Rolling☆Girls

The first two episodes of Rolling Girls are an explosion of light and colour, leaving the viewer wondering what sort of show this wacky, crazy and interesting thing is going to be.

The answer is: not a whole lot.
Rolling Girls never lives up to that original promise. The story decides to focus on entirely different characters than the premier, introduced in about the third episode. It jumps from city to city, introducing characters but never spending enough time with them for the viewer to actually care about them. The Rolling Girls themselves, Nozomi, Yukina, Ai and Chiaya spend most of their time failing to achieve, ... well, anything.
Now to explain the art rating. Man, this show is pretty, and the duel animation is a thing of beauty. Every background is a watercolour-style painting that gives the show an interesting atmosphere.
Unfortunately the rest of the show is something of a letdown. The writing basically backs itself into a corner, and the show goes out with a lot less of the energy it came in with. The end of the story leaves you going-or at least, it left me going-"Wait, what?" The show had some okay arcs, but on the whole it was something of a flop.

TL:DR; An at times visually stunning & entertaining road trip through a bombastic future Japan, The Rolling Girls should be everything fans of Fooly Cooly, Michiko & Hatchin, Little Witch Acadamia & other such shows would want from a series. Sadly, despite all its promise, Rolling Girls ultimately is a show that I spent too much time wanting to enjoy rather than actually enjoying, let down by unfocused storytelling, sloppy character development, occasionally poor art direction & a general sense that this is an experimental 60-120 minute OVA that for some reason got made into a 12 episode series instead.

Wit Studio have garnered quite the ... reputation for an animation studio that has been active for only three years (not withstanding that it is a subsidiary of animation powerhouse Production I.G.). With only Hoozuki no Reitsu, film Hal & of course Attack on Titan to their name, I was certainly interested to see what the first original animation from a studio that has certainly shown itself to have a flair for animation would come out with.

On first appearance Rolling Girls seemed like everything I could have wanted & more. A visual feast for the eyes, the first two episodes were an almost constant colourful, explosive set of action sequences fought between the two rival Bests of Saitama state, Masami Utoku & Kuniko Shigyou. It's frantic. It's exciting. The Bests & the Rests motif for how Japanese society post the Great Tokyo War operates is compelling, as is the apparent friends turned rivals relationship between the two Bests. I wanted to know more. More about this mad world & the colourful chaos it has descended into. What would come of the fight between & would Nozomi, Masami's sister from another mother, so to speak, find a place for herself as a Rest in a world where only the Best seemed worthy of note?

However, two episodes in both Masami & Kuniko end up hospitalised & the shows direction changes to that of a bike riding road trip of self-discovery for Nozomi & three other girls: boisterous Ai who wants to be a Best herself; clumsy Yukina who lacks any sense of direction but wants to be an artist; & the strange moeblob Chiaya who wants to collect the heartstones that all Bests wear & also somehow knows the other girls despite their apparently having never met. Not that this should necessarily have been a bad thing. Their journey, undertaken ostensibly so Nosomi can fill Masami's role as a peacebroker in various disputes around Japan, should & to an extent does serve as a way for us to go on a Gulliver's Travels type journey through various places which serve as allegories for different elements of Japanese culture & society, while our quartet of bike riding heroines learn more about themselves, each other & hopefully find whatever is really at the heart of the wanderlust that set them on their journey.

The places the girls visit on their journey are certainly a varied & interesting bunch. Their first stop is the state of Always Comina, where post war society has become one of constant conventions & cosplay, watched over by a cosplaying Best named Thunderoad. The story in each place tends to be about two groups, each represented by a Best, who are in some form of conflict with each other. The Rolling Girls roll in (pun fun) & in some way help the main character of each story arc to resolve whatever problem they're having in return for payment in the form of their heartstone, though as often as not said stone never manages to find it's way into their hands.

While the stories themselves during this part of Rolling Girls are pretty simplistic - a conflict between friends say, or in Thunderroad's case her learning that sometimes getting something you want is not worth the price you have to pay to get it - they none the less for the most part are told well enough & perhaps most importantly facilitate the visual extravaganzas that make Rolling Girls unique among the other shows airing in Winter 2015. However it does often rely on a convenient convergence of events to bring everything to an end, which can feel rushed & somewhat anticlimactic even with all the fireworks going on around it.

