Sakamichi no Apollon (Kids on the Slope)

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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Sakamichi no Aporon, Apollo on the Slope

Japanese: 坂道のアポロン

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Information

Type: TV

Episodes: 12

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Apr 13, 2012 to Jun 29, 2012

Premiered: Spring 2012

Broadcast: Fridays at 00:45 (JST)

Producers: Dentsu, Fuji TV, TOHO, DAX Production, Sony Music Entertainment

Licensors: Sentai Filmworks

Studios: Tezuka Productions, MAPPA

Source: Manga

Genres: Drama, Romance

Themes: Historical, Love Polygon, Music, School

Demographic: Josei

Duration: 22 min. per ep.

Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older

Statistics

Score: 8.30¹ (scored by 172,350 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #268²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #600

Members: 385,812

Favorites: 7,036

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@apollon_anime

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8.30

Ranked #268Popularity #600Members 385,812

Spring 2012TVTezuka Productions, MAPPA

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Episodes: /12

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Synopsis

Introverted classical pianist and top student Kaoru Nishimi has just arrived in Kyushu for his first year of high school. Having constantly moved from place to place since his childhood, he abandons all hope of fitting in, preparing himself for another lonely, meaningless year. That is, until he encounters the notorious delinquent Sentarou Kawabuchi.

Sentarou's immeasurable love for jazz music inspires Kaoru to learn more about the genre, and as a result, he slowly starts to break out of his shell, making his very first friend. Kaoru begins playing the piano at after-school jazz sessions, located in the basement of fellow student Ritsuko Mukae's family-owned record shop. As he discovers the immense joy of using his musical talents to bring enjoyment to himself and others, Kaoru's summer might just crescendo into one that he will remember forever.

Sakamichi no Apollon is a heartwarming story of friendship, music, and love that follows three unique individuals brought together by their mutual appreciation for jazz.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

The anime had a pre-airing event on April 7, 2012 and officially aired on April 13, 2012.

The final episode received an early screening at a special event held at Odaiba Cinema Mediage on June 24, 2012. The regular TV broadcast was held on June 29, 2012.

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Related Anime

Adaptation:

Sakamichi no Apollon

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Kawabuchi, Sentarou

Main

Hosoya, Yoshimasa
Japanese

Nishimi, Kaoru

Main

Kimura, Ryouhei
Japanese

Mukae, Ritsuko

Main

Nanri, Yuuka
Japanese

Katsuragi, Junichi

Supporting

Suwabe, Junichi
Japanese

Fukahori, Yurika

Supporting

Endou, Aya
Japanese

Mukae, Tsutomu

Supporting

Kitajima, Zenki
Japanese

Matsuoka, Seiji

Supporting

Okamoto, Nobuhiko
Japanese

Taichi

Supporting

Iwasaki, Megumi
Japanese

Kaoru's Aunt

Supporting

Jou, Masako
Japanese

Maruo, Shigetora

Supporting

Murase, Ayumu
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Maruyama, Masao

Producer

Ootsuka, Manabu

Producer

Udagawa, Sumio

Producer

Watanabe, Shinichirou

Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Edit

Opening Theme

"Sakamichi no Melody (坂道のメロディ)" by YUKI

Edit

Ending Theme

"Altair (アルタイル)" by Motohiro Hata meets Sakamichi no Apollon

Reviews

Mar 9, 2024

Oh_MumenRider

Recommended

Reading some of the mixed and negative reviews here, it's hard not to feel like those reviewers and I watched completely different shows. While firmly a high school coming-of-age story, Kids on the Slope has the kind of originality in execution and genuine heart that easily puts it a cut above the rest in its genre. I knew from the first episode that I was beholding something truly special. As every episode passed I experienced that regret which comes from knowing your first watch of an anime masterpiece will be over all too soon.

DUB/VOICE ACTING
Because I've been watching a lot of subs recently, I ... started Kids on the Slope in dub and ultimately stuck with it. I am looking forward to rewatching with the sub sometime in the future. Overall, the English voice actors do a fantastic job and bring the characters to life, however, some side characters' dialogue had me cringing at times when it leaned a little too stereotypical (in particular, the "cool cat" Brother Jin with his 1960s hipster jazz slang and the overly affected, lisping gay boy who dreams of stardom (I wish the actor had just toned down his lisp, it's so degrading and unnecessary to portray gay men as caricatures)). Both of these are also probably portrayals consistent with the era of the story, which is set in the late 1960s. These two characters' dialogues/dubs are my only criticism of the show.

