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Nov 23, 2022
Vazzrock The Animation is a slightly confusing cocktail of overall relatively interesting characters & storylines, pretty but stiff animation, and a mild over-reliance on cameos from their sister series (Tsukiuta and Tsukipro) au lieu of allowing the members of Vazzrock to shine on their own. I still enjoyed it, though.
(NOTE— though it says ‘preliminary’, I have actually finished the show, I just don’t know how to edit the amount of episodes that I’ve watched once the review it published.)
The characters, in my opinion, are alright as far as idol project characters go. Very trope-y, but not unpleasant. There are twelve in total, divided into
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two groups of six, and then again into duos within those groups. I think the show’s format works unexpectedly well— the first twelve episodes are split into pairs with one storyline told across two episodes, told from two different perspectives. It allows the audience to become familiar with the characters in a much more relaxed, comfortable way than if it had tried to make it one episode per character (*coughs* Tsukiuta *coughs*). While they’re not the strongest characters ever, it’s not hard to become endeared to them and their individual struggles. My favourite is Ruka by far, since I’ve always been a fan of both gender-non-conforming characters and catboys… though it’s also admittedly partially due to the fact that he seems to be oddly immune to how stiff the animation is in this show.
It’s a classic from Tsukino Productions— extremely pretty character design with extremely stiff animation. Pretty much every character (except Ruka for some reason????) basically doesn’t move their face, leaving the voice actors sounding a bit ridiculous in comparison. A real shame, considering how good the cast is. While it’s by no means a dealbreaker for me, I can see it being annoying for other people, so definitely keep it in mind before watching.
I greatly enjoyed the pacing of this show. It’s an extremely easy watch, with relatively low stakes and a good amount of humour to balance out the lull. It’s also interesting that the episodes all seem to focus on various aspects of the entertainment industry, in particular acting (with the exceptions of episodes 9 & 10, which focus on an alternate universe known as TSUKIHANA KAGURA), while still portraying the interpersonal relationships between the idols pretty well. The episode’s plotlines are definitely a highlight— though as other reviewers have pointed out, it can sometimes feel like you’re watching a show about actors rather than idols.
My biggest issue is the fact that it relies far too much on cameos from past series. Cameos are normal for the franchise; Tsukiuta and Tsukipro were both full of them as well. Vazzrock’s problem is how the cameoing characters borderline overshadow the Vazzrock members at times, rather than complimenting them— in episode 6, it feels less like we’re watching Issa get advice from other members of the company, and more like we’re watching Nozomu from SOARA and Rui from Procellarum talk to each other about having older siblings, with Issa just so happening to be in the room with them. Issa’s not really involved in that conversation at all. If you’re familiar with other members of Tsukino Productions, that’s great! You’ll love the cameos (I, for one, was very excited about my boy Nozomu being there)! But it’s not a good look for new viewers that might not be aware that you basically have to watch four seasons of two other shows to completely understand this one.
Overall, while it’s no masterpiece, it’s not the worst show ever. It has nice characters with stiff animation and a chill, easy-to-follow storyline. An extremely normal idol anime aside from the random alternate universe, really.
If you haven’t already, and you’re a fan of idol animes— or if you liked this one—, I would recommend giving Tsukiuta and/or Tsukipro a try (especially Tsukipro, which I consider to be the best series of the franchise, as well as one of my personal favourite animes in general). If nothing else, you’ll be able to understand the full Tsukino Productions universe a bit more. If you’re looking for something with higher stakes, try IDOLiSH7, which takes a much more… dramatic route in portraying an idol group’s journey through the industry.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Apr 23, 2022
I am a huge fan of Chiharu Sawashiro, who plays Taiga. I’m mentioning this because, when it comes to anime, I tend to have an “I’ll watch it if Chiharu Sawashiro is in it” mentality. While it may have led me to watching some absolute gems like Tsukipro, I really need to stop having that mentality, because it also led me to watching Tribe Nine, which might just be the worst anime I have ever watched in my entire life. The worldbuilding makes no sense, I hate most of the characters, and it genuinely confuses me that someone looked at this monstrosity of a show
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and thought it was okay to subject the public to it.
