Try Knights

Well, after all the negative reviews... I felt like giving contra.

Story: I'll admit... when it comes to rugby... I have zero knowledge. But rather than enjoying the game, I prefer to look at the interactions of the characters. So it may not be most accurate when it comes to rugby (I really have no idea), but if you come to watch a sports anime for the general atmosphere rather than the actual game, it may remind other sports anime. If you don't like this kind of animes to begin with... you maybe look in the wrong place.

Art: Well, I'm not the first to care about ... arts, but as a josei, this reminds more of a shoujo anime than a shonen. Not that I mind.

Sound: No special thoughts.

Characters: Though in a way, our characters were quite stereotypical for anime sport, when coming next to each other they make a nice combination

Enjoyment: As cliche as it is, I love this kind of animes, even if they can be predictable. I watched it as I looked for a relaxed anime rather than overwhelming anime. So... I guess it was good for me.

Perfect anime? No. Unique anime? Probably not too. Will you miss something by skipping it? Maybe not, but if you look for a nice relaxed show, why won't you give it a try?

Objectively speaking, not very good, especially the animation quality is pretty terrible.

However.

I was really entertained by how the rival school is going full on into LARPing territory with their shtick. You know how some anime will have "the prince of the school" or something? This school has a rugby club leader they treat like a prince (one guy would likely do anything for his sake, and frequently gets down on his knees to like, just give him a towel) and their club room has a large round table they all gather around, and it's located presumably in the Sistine chapel, if the decoration ... is anything to go by. It's ridiculous and over-the-top, I love it.

There's also a fascinating character that I cannot believe comes from this anime, and I know he'd get a bunch of fanart with angels and hell-like backgrounds if he was from a better anime.

Watch with a friend and prepare for something silly to have a good time with this.

I felt bad for this series so many times during its run that I just lost count, for various reasons.

I mean, look, if you have your main character declare he will put a collar on the other main character in the very first episode... at the very least make it a thing. A gag, a running joke, something that comes up multiple times during the series for a bit of fanservice. If you have a flamboyant pink guy whose self-proclaimed motto is "enjoy and excite"... leverage that for fanservice. When you're showcasing a sport with so much body contact... put some fanservice in there, it's ... so damn easy.

And - yes, I'm going on about fanservice, which no anime should be solely built around, but if all else fails, at least you should be able to fall back on that. And boy, does Try Knights fail everywhere, sadly even at fanservice. Story and plot are pretty much non-existent, just a very few basic building blocks of a club in disarray. A few of the characters seem to have at least some level of, well, character to them, but it's very rarely utilised. The voice acting sounds rather sterile and unmotivated all too often, which is unfortunate because the animation is outright horrid all too often as well. Soundtrack can't help either, exactly because the visual setup is so sterile. It doesn't do much to showcase rugby in any sort of exciting ways either, and that's probably its biggest crime, being a kind of official tie-in for the rugby world cup happening in Japan. With all this, the fact that even the few attempts at fanservice are so tentative (or outright bad, like I've never wanted to say no to shirtless boys before) is really unforgiveable.

There is some honest effort that can be seen, here and there, particularly in the last few episodes... But it's not enough to redeem the entire series. At any rate, why should anyone suffer through more than three quarters of a series to get to the good bits?