STORY
In my opinion, this is coming-of-age at its best, told in the clear-eyed, melancholic-yet-hopeful way that is unique to the Japanese perspective. What takes Kids on the Slope over the edge to excellence is its main characters. Richie, Ritskuo, Sen, Jin, and Yurika all feel so human, and each acts in truly unexpected ways at times. Overall, the story is practically cliche-free, which in and of itself is a miracle in a medium (anime) oversaturated with its own tropes and cultural mythologies.

Honorable mention: Because it takes place in 1960s Japan the historical backdrop and events are particularly interesting, for example the presence of U.S. GIs and the Tokyo student protests. Impressively, it also critiques contemporary United States culture with the inclusion of a racist white heckler at the jazz quartet's live performance. It's a detail that didn't have to be included but the story is more nuanced for it.

ANIMATION
Kids on the Slope came out in 2012 and the animation style still feels fresh in 2024, which speaks to how much effort the creators put in at the time to make a show with groundbreaking cinematography, shot design, and editing. Every character is distinct, yet simply designed with fairly clean lines. The backgrounds are lovely. The animation of the jazz jam sessions is particularly impressive. A few times, I did notice a few still/minimal animation frames but they felt like cinematographic choices rather than corners cut.

ROLE OF MUSIC
Although it isn't an anime about music, music is central to the journeys of the characters. Further, it is how they express their inner selves and communicate with each other- frequently Richie and Sen work out their conflicts using instruments alone. All of the jazz is played incredibly well, the piano solos are beautiful, and even the rival band's Beatles-inspired music is groovy (although maybe a little grungier than is period-appropriate). It should be mentioned that the show's opening and closing tracks are gorgeous as well.

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Aug 17, 2020

Lugga02

Mixed Feelings

Do you like jazz? Would you like to see a show where jazz is the focus? Where the characters have fun playing some good ol' jazz pieces with each other and talking about jazz pieces? Then this anime is NOT for you. Do you like normal cliché romance with poorly constructed drama with a far too fast and disappointing ending? Then this anime is for you!
This anime let me down in all respects, even though the first five episodes are pretty darn good and have the right pace and you get well introduced to the characters' backstories.

Story: 5
The story has a good layout. A rich, ... affluent boy gets to know jazz and begins to like it, even though his values actually do not allow him to. So far so good. They just have fun together and the student learns to love jazz when he practices with his band more often. That's fine. Oh, a new character who seems like a cool guy, WOW WHAT HAPPENS NOW, MY BODY IS NOT READY FOR IT. REALLY GOOD SO FAR. Oh no, beach episode. Oh why so much drama. Where did jazz go? Wait who is this, hey this is unnecessary. Don't fight. Oh what the fuck what just happened. I thought it was a show about jazz ... OH SHIT A PERFORMANCE ... that's it again ... from then on I don't want to continue and then comes the quick end and whoosh. Why did I watch that again now? Ah jazz. Nope. No jazz. DRAMA AND ROMANCE.
TL; DR: good start, boring cliché center with repetitive drama, bad fast ending.

Character: 5
At first sight, I liked the characters. It's just 2 guys practicing jazz and an unnecessary girl for the romance part. Then you get to know Juunichi who is the best character with the best background. An excellent voice actor and a very interesting charm. Then there is Seiji and Yurika ... so they were kind of unnecessary and just created unnecessary drama. From there on, the characters only ever have predictable character plots. Romance. More romance. More more romance. So much romance that the characters forgot why they actually had fun in the first 5 episodes: They played jazz.

Sound: 8
I only rated sound highly for the performances and the exercises. (e.g .: John Coltrane, Chet Baker, Moanin ', ...) They were sensational. By the way: I love Yoko Kanno. She makes really good soundtracks that can even improve or enhance the anime. But somehow she got the idea not to do Jazz Ost if they weren't playing, no, she chose lo-fi, rock and classic piano. Why that in an anime about jazz? I HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA. It partially did not fit the scenes and made it worse. That was forgiven potential. Voice actors were fine, not bad comments.

Animation / Type: 7
As expected from Studio Mappa / Tezuka Productions: good. No complaints. Good character design, especially in jazz performances. Sometimes good camera work. No bad CG noticed.

Enjoyment: 6
As I said: I love the first five episodes. Episode 4 especially.
I didn't like the female characters. I liked the references to various jazz soloists. The end ruined everything, like romance. I like Romance in general, but the relationships were trash. That screwed everything up for me.

Overall: 6
There was potential, but they couldn't take advantage of it. Sad.

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Aug 30, 2021

RESOLVING_POWER

Not Recommended

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.

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