The main character, Haru, is… fine. He’s alright. Personally, I find him a bit annoying in his weird passiveness, but there’s nothing actively wrong with him, I guess. This can be said of the vast majority of characters, in fact, because barely anyone has anything going on besides being extremely basic, stock image character tropes (the newbie, the singular girl, the big guy, the little guy who’s a huge perv, the big bad villain who just wants power, etc.), with two exceptions that I’ll discuss in the next paragraph. That doesn’t mean they’re tolerable characters by any means, though. They all kinda suck.
The two exceptions are Taiga, and the members of the Ota Tribe (so, technically, there’s six exceptions, I guess). Taiga is easily my favourite character (and it’s not just because he’s voiced by Chiharu Sawashiro, I swear), even if his character motivation kinda stopped making a ton of sense after episode 4 (no spoilers). He seemed to actually care about the things around him— both XB and the other characters— compared to the other members of his tribe who seem infuriatingly take-it-or-leave-it about everything. This is interesting considering that Taiga is a total newbie to both the sport and the area, being from “overseas” (the dub decided that he’s Irish?), and thus has every reason not to care. There was even a moment where something bad happens involving Saori, and he’s the only one who wants to help her, despite everyone else being theoretically her longtime friends. The show seriously treats him like a punching bag, calling him “arrogant” and “stupid” for wanting to do things that are the completely logical thing to do in the given situation. There’s also several moments in the show where he says to the other characters that he’s the only reason that they’re alive, and the show treats those moments as if he’s being dumb and overconfident, but if you follow the plot up to that point, it’s literally just the plain truth. It’s absurd, and my boy deserves better.
The Ota Tribe are just funny, honestly. They’re so gimmicky but it’s in a genuinely enjoyable way (very #edgy and rawr XD if I’m being honest, but in a funny way). Sonoda is a delightful antagonist, all he wants is chaos, and that includes keeping a guy who’s constantly trying to murder him by his side. The puppet show sent me into actual hysterics. Episode 9 was the only good episode of this show and it left me wanting the Ota Tribe as the protagonists.
The animation and art style are horrific. Most of the main characters have grey skin, the hairstyles completely change shape depending on the scene, and the limited colour palette makes my eyes hurt. The purpose of a limited colour palette is to make sure your colours look nice and cohesive in any scene, but they chose the absolute worst colours possible so there’s no point of making it limited in the first place. The shading also doesn’t make any sense in most scenes, neither does the lighting. It’s all godawful and I really shouldn’t have expected anything else from the people who made Danganronpa of all things.
The voice acting isn’t terrible, but the mixing in the Japanese dub made it almost unwatchable at certain points, even if the casting and voice acting was good. The music was super loud and invasive, and the voices were stupidly quiet in most scenes. The English dub fixed a lot of the problems, even if there wasn’t much vocal diversity compared to the Japanese cast. I still don’t entirely understand why Taiga was Irish, but Phillip Sacramento was honestly phenomenal, so it’s hard to even care. It was nice that they made it clear where he was from, compared to the Japanese dub which just said “overseas.”
The overall standout was probably Junta Terashima as Sonoda, though— he really captures how absolutely batshit the guy is, even when he’s saying stuff in an objectively calm manner, and especially when he was trying blow everything up for the sake of some “chaos.” Also, once again, the puppet show sent me into hysterics and I think about it regularly.
Everyone in the dub was about equally good with no real standouts, with my only real complaint being, unfortunately, Ojiro’s casting. I don’t hate Corpse Husband or anything, but he wasn’t… um… acting. He just seemed to be reading the lines as himself, or something. A bit disappointing considering his voice is obviously very unique and I think he could bring something really cool to the dubbing industry, but he really dropped the ball here. Hopefully he’ll get better over time, though!
Before I continue, I also really feel the need to mention all the misogyny in this show. It’s awful. Saori’s constantly getting sexualized (groping, getting walked in on, etc.), the main female villain’s gimmick at the end is just an excuse to draw her basically naked, and the only other female characters (Enoki and Minami) barely existed. Minami is basically just a prop to her male boss in most cases. It’s hard to say anything else without spoiling stuff, but please, if you’re going to watch this, be prepared to be practically assaulted with misogynistic bullshit. It’s very reminiscent of the humour of older, “haha they’re threatening to rape the girl, isn’t that HILARIOUS?”-type shounens, and it’s seriously uncomfortable to watch.
Overall, holy shit, don’t watch this show unless you’re some kind of Danganronpa mega fan, though even those people seem to be disappointed judging by some of the other reviews. It’s a complete mess of a show with a bad plot, bad worldbuilding, bad art, bad characters, and bad development as a whole.