Unfortunately, The Rolling Girls fails in one crucial respect: it fails to make you care about the main characters. A good road trip is not really about the places people go but what they learn from going there. A movie like The Motorcycle Diaries isn't interesting because we see some places & events happening in South America. It's interesting because we see how the mind of the man who would become Che Guevara was shaped by those things. The Rolling Girls fails to achieve this. Yes, each girl in the group has their own thing that's the reason for their embarking on this journey, but it rarely if ever has any connection to the story being told at each stop. Indeed, it's really only in the in-between episodes where the girls spend any real time thinking about their goal & acting as the friends they're supposed to be becoming, all their focus otherwise being spent on what really should be of secondary importance to their story.

The best example of why this is a problem is in the character of Yukina. Her "quirk," as it were, is that she has a terrible sense of direction & often gets lost. This really is just meant as a funny joke & perhaps reflecting her own feeling of her life not having any real sense of direction. The problem is, each time she gets separated from the group I'm left wondering if it would make any real difference if she didn't find her way back? That shouldn't be how the viewer is left feeling about a nominally important group member in a series like this, & in truth the same can be said of all the characters. This is supposed to be their journey of self-discovery, but instead The Rolling Girls just uses that journey as a lazy way to string otherwise unconnected events together. The result is a set of minor characters whose stories are too short to get involved in, & a quartet of main characters whose story is too undeveloped for anyone to care about.

It's such a shame, too, because The Rolling Girls really does have some good things going for it. I enjoyed the weird worlds the girls visit & really do wish more effort had been made to connect each one with the journey of personal discovery the girls are on. I liked how the heartstones they're trying to collect are ultimately only a symbolic object to show that it's really strength of character & resolve that marks a Best from the Rest. I really wanted to like Nozomi, Chi, Ai & Yukina, who were different enough both in character & motivation that it should have been so easy to make their story of four girls searching for answers & finding friendship so much more compelling than it ends up being.

Things only get worse towards the end, when The Rolling Girls changes gears again to try & form a final story arc that brings together all the different subplots going on through the series into one big finale. Sadly, it's a complete mess; with three supposedly connected storylines involving, among other things: yakuza, pirates, mechs, spaceships, a kung-fu emu & an out of nowhere story about aliens. The whole thing climaxes in a giant, visually confusing battle that makes absolutely no sense to anyone involved in it. It really almost feels like a case of director Otomi Deai saying screw it, it's an ending kind of like Fooly Cooly's & that's enough. It isn't enough.

The visuals on which The Rolling Girls so heavily relies are a more mixed bunch than I'd hoped as well. When it works, it's stunning, with fast, fluid animations coupled with a softer, more varied colour palette than is standard for animation makes for some utterly gorgeous sequences. The already mentioned fights between Masami & Kuniko are a highpoint that comes too early, but there are other scenes, such as the final bike race in Kyoto, which are also well directed visual treats.

The choice of using watercolours for the background art at times further enhances the vibrant colourfulness that runs throughout the series. The character design has a decent variety to it & the use of thinner borderlines & softer, pastel colours for them helps to avoid that problem animation sometimes has where characters seem to pop out of the background as though they're standing in front of a screen.

However, for every good thing about Rolling Girls art & animation, there's something bad. When they work, the action scenes are fantastic. But just as often they can feel overwhelmingly chaotic & hard to follow, the anime equivalent of a Michael Bay Transformers fight. The climactic final action scene I've already mentioned is a case in point, a cacophany of explosions, fights & flying objects (including one rocket impact cut that is reused two or three times in five minutes) that lacks any sense of focus or disciplined art direction. Stuff just happens & keeps happening, apparently for the sake of it.

