Sakamichi no Apollon

Sakamichi no Apollon is a school drama from 2012. The original manga was written by Kodama Yuki. The anime version was brought to us by MAPPA & Tezuka, neither of which I've seen a lot from. I don't know what to expect from this one at all. So, let's just get right into it.

Story:

Our focus is on Nishimi Kaoru, a bright young student who plays the piano and moves a lot. He's also a complete drama queen, but we'll talk about that later. Nishimi suffers from social anxiety issues and feels the need to get some air on the roof after things take a ... slightly unanticipated turn. Fortunately for him, he's able to overcome that within about five minutes of meeting Kawabuchi Sentarou. Aren't we all glad that plot point was there? I mean, it contributed so much to the narrative. He and Sentarou wind up becoming friends and playing jazz together while filling the time between sessions with melodrama.

Therein lies the massive underlying problem with the series. Everything has to be overly melodramatic. Dude falls in love after knowing a girl for all of two minutes? Better act like this is super serious and dramatic. Someone gets rejected? Total drama. Sentarou might play... rock music with a band made up of their class mates? This is clearly the most important disaster in history. Don't even pretend that worse things have happened. Although, in all fairness, the series actually acknowledges that that one is childish. To exacerbate things, however, the vast majority of these “hyper, ultra dramatic situations” get resolved, at least to a satisfactory degree, in the next episode. Probably would've worked better with fewer sources of drama that were ongoing.

Here's the thing, teenagers can be overly dramatic about stupid things but watching teenagers be overly dramatic about stupid things is really annoying. Especially when the narrative treats it like it's super serious. This shite isn't serious, it's dumb teenagers being drama queens. So, when two things that are actually serious happen in the last couple episodes they just don't have much weight. Especially when one, an injury, gets resolved in less than five minutes. The romance is honestly where it's at its worst. We start with a ridiculous situation where one dude likes a girl, she likes another guy, he likes a different girl and she likes this other guy. From there, we get a lot of overblown angst and aggravation because we can't pummel these wankers.

The only good parts of the series are the jazz jam sessions where the characters are just enjoying themselves for once. Unfortunately, these scenes are vastly outweighed by the scenes where drama is happening over something that really doesn't matter.

Characters:

The characters in this are reminiscent of the worst people you knew in secondary school. You know the ones. They treat everything that's remotely upsetting to them as an unmitigated disaster. Then they get mad at you because you openly don't care and won't even remotely validate them. Kaoru is the worst about it, putting distance between himself and his friends on multiple occasions but always for petty reasons. Kodama, you do know that introverts don't have those kinds of rifts just because we're socially awkward and need to limit our time around people, right? Usually we just excuse ourselves from an event or don't go out for a while when we need time alone. And, trust me on this one, your friends will understand if you just tell them “Hey, I need some time alone. Can you try calling back tomorrow?” Yes, even in High school.

Art:

The artwork is one positive the series has going for it. The backgrounds are well detailed and look quite nice. The characters are drawn well. The animation is nice and smooth. So, I'll give them full credit on that one. They may not have produced something with a compelling narrative or tolerable characters but they made what they had look pretty.

Sound:

The acting in this is passable enough. Our main cast is made up of Hosoya Yoshimasa (Reiner Braun), Kimura Ryouhei (Sorey) & Nanri Yuuka (Takakura Erika). Their performances here are perfectly fine. The music is pretty good, mostly. I won't pretend that I cared for the theme tune and its whiny sounding singing but the jazz is good. Kanno Yoko's soundtrack in general works nicely.

Ho-yay:

There's a little bit. Kaouru goes off on a tangent about how handsome Sentarou is at one point. And Sentarou calls him an angel at another. Bad dialogue writing or unexplored sexual tension, you make the call.

Final Thoughts:

When it comes to the basics, the artwork, music and acting, Sakamichi no Apollon does just fine for itself. Unfortunately, it doesn't do so well in terms of the main content. The characters are overly melodramatic to the point of being quite obnoxious a lot of the time. The narrative is a lot of annoying, all too easily resolved melodrama with the occasional good jazz session thrown in. All factors considered, it's kind of a bad series. Although you might enjoy it if you like that High school melodrama. For myself, I lost all patience for that while I was still in High school and watching this was, more often than not, an irritation. So, for myself, I give it a 3/10. Next week I'll look at Wizardry.