If you want a show about a semi-post-apocalyptic Japan where a new government takes over and instates a law declaring that people have to fight with something extremely specific other than weapons, causing the 23 wards of Tokyo to form groups and essentially start a turf war, I would suggest Hypnosis Mic: Rhyme Anima, where it’s basically just Tribe Nine’s worldbuilding but with rapping and infinitely better. If you want “existing sport but EXTREME,” try Prince of Stride, which is about track racing but with added parkour. If you’re like me and will watch anything with Chiharu Sawashiro in it, try Cheer Boys, which is about male college cheerleading, or Tsukipro, an incredible chill and delightfully “nothing happens” idol anime. Alternatively, watch literally anything other than this.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Apr 15, 2022
This show sucks. Oh my god, it sucks so bad. It’s unfortunate, really, considering it had a few promising elements sprinkled here and there throughout the show, but overall, it just ended up being a huge mess that left me feeling completely empty inside. I’ve been waiting for this to come out since 2019, so it’s a real disappointment.
DISCLAIMER: Unlike many other reviews, I am not going to mention Haikyuu at all after this paragraph, because I think that making these excessive comparisons renders your review useless to those who haven’t watched Haikyuu. However, I do feel the need to mention the fact that
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Futsal Boys seems incredibly insecure about the fact that it’s not Haikyuu. Many of the character archetypes, dynamics, backdrops and even character poses seem directly ripped from Haikyuu. Like, there are scenes that look literally traced from Haikyuu. I’m not kidding. It sucks considering that there were some very interesting original elements to the story (namely Taiga & Ryuu’s dynamic and Haru’s backstory), but they were completely overshadowed by the fact that the creators seemed to feel the need to make it as close to Haikyuu as physically possible, without taking into account what made Haikyuu popular and likeable as a show in the first place (as shown by Sakaki’s entire character).
Don’t worry if you haven’t seen Haikyuu, though, because Futsal Boys has plenty of bad elements that aren’t directly ripped from Haikyuu, too!
The main character, Haru, is such a sad case of wasted potential. While he’s not exactly original (‘red-haired genki protagonist’ is an incredibly common character type), his backstory is actually incredibly unique among protagonists, and while I’m not going to spoil anything, I really like how the show handles his particular trauma. It’s pretty realistic, and he has a really unexpected way of handling and processing it that I really want to give the show praise for… but it gets pushed to the side in favour Sakaki’s BS problems stupidly fast. There’s also the fact that he has a background in breakdance, which I thought could theoretically be really cool and give his play-style some uniqueness (especially as a former breakdancer myself)… except there’s only a brief mention of how it could maybe have some transferable skills, and it really doesn’t come up much outside of his ‘special move’ which he does, like, twice. Overall, he could have been a semi-decent protagonist, but he gets overshadowed in favour of Sakaki (who I admittedly hate), which was unfortunate and annoying.
Sakaki is an awful character. You expect him to be the usual ‘blue-eye black-haired genius character type,’ the blue to Haru’s red, and the show really treats him that way— except he’s demonstrably awful at futsal. Despite being referred to as something along the lines of ‘the best player on the team’ or the ‘only capable one’ or something, and constantly being talked up as if he’s amazing, he also can’t pass, is constantly shown missing goals, refuses to get better, and yells at everyone else for supposedly sucking. He also throws a hissy fit when he finds out that Haru has been practicing with Ryuu, berates Haru for his trauma, and never apologizes for any of the awful shit he does, because the creators decided that Sakaki was the victim or something? I also hate the fact that Sakaki’s middle school nonsense was compared to Haru’s real actual trauma, as if they were at all similar.
The characters basically get more interesting the further that you get from Sakaki. Taiga & Ryu have a really lovely dynamic (who doesn’t love a tiger & dragon duo?) and the captain & vice captain are fine. Adelbert probably would’ve been interesting if they’d gotten more screen time, same with Amanogawa. Momomi were WONDERFUL, they were easily my favourite part of the show. I loved their dynamic so much, I genuinely wanted them as protagonists. Also they have a theme song and it’s a bop.
The animation is iffy. It’s pretty inconsistant, with a lot of the colours being a tad unpleasant to look at, but it’s not the worst I’ve ever seen, I guess.