Those backgrounds too, are a mixed blessing. At times, particularly indoors, they can become so busy, in the sense that they're trying to paint a lot of small, different coloured objects, that they seem almost muddy in appearance. The art direction, again, falls short in a lot of scenes where there are characters not doing anything. Often as not, they will be staring with a gormless expression directly at the audience, rather than whatever action is happening in the shot. It happens often enough to become distractingly noticeable, not least because it's something that would surely be so simple to correct. Equally, while the simpler nature of the character design makes for more fluid action when animated, when static it can often look, for lack of a better way of phrasing it, almost cheap; as though they didn't have the time or budget to draw in enough detail.

Finally, the music of The Rolling Girls feels like it's trying a both to stand out as one of those OSTs that make the series while at the same time being restricted to music the voice actresses can sing to. For all the rock & roll mentality that permeates the series, this isn't a soundtrack like The Pillows composed especially for Fooly Cooly or Michiko & Hatchin's eargasmic journey through Brazillian jazz, samba, hip hop & rock. Instead, while some of the tracks are enjoyable to listen to they all feel either forgettable or meant more as songs otaku idols can sing along to rather than something meant to really capture that feeling of rock & roll. It's not bad, by any means, but neither does it feel like the soundtrack that The Rolling Girls needed to match the visual style of the show.

It can feel bad to watch a show with all the promise of The Rolling Girls & be forced to conclude that not only does it fail to live up to the hype but doesn't even manage to be good. It had real promise to be one of those shows that really stood out as something memorable, that even those who might not necessarily enjoy it none the less recognize as something that doesn't come along very often. To The Rolling Girls credit, it certainly feels like it's trying, at least at first, to be just that. But knowing that just makes it all the more disappointing, almost heartbreaking, to see it fall so flat. I certainly hope this doesn't stop Wit Studio, Otomi Deai or writer Yasuyuki Muto from attempting further projects like it. I so wanted to like The Rolling Girls & it almost did enough that I could look past its failings & say that even with its flaws it was still worth watching. Almost, but not quite.

My abridged review of *The Rolling Girls*, a visually stunning anime that makes absolutely no coherent sense!

From the studio that brought us Attack on Titan comes The Rolling Girls, the winter season's Kill la Kill, well, at least until episode three...

The Rolling Girls' first two episodes feature over-the-top colorful battles that introduce the viewer to the world's concepts, and the series arguably peaks in these episodes. The rest of the series follows the other girls, and the plot becomes more and more convoluted and confusing as it progresses. As much as I wanted to enjoy The Rolling Girls, the usually two part adventures are, more ... often than not, incomprehensible. At times you can make sense of what is going on with some stories working better than others, but many times I found myself saying: "What the heck is going!?" A simpler approach to each episode arc would have worked best with an easier to follow story. Towards the end, the series tries to bring together an overall plot, and while it works to a degree, it still does not save the series as a whole.

Thankfully, the characters are at least cute and likable, and sprinkled throughout are moments of heart, especially the very end of the series.

Wit Studio's animation is what makes you continue to come back to watch The Rolling Girls. Visually, The Rolling Girls is a splash of crazy colors, and it so visually appealing! From the use of watercolor like art for the backgrounds to the soft character designs, the series is a pleasure to just look at. During the occasional action sequence, the animation shines even more with explosions of color and fluid animation.

Another highlight is the J-Rock soundtrack with the OP being one of the better ones of the winter season, and I watched every episode (watch it in the full post).

With appealing visuals and a potentially fun concept, The Rolling Girls should have been a sure bet to at least serve mindless entertainment. Unfortunately, the completely incoherent style of storytelling makes watching the series a chore at times; however, if you really love the art style, then it might just be worth watching.
_Watch if you like:_ Colorful art
*-6.1/10*

This is the sort of show that will make the optimists out there think something like "I have no idea what's going on, but I'll suspend my disbelief for a bit and see what happens." What happens is that you wind up with your disbelief suspended so high it's somewhere in the stratosphere and yet your patience goes unrewarded.