How much you enjoy Sakamichi no Apollon is largely dependent on your level of emotional maturity.

SPOILER-FREE™

Sakamichi no Apollon translates to “Apollo of the slope,” not “Kids on the Slope,” so whatever translation you want to use really doesn’t matter. Kids on a Slope may look on the surface like a typical clichéd romance anime with lots of misunderstandings, too much drama, love polygons and people sort-of-but-not-really changing who they love. You may be tempted to think that’s all Adolescents on an Incline is, and you should give in to that temptation because that’s exactly what it is.

Juveniles on a Slant, by the way, is totally ... NOT GAY. It’s completely normal for male friends to hold hands, embrace each other crying, run out of school together, eat out of each other’s hands and the like. At least I hope so because me and my roommate may have had a small sexual encounter the other day so PLOT POINT: my childhood friend who I secretly love read that and is now crying so I headed over to her house but PLOT POINT: my father who I thought was dead meets me along the way and tells me he wants to be a real family from now on but PLOT POINT: my roommate accidentally bumps into him and knocks him into a cement plant and starts crying because PLOT POINT: my roommate was actually in a relationship with my father but PLOT POINT: there’s a meteor headed toward earth and I have to decide if I want to spend my last moments with my dying father or childhood friend.

STORY 4/10

You may have gathered from that somewhat cryptic paragraph that Youths on a Declination has no story, what it has is a string of barely connected random events as a cheap attempt to cause an emotional reaction in the audience. The other point I was trying to make is that Striplings on an Oblique Surface has quite possibly got the single most forced plot I have ever seen in anime. The story is hashed together with every situation the creators think could possibly pull on someone’s heart strings, natural story development be damned. The result is some completely artificial Frankensteinian monster. You can almost hear it sob “Please…kill…me” as it stabs your eyeballs trying to get you to cry any way possible.

As the plot lurches through its various stages it manages to amass quite the collection of plot holes and inconsistencies. For the most part however, it manages to hold itself together as a pretty stereotypical Josei. It does treat themes like coming of age and friendship acceptably. If you happen to really, really love drama and romance then maybe you’ll find a way to enjoy it.

The setting of late-60’s Japan deserves special attention in this review, because it didn’t get any in the show. Whippersnappers on an Acclivity really missed a chance to be unique and interesting by capturing the flavor of the era. Instead, there is barely anything there to distinguish it from a typical modern anime, I half expected a student to pull out a cell phone at any time. There are a few token times when the show tries to masturbate to its own classiness, old-style desks, records and such, but there are so many anachronisms that it winds up just being annoying.

ANIMATION 7/10

The art is not very attractive. The characters have faces only a mother could love and objects and backgrounds can look plain and simple. But Minors on a Gradient has one secret weapon up its sleeve: animation. I could use words like fluid, smooth and beautiful. One test I use to determine how lazy a studio is in animation is music scenes. That is, whenever someone is playing an instrument, do their movements match up with the song? Even an amateur can tell if the beat is on (which it often isn’t). Here, the piano parts are matched to the characters fingers. It shows great attention to detail that is present throughout the show, which compounds the great animation to look spectacular.

SOUND 3/10

Wait, WHAT? 3!? What the fuck is wrong with you John, giving a music anime a 3 for sound? Well, Tykes on a Cant’s soundtrack is lousy. That isn’t to say there’s no good music, it’s just all 30-60 second outtakes of jazz classics. I like jazz more than most, but no points for unoriginality, especially if it’s tied together with a second-rate OST. The voice acting is underwhelming but passable. Ultimately, if you came for the music, go listen to music and give this one a pass.

CHARACTERS 3/10

The translation “Kids on the Slope” may not be faithful to the Japanese, but it’s very faithful to the characters, because they act like children. The main pair: Kaoru and Sentarou, have an interesting relationship. They are best friends, not because they are alike or get along or anything lame like that. No, the show just declares them best friends when they barely know each other and from then on they stick together for better or worse.

SIKE! They spend more than half the show not on speaking terms, and they have at least one fight an episode. I seriously hope nobody views this as a model of a healthy friendship. The way they hate each other makes it even more bizarre and surreal during the few times when they inexplicably love each other.

