride: Alternative was no different. It uses almost every cliche in the book. Not in an oh-this-is-kinda-refreshing way but in a haven't-I-see-this-a-million-times-? sort of way. Honestly. However, the title doesn't lie when it says 'alternative'. Prince of Stride is an anime centered around a COMPLETELY FICTIONAL and MADE UP sport, throwing any chance of being compared with an anime about ...

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Poll: Prince of Stride: Alternative Episode 12 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 ) Stark700 - Mar 22, 2016	157 replies	by vadoyager7 »» Feb 14, 11:50 PM
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Poll: Prince of Stride: Alternative Episode 10 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Mar 8, 2016	53 replies	by vadoyager7 »» Feb 8, 5:11 AM
Poll: Prince of Stride: Alternative Episode 9 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Mar 1, 2016	56 replies	by vadoyager7 »» Feb 6, 1:18 AM
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