I'm being harsh. Let's talk about what drew me to this anime. The art is hands down fantastic, with beautiful sprawling surreal settings and pleasing character designs to boot. The first two episodes promise a hilarious and stylized spoof on superheros driven at ... its heart by the relationship between two sisters. But then the show takes a completely different tack and ultimately tries to stuff way too many plots into twelve episodes, purportedly held together by a road trip that lacks any road trip style nostalgia and stars characters that get zero development. To be fair, there simply is not enough time! There's no time for this show to do what it tried to do, and for that reason it winds up a confusing, convoluted mess with way too many moments of "they just happened to be in the right place at the right time because... reasons... cough".

To be fair, however, I did enjoy this anime once I stopped expecting too much from it. Its power is in its individual scenes, which use its fantastic animation and sound to amp up your emotions to a "Hell yeah!!" frenzy despite your complete disconnect from the characters. There's something to be said for that skill. This show is also very funny, with a referential humor that might go over the heads of people without much intimate knowledge of Japan (read: me), but it still feels fresh and lively and doesn't take itself seriously. The tone and animation are what makes the show.

Is that enough to be successful however? I would regrettably say no. Even if I had fun with the first half of the series, I found myself dragging my feet through the rest because I just had nothing to latch onto, no characters or risks to get me invested on more than a superficial level. In the end, I'm disappointed but not unhappy. The potential was there, it just didn't pull through.

Rolling girls is a disappointment.

Yes, I know, I couldn’t believe myself either. I mean, how did this happen? Rolling Girls was one of my anticipated anime this 2015. But do read where I will be getting through with this scrutiny because I haven’t scrutinized an anime so bad as this.

So let's begin. Over the years, there is a ‘gap’ in the car industry about slotting a kind of vehicle between a proper off-roader and a proper road car. It’s a mystery why people can’t figure out that pickup trucks are the vehicles that had always been filling that gap, but car manufacturers were able to ... sort out a solution called the ‘urban-SUV’, which soon morphed as ‘compact-SUVs’—and got commonly referred as ‘soft-roaders’ because they can’t go off-roading. Ford has them with some, so is Toyota with its RAV4, Hyundai with the Tucson, and up to the even big brands like Audi and BMW with the Q3 and X3 respectively.

For this metaphor, I’ll give an example. A car that I know and close to getting, but instead don’t wanna: the Ford EcoSport—Ford’s ‘compact SUV’ for South America and Asia market. On paper and commercials, Ford seems to have designed and engineered it to be so impressive that you can water-wade it on a river, towards a waterfall and down past the thick forests before reaching back to the road. Impressive enough, Ford says this is not just a compact SUV, it’s a ‘crossover’. The thing is, being the “compact SUV” or “crossover” means it’s fitted with a compact SUV engine: an incline-4 mill crossed from the Ford Fiesta. Yet, it’s raised 200mm above the ground to give an off-road impression, but with shocks belonging to the Fiesta, on a Fiesta chassis, and that it is front-driven because I see no differential on it, ultimately means it is a Ford Fiesta on stilettos: nothing more but a real soft-roader ‘car’, this.

Hence, that brings me back to Rolling Girls.
It is an anime that tends to be action-y while maintaining cutesy, much like how the Ford EcoSport wanted to become an off-roader while being a cute Fiesta on raised suspensions. And that’s the problem because both of them failed in trying to become two things at once. Both became disappointments.



STORY = 6
The story begins with the main character (MC) who is a ‘rest’, which is the show’s term for a ‘supporting character’. Episode one begins with cotton candy explosives that goes haywire-fantastic, and in a turn of the events, the MC wanted to help her friend who is a ‘best’ and known as “Maccha Green”. With the plot developing positively towards adventure and some events that went as an outcome, she then decided on substituting for her friend. She was joined then with three moe’s: the moe she met before, another moe who she initially met on the enemy’s side, and another moe she was fated to meet and met since way back. Adventurous as sitting on the Ford EcoSport, you’d really think of getting through the forests and hills of excitement, maybe like how Kill La Kill treated you on your seat, all the while being comfortable on the seat listening to J-rock-esque tunes that resembles K-On and being fuwa-fuwa. It seems like an ambitious but highly-anticipating prospect, this all thought out to be.