Now flawed characters are a good thing, but the biggest flaw of Squirts on Uneven Ground’s characters is that they don’t feel like people, not at all. They certainly carry out the orders of the story well, but they have no depth OR consistency. The few times when they acted like human beings was lost on me since I was completely unattached to them.

ENJOYMENT 5/10

Do you get emotional easily? Do you cry when you see road kill? Are you a pre-teen girl? If any of these are true, you may enjoy Youngsters on a Rise. But if unrealistic story and characters causes you not to get emotionally invested, I don’t think this is for you. The make or break here is drama. Many people will think the drama is excessive, but if you’re easily affected then maybe this is worth a shot.

CONCLUSION

I may not be the biggest fan of the romance genre, but (Baby+15)/(mx+b) was a real let-down. It didn’t so much strike me on a sour note, mostly I was just bored watching it. I definitely enjoyed some of the music scenes, but mostly I just want my six hours back.

I only watched the first few episodes of this series, though i think i'm able to write a review about it.

First of all, i'm not someone who is pleased easily. I don't watch many anime, in fact i don't watch TV or Movies all too often, because they are, well let's say ... crap. When i read and heard about this anime i was eager to watch it, for it promised not to be "mainstream" (as i like to call it). Also, Yoko Kanno was on board as well, so that held my hopes high enough. It's really hard to see this promise not fullfilled.

Why, ... you ask?

Well, yea it's quite rare to see such "good" characters, so early on in a series, but episode 4 already had signs of your typical "Slice of Life"- Bullshit. To be honest, even the first episode made me worry. These "mood swings". Don't get me wrong, character developement is not a bad thing, but in this case, it is not believable, and more importantly, it is too fast. Kaoru's character developement in particular. It's almost hilarious. First, he is depicted as a loner, who doesn't give a damn about anything in school, or rather life. In this and the following episode he slowly "befriends" Sentarou, the tough guy everyone is afraid of. He also developes a crush for Ritsuko, an old childhood-friend of Sentarou. Wow. And with that, one might think the "Love-Triangle" is set. Well, we thought too soon. Another girl appears on the stage, Mariko. Sentarou saves her from some guys and, yes you guessed it, he wants to get into her panties.

And that's just the beginning. I could still bear with that, i even was okay with it, but the thing that really struck me was what followed soon after, or rather, what DIDN'T follow. To keep it almost spoiler-free i'll just name it the "Kaoru-Ritsuko-Resolution". It's like little girls drinking tea, if you know what i mean. I just can't relate to that. The series is called "Kids on the slope", but they aren't THAT little, are they? I mean, i tried to continue watching it, but i just couldn't. This anime left a bad taste in my mouth.

Anyone just wanting to watch their new season anime, go ahead, have fun with your routine. I can't watch this, seriously.

(SPOILER REVIEW) Kids on The Slope...what can I even say. This show isn't THAT bad I suppose, I mean, the character dynamics are fine sometimes and the OST is great but damn, just damn. That writing is absolute ass. This review is going to be divided by characters instead of plot, animation, etc. because I don't have much to say about anything else and the plot itself is that the show is a character drama so that'd be a waste of space. Anyway...