The voice acting is great, though. The vast majority of the voice actors are complete newbies, with exactly one role (whoever they play in Futsal Boys) to their name, but you can’t even tell. I also think it’s neat that Komori, a musician on Momomi, is played by the guy who sings the opening (Takao Sakuma). I think that’s neat.
Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this show to basically anyone unless they were really desperate for a new sports anime to watch, or wanted to see some good daddy issues representation.
For a 12-episode anime with a better red/blue dynamic and a better case of “character is a newbie to the sport but has a previous skill that gives them a unique play-style,” I would recommend Sk8 The Infinity. If you’re okay with watching 75+ episodes of what Futsal Boys was desperately trying to do, watch Haikyuu. Both shows are way better written, and their blue-eyed genius characters are actual endearing and good at the sport, instead of unbearable and awful at it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Mar 29, 2022
Would I recommend this show? Maybe. But only with the warning that after episode 1, it’s almost painfully boring and completely unenjoyable to watch until about episode 8. It’s a real shame, I was really rooting for it in a lot of ways (the exposition and explanation of the sport was done SUPER well and seamlessly, especially since it’s a fake sport), but they basically dropped the ball at episode 2.
The main character, Maeshima, is unbearable for most of the show. He starts off with an “I’m better than everyone” attitude, gets his ass handed to him several times, and doesn’t improve whatsoever, because
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the fact that he gets his ass handed to him doesn’t impact the plot AT ALL. The characters KEEP making deals and bets with him but there’s always some convoluted reasoning as to why it doesn’t matter in the end. He honestly had a ton of potential to be a relatively compelling, fresh protagonist (he’s a lot harsher than your average ‘genki’ sports anime protag, for example), but instead they just made him annoying and pompous and unable to learn from his MANY mistakes.
Most of the other characters are pleasantly boring at best, with the exceptions being Sasugai, the main team’s coach, Shinozaki, and Noa. Sasugai is by far the best and most interesting character in the show, but they also kind of dropped the ball with him, because he stopped being all sneaky and meddlesome and complex at about episode 4 (I do find the gag of Sasugai being wrapped around the manager’s finger to be pretty funny, though). The coach is infuriating since all he does is ignore the kids and then berate them for WANTING HIM TO DO HIS DUTIES AS A COACH but somehow ends up getting a bunch of praise at the end, despite leaving ALL of his workload to Sasugai. Shinozaki is inconsistant and annoying. Noa is just funny honestly, I didn’t mind him too much.
The animation isn’t bad at all, I liked the art style a lot honestly. The colours are bright without causing an eyesore, and the designs are varied without looking like they shouldn’t be in the same show.
The biggest thing that Skate Leading Stars has going for it is the voice acting. Yuuma Uchida did great as always, and Makoto Furukawa can do no wrong in terms of voice acting in my eyes, honestly. Seriously, the way he voiced Sasugai made my skin crawl in all of the ways that a character like Sasugai SHOULD make your skin crawl. The English dub was also great. Jack Reeder, who voiced Sasugai, was seriously awesome, it’s hard to believe that he has barely any other voice acting credits!
My only issue with the voice acting was the Japanese casting of the Ishikawa twins. They cast actual brothers, Hirofumi Nojima and Kenji Nojima… and then made the gag that the twins didn’t talk, they only whispered incoherently. They cast ACTUAL BROTHERS to voice the brothers, and then made it so that they NEVER TALKED (except for one glorious scene in episode 8 or something). That’s the definition of wasted potential and I’m still mad about it.
The fact that the gender of the manager, Yukimitsu, seems to switch between the Japanese and English versions could technically be seen as an issue, but I mostly just find it funny. I cannot deny that I love an ambiguously gendered king/queen.
Overall, the most positive words that I can use to describe this show is “semi-decent.” The pacing is horrid, the vast majority of the characters are boring, the ending makes no sense, and even though it’s not a COMPLETE garbage fire (I still gave it a 6/10), the many bad moments in the show completely outweigh the good moments for me.
If you’re looking for a quick 12-episode anime with pretty animation about a fake sport, please, unless you’re REALLY bored, just watch Prince of Stride. I am not exaggerating when I say that it does EVERYTHING that Skate Leading Stars tried to do, but infinitely better. If you’ve already watched Prince of Stride, watch this, then watch Prince of Stride again, because it’s going to make you want to watch Prince of Stride again.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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