CHARACTERIZATION = 3
Yet, as the story progresses, the character development faded after it left the road, precisely after Nozomi decided on that substituting. I mean, really. What Rolling Girls really managed to develop were the sweet sparkles and flower-blooming pretty visual effects, but they were all like candy foil-wrappers. It was the candy that matters, not the foil. It's like what the Ford EcoSport’s brochure told you: ‘candy red’, ‘ingot silver’, ‘mars red’ and ‘winning blue’ are some of its colors, all sounded like jelly flavors, yet it was the Fiesta-on-stilettos itself that propels you past the terrain, not the candy-red paint. To give some credit, the first-half of Rolling Girls does revved up excitement. It was something worth the watch, and there really seemed to have some characterization going on.

Past the second-half and you just realized that there doesn’t seem to have any. In fact, character development does not appear to be a part way back when the writer was outlining the story. Or maybe he forgot.
It was like the EcoSport’s way of saying water-wading—but with only the front-wheel-drive on it—those Ford engineers must have thought water-wading the depth of a puddle. After Nozomi’s decision, which is the only decision ever made, they then tried to become helpful; which they did become helpful when they’re not, and not when they need to be. What really happened was all of them four moe’s seemed to be taking the backseat and no one’s driving after. No one changed or developed from being ‘rests’ or supporting-character-ish. Maybe the writer on this thought character development wasn’t necessary because it’s all moe-ish with guitars and tunes that sounded like HTT's compositions. But I’m sorry because that just could not happen. This is not K-On or KinMoza or Koufuku Graffiti. You simply cannot portray ‘moe’ in this adventure-action genre (or what sounds to be like) without the essence of developing the characters to what and how they will be. Because the plot isn’t about music and tea, or Europe and Union Jack, or cooking, then the MCs need to develop because the plot demands them to.

Hence, the end-product is nothing more but a total backseat-driven plot where the four MC’s don’t matter at all. All they did was to drive their motorcycles after deciding they will do something helpful, while the plot drove itself into unveiling after drifting from one episode to the next. In fact, the unveiling of events were so forced that the caged crow swooped the stone, the motorcycle race was decided by rivalry all bound to happen, then the rockers and geishas and villains all came to an abrupt stop, and worse—the stone which serves as the plot element just fell from the sky in quantum numbers and finally--they don't have anything to do with anyone at all. All of these are a mashup of force-majeure in a weird script—or just badly written. This is like the Fiesta rethought to become an EcoSport—but was never further thought as to what harsh punishment the off-roading brings.


ART = 10
What every weak, wishy-washy, hapless attempt of plot and characterization that Rolling Girls rolled, fell, and scrambled and finally destined to be lost elsewhere, the art made—or at least tried to make all amends up. It’s all flowery, glittery and kaleidoscopic that beats the city of blinding lights and Aurora Borealis combined. Though, I can imagine the animators tasked to animate this thing must have realized what a complete waste of time and talent they’ve poured themselves into.


SOUND = 7
J-rock tunes and music compositions for the opening and ending that give you the K-On! feel, yet doesn’t really come as heartbeating and unforgettable.
Seiyuu-wise, Risa Taneda and Rina Hidaka are among the known seiyuus on this, all of which both made a good assurance for what anticipation-turned-disappointment that Rolling Girls turned out to be.


ENJOYMENT = 4
I enjoyed Rolling Girls, really I did—from the high hopes of looking forward to watching it until the second half where I all figured the mess and wrote it up here. It’s another letdown addition to the meager list of recent 2014/2015 CGDCT or slice-of-life anime, or you know, the kind of anime that doesn’t hold the caliber of Fate-series or Psycho Pass or any other epic anime. Metaphorically, the Ford EcoSport sort of feels this way before it was released in 2013. I also had high hopes for this crossover-SUV, only to find out after inspecting it personally that I recognized its faults.