Kaoru - Ah yes, the MC. Kaoru is the absolute worst. He definitely brings down the quality of the show like 2 or ... even 3 whole points. Where do I even start. He's just an asshole for no reason other than "I was lonely as a child" and doesn't even apologize for the shit he does even if he acknowledges that it's wrong. There are 3 main thing she does that come to mind in this show that I'll cover. Before I do though, a lot of these complaints will be about a lack of resolution/apology. I think it's important to note that early on, Kaoru made a harsh remark at Sentarou about his family life and it being great. This ended up being wildly inaccurate and Kaoru apologized. We know that early on, before these 3 things happen, that Kaoru has the mental capacity and maturity to apologize and make amends for his mistakes. 1.) So early on he was able to observe that another character Ritsuko, liked Sentarou, yet another character. Kaoru the decided to askout Ritsuko, beforehand having an inner monologue about how it'd be fine if she rejected him, as again, she likes someone else. So he gets rejected in probably the nicest way possible and next decides to give Ritsuko and Sentarou the silent treatment...Why? This lasted for a month or something if I recall correctly, and the silence was only broken when Sentarou just kind of forced his way into Kaoru's house to talk to him. Next, Sentarou and Kaoru fuck off to Tokyo for an episode to find Kaoru's mom. When they return, the show completely returns to normal as if nothing happened. They 100% ignored the subplot they had going, there was no apology for the way he treated everyone, there was no resolution, THEY JUST DROPPED IT. I even went back and watched it over again to make sure, I was baffled. "Well surely it gets better from here" I thought. 2.) So Sentarou and Kaoru play jazz together just for shits and giggles and this one kid, Seiji, asks Sentarou to play drums in his band for the school festival just to help him out. Kaoru freaks the fuck out and goes off about how he doesn't wanna be friends with Sentarou and how he's always alone. Immediately afterwards he regrets it and wants to apologize. He doesn't as you could probably tell. He does his silent treatment schtick, somehow gets multiple opportunities to apologize but doesn't, and now Sentarou is pissed at him too. The amp stopped working for Seiji's band at the school festival and as a result, Kaoru and Sentarou play a song together to keep the crowd there and boom. Rainbows, sunshine, and sprinkles everyone, they're besties 4ever again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you're fine with accepting this "apology*********" then be my guest but this is some of the most bullshit cliche shit I've seen in awhile and regardless, barely works as an apology or any type of make-up. Again, they never addressed the problem, they just dropped it. I desperately wanted to see this man aplogize, the show would've been so much better. The solution was so simple! But be careful what you wish for, because part 3 is a doozy. 3.) THANK GOD!!! KAORU FINALLY APOLOGIZED FOR SOMETHING!!! Wait a minute...he apologized for what??? The fact that THIS is what Kaoru decided needed an apology is good, what was done 100% warrants an apology and even more. But also the fact that it takes something of this magnitude to get this man to apologize is absolutely ridiculous. Ladies and gentleman, he tried to rape a woman. I shit you not. Sentarou decides to disappear for zgod knows why and at the same time we get a fun new subplot going. Ritsuko eventually grows to like Kaoru, they get a romance going and he decides to...rape her. She struggles, tells him to stop, everything, but he is only stopped when she has to force him off and knee him in the balls or something. He apologizes, isn't forgiven, and fucks off to college. BUT on the train to college, we are treated to more cliche as Ritsuko goes to forgive him, just misses the train, and chases it as it pulls away. Only positive thing I can say about this is that they actually concluded this subplot, but I don't think rape was the move. But hey! If you don't mind feel free to watch, I assure you, it has no place here. All I could imagine as an excuse is that he was acting out because Sentarou disappeared, but if you think that justifies it then you might wanna get checked out. And remember, as stated at the beginning of this Kaoru rant, he has shown he has the capacity to apologize, so I don't wanna hear shit about learning to apologize being his development. And even if you wanna say that, learning to apologize for rape isn't a lesson that should need to be learned.

Sentarou - Sentarou is cool for a decent portion of the show. His character arc near the end though...yikes. Sentarou decides to fuck off somewhere doing who knows what and tells no one where he's going. Most importantly, why he does this is never answered, though in episode 12 we are shown where he went. We are shown him making this decision, and soon after gets in a motorcycle accident which near fatally injures his sister, but he is fine for the most part. I bring this up because as I said earlier, we are never told why he decides to leave, but staying to support your sister is a pretty damn good reason to stay, but I guess not for him. 8 years later, Kaoru finds Sentarou training to be a priest at some small island church. Well now we know where he went and what he's been doing, priest training! But why did you disappear without telling anyone? The only thing I can imagine is if his family was atheist or something, but they aren't. In fact the show consistently shows Sentarou and his family attending church. So why?!?!?!?!? There is absolutely no reason for his not telling anyone, or even why he decided to travel so far away. Anyway, Kaoru finds him after 8 years, they play jazz together, Ritsuko shows up I guess, and the show ends. What? I can't begin to describe how baffled I was upon seeing the conclusion to his character arc, it was all completely arbitrary and out of place. I can't even think of an appropriate conclusion sentence to this segment to describe the emotions I felt. Upset is the closest I could get, but that doesn't do justice to how strong my emotions were that the ending was this bad. Just imagine a really angry conclusion and me calling this extremely retarded.

Ritsuko - I actually don't have many complaints here. Although I think it's worth mentioning her arc. In the beginning she liked Sentarou, they are childhood friends after all. But after she rejects Kaoru ,she begins to fall for him despite Kaoru being an insufferable asshole a lot of the time. I won't complain too much, maybe she's into that. Maybe I'm missing a lot of relationship development because the way the show portrayed passage of time was indecipherable most of the time, I don't know. But it was just kinda stupid I guess.

Jun + Yurika - I group these guys together because they're subplot is a romance and DAMN this sucks. But first I want to say, Jun is beyond cringe or as I suppose he would say "not a cool cat" or someting like that. Yurika is simply a no name no personality character except her parents are strict or something. Back to actual writing critiques. Atleast with Ritsuko and Kaoru they spent time together, but Yurika saw Jun performing on stage, he kissed her, and now they're running away together I guess. They barely spent any time together, it was ridiculous and felt really unwarranted. But hey, that's just Kids on The Slope, isn't it? A bunch of random ass, melodramatic bullshit dressing up as something trying to be taken seriously. I'm going to use that sentence again later, I like that.

Seiji - So Seiji is barely relevant, in fact he was mainly here as a plot device for that second shit thing Kaoru did. But I wanted to mention him because he is the ONLY example of good writing in this show, even though it's ridiculously basic. He wants to be a star to support his family so he sings. That's it, and this is the best the show has to offer. However, I'd be remisce calling him anywhere near an enjoyable character, in fact he might be the least enjoyable for one reason...his voice. I watched dub, and oh my fucking God, this man needs to shut the fuck up. I mentioned this in my Toradora review, but Taiga and Minorin's voie actor's made me mute the TV and wanna rip my bleeding ears out. This is also prevelant with Zenitsu in Demon Slayer. It was definitely wishful thinking to be under the impression I would never suffer like that again, especially from a dub, but they did it. I can only describe it as an offensive stereotype gay voice but ridiculously annoying. I can't describe it, you need to hear it for yourself. The dub singing was the worst, like at some party in episode 9 I think. Similar to the end of my Sentarou section, I truly can't describe it, it's something one must experience for themselves. I urge you to look into this, at your own discretion of course, it's beyond insufferable.

My main thing with this show is that the writing is absolutely awful. I used to be somewhat analytical when watching shows, but have stopped for the most part awhile ago. But goddamn, I just couldn't leave this one alone. It's so fucking bad. I can't even fathom how it ended up this bad. And even further from a non-analytical standpoint, how do you make a Bunny Girl and Angel Beats fan think something is overly melodramatic!? HOW!?! This show is beyond bad character writing, it just drops subplots with no conclusion. When I need to rewatch portions because I think I missed something, only to find more problems, there is an issue somewhere. Please, never watch this, I legitimately don't understand why this has a high score. I can never get that time back. I can't stress enough the upset inside of me. This show seemed so promising in the first few episodes. Why?! Heed my warning, I haven't exaggerated a word here.

(Greetings from Portugal) (overall Sakamichi no Apollon 4/10)
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Well, this was boring.

I watched Kids on the slope, following the Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu (that I love) recommendations... the regret, oh the regret.
Besides the bizarre and very out of this world recommendation I'll try to keep this review simple and focused.

Kids on the slope is about teens discovering love. Nothing wrong with that. The show want us to think that is about jazz, it isn't. But that is not the real problem, in fact the music was good. The jam sessions scenes were the best part in the all thing. The 1-dimensional characters were the major ... issue for me.

The story is simple. Except when it gets to the love theme, is just plain, flat and shallow in KotS. You can argue, that love in those teen years is confusing and full of misunderstandings, but Kaoru, Sentarou and Ritsuku are very poorly developed, for the show to work. Don't watch this anime if you're imagining jazz and joy, with musicians growing in their abilities.

The melodrama is quite disturbing, the quality is really low and boring and expected and obvious [insert synonyms here].

(minor spoiler ahead)

When things go bad there is always a train to give you hope - Same scene 3 times ...

Thank you for reading my review.

Holy shit, this anime is kind of hilaribad? And it blows my mind that people are laying down 10s on this. I watched half of this with my boyfriend and by the end of episode 6 I was laughing in a sort of hysterical, no-way-is-this-the-anime fashion.