OVERALL = 5
Probably this is the first anime I rated as 5 that I could have wanted to rate higher, yet I honestly can't. If you’ve seen my anime-list, ecchi anime like Infinite Stratos was rated at 6 for me not because I like it better than Rolling Girls, but more so because generally, there are other people who’d appreciate it—especially those who likes ecchi. Rating the Infinite Stratos is like agreeing that a stray dog would like leftovers, when a sausage dog would not. It’s like giving a nod to a stickersized Honda Civic for all its ostentatious mods and upgrades because nevermind if I don’t like the tuner effect, I know other people out there will appreciate it for their tastes.

However, giving Rolling Girls a 5 is a means of saying that watching this really goes like watching Wizard Barristers in KyousouGiga fireworks presentation—or worse, Glasslip. I'm not comparing this to Kill la Kill because it just isn't. It’s like not being able to smile and nod to people who like the Ford EcoSport—because that car or crossover or compact-SUV doesn’t have anything much to offer, so why bought a car that looks off-road but can’t really do the off-roading? Rolling Girls is like that: why bother it with the action-y and moe when it failed miserably on striking the plot and characterization? Maybe if you don’t mind plot and development, being contented with the haphazardness of such anime, and you’re a prospect target for Ford marketing personnel, then Rolling Girls is a go-glitter for you.

Otherwise, you might just rather take note to watch action-y and moe anime as two very different shows instead.

Verdict: another CGDCT anime brimming with lackluster.

Rolling Girls was an anime that I was looking forward to, but utterly flopped in my eyes. It was filled with such potential to do something great, but in the end it was squandered with a lack of substance.

Story: 2

The first two episode of Rolling Girls put down a foundation for the series that was absolutely amazing. These episodes put up a colorful backdrop to an interesting world. It was a story about what it means to be Best, and what it means to be Rest. Even after the Comima Arc, I was loving the series. But as time went on, it was clear that ... there was no real plot to what was happening. Each arc followed the same predictable format, right up until the very end.

And the end was still not very good. When the show begins to wrap up, it starts to oversaturate itself with all of the things we need to know - things that should have been explained throughout the series. All of the 'plot' comes together near the end, but the execution left us feeling just as directionless as Yukina.

Art: 8

Everything in Rolling Girls is beautiful. From the fight scenes, to the watercolor backgrounds. Movement is fluid, colors are bright, locations are creative and fun. The characters are all designed uniquely and interestingly, and all looks fit the personality of the person. Near the end, though, it looked like a few corners were cut, and that animators simply said, "Good enough."

Sound: 8

The music in Rolling Girls was something that set it apart to me. The series uses and covers a multitude of songs by the band, The Blue Hearts. The OP, Hito ni Yasashiku, is catchy and bubbly, while the ED, Tsuki no Bakugekiki, has a tune that seems to wrap things up. The insert songs, are also mostly, if not all, covers of the same band. In any case, the music is phenomenal.

Character: 6

The characters are the (somewhat) saving grace of this anime. Yes, it's another quartet of female leads, almost mimicking the K-On girls. You have the loud, fun, beat 'em up girl, the quiet one, the other quiet-yet-fun-loving one, and then the true main character. All four of them have their own motivation for going on their trip, as well as their own quirks. Their designs are pretty and unique.

Side characters are also well designed and have good motivation. Antagonists, on the other hand, seem to lack true motivation (especially during the Kyoto arc). The oversaturation of pointless antagonists caused most of the villains to be pretty bland.

Enjoyment: 3

Rolling Girls wasn't very exciting. The anime was rushed and then, boring. After around episode 5 or 6, it became more of a chore to watch. While it does have its fun moments, there weren't enough to reel me back in. I never finished an episode and wanted to watch another.

Overall: 5

Rolling Girls did little right, and a lot wrong. The lack of plot made it difficult to follow any encompassing story. Characters, art, and sound were fantastic, but didn't offer enough to save it. The anime tried too hard to be slice of life, after it set up a world that could be explored in a more action-adventure focused anime. They never delved into the possibly lush backstory that was set up in the first episode, merely saying, "This happened and now this is happening." In the end, the small hint of backstory played little role, even at the end of the series.

Rolling Girls is a big 'what if' to me. What if it was a 24 episode series? What if there was more plot? What if they stuck with the action? Sadly, we likely will never know.