Synopsis: Melodrama to the max. Kaoru honestly is kind of a toxic little shit and aggravated me constantly. He creates all his own problems and exacerbates them with every step. The center of the universe is Kaoru, here, and he’s going to take all his well-adjusted friends on an overblown rollercoaster of teenage drama any chance he gets! Honestly, I ... WANT to like him because he’s kind and sympathetic, but the dude has zero perspective and turns everything into his own personal telanovela.

Otherwise the pacing is consistently off and super weird, and characters can be wildly inconsistent! Exhibit A: is the chubby train kid afraid of Sen, or are they kind of friends? He gives the guy unsolicited train expertise to halp their mutual friend Kaoru, then cowers away from Sen like a legendary monster the next episode!

I watched Sakamichi no Apollon, also known as Kids on the Slope. Here are my thoughts:

A music-themed josei drama is right up my alley, so I expected that I would enjoy this. Unfortunately, despite my optimism, I was disappointed by this anime.

The anime has pretty good direction. It feels movie-like, both in terms of direction and production quality. Very polished.

Decent character designs for the male characters (can't say the same for the women). Although the art style is bland, the animation is fluid and looks nice. The colour palette is quite dull and muted, but admittedly it does suit the retro-Japan time period.

I really like ... YUKI's vocals, so it's not surprising that I enjoyed the OP song. The ED song grew on me over time as well. The OST itself was unremarkable from my perspective, but jazz fans may feel differently. Voice acting was alright; I thought the VAs for Sentarou and Yurika did a good job.

The characters each have unique personalities but one thing they all have in common is how immature they behave. This immaturity is frustrating, not endearing. Particularly so, given that this is a serious drama show. The main character is about as likable as Holden Caulfield (read: insufferable). In fact, I did not empathize with any of the characters in any way, despite the drama-heavy nature of the story.

Although the story takes place in the 1960s, this has fairly little relevance to the content of the show itself, aside from the prominence of jazz as a popular music genre. Give everyone a cell phone and it would easily pass as a highschool anime set in the modern day. It all felt very generic, regardless of the high production value. Basically just a jazz spin on a typical highschool drama anime. This generic feeling is compounded by the stereotypical mechanisms through which drama is created in the story.

I really dislike 'love at first sight' in fiction. It feels so shallow, forced and lazy on the writer's part. "These two characters just saw each other and never even spoke and now they're arbitrarily in 'love' with one another" ugh. This anime is guilty of doing this multiple times. Groan. Generally speaking, I also dislike love triangles (or n-dimensional polygons, in this case). That kind of writing was stale literally four centuries ago, and it certainly isn't creative now. The love 'geometry' in this anime feels like lazy, uncreative, and eyeroll-inducing writing. If romance is going to be the central focus of a story, then it needs to be implemented better than the fictional equivalent of playing dollhouse and randomly pressing your dollies' heads together and yelling "now kiss!". This kind of thing can be very frustrating to watch. Similarly, the way that characters react when this so-called 'love' is not reciprocated is equally groan-worthy and feels like a chore to watch. Simply put, the characters (specifically, their behaviour and interaction) are written terribly. For this reason, the high production value of the show is just lipstick on a pig, unfortunately.

One thing I will praise is the absence of humour in this anime. I can imagine a different version of this show where unfunny comic relief is laid on heavily. Thankfully this was not the case and the anime kept a consistently serious tone. This is in contrast to, say for example, Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso, which I recall having dreadfully inappropriate comic relief.


My overall rating: 3/10
Although it is skillfully produced, this anime fundamentally has a very poor story. I often felt frustrated while watching due to the bad writing. Very disappointing. I am quite surprised by how praised this show is. It felt like an anime adaptation of a really bad soap opera.

Although I am capable of enjoying many different kinds of music, I unfortunately have never been able to get into jazz, despite multiple attempts to do so. Someone who likes jazz might enjoy this anime more than I did. In any case though, music is not an important aspect of the show. The majority of the episodes are crammed full of awful fanfic-tier teenage drama which overwhelms any potential for a significant focus on music. Lastly, just for clarification, I have no problem with drama in anime at all, in fact it is one of my favourite genres. Like I've already said, the fundamental problem is the writing, not simply the drama-heavy nature of the show.