Dive!!

I'd like to recommend an anime that doesn’t get much love on MyAnimeList, but that I personally really enjoyed: DIVE!!

The Mizuki Diving Club (MDC) is on the verge of being shut down. To turn things around, an American coach named Kayoko Asaki is brought in, with one clear goal: get at least one of the boys to qualify for the Olympics.

The anime gives us a real glimpse into how challenging the sport of diving is. It’s not enough to perform clean dives — athletes also have to choose high-difficulty and visually impressive dives to catch the judges’ attention.

The club dynamic is also interesting: the boys ... are friends, teammates, and rivals, all competing for the same dream.

The main characters include:

Tomoki, sensitive and sometimes insecure, but deeply passionate;

Yōichi, the team’s star, pressured by his father’s expectations;

Shibuki Okitsu, a wild and instinctive diver from the sea, held back by a back injury;

and Reiji and Tsuji, who are still developing but just as determined.

I also really liked Coach Kayoko — a strong, driven woman who puts her heart and soul into helping these boys reach their full potential.

In the end, DIVE!! is a story about sports, growth, and emotional bonds, and I think it deserves much more appreciation. If you like sports anime with real heart, give this one a chance!

So I was looking through the "Summer Stack Challenges" and saw Dive!!, I like diving sports so I took a shot at this anime. It's missing everything that the other sports animes have, for example, there's a lack of energy and adrenaline that the characters give off making them forgettable and a bit boring. Additionally, there's a lack of information about the diving techniques, scoring, and difficulty levels. Furthermore, in other sports animes, there is competition and we get to see the teams progress in order to beat the other teams, in Dive!! there are hardly any competitors shown; it makes us ... (the audience) question what pushes these characters to improve and train harder.

Additionally, there are moments in the anime that build tension, however we don't get to see anything come out of those scenes. The characters hardly develop, and we don't get the chance to see them push or challenge themselves to overcome these hardships.

anime felt pretty boring to me to be honest, i don't think it really focus on the main plot which is "Diving". there isn't much explanation about the sport related topic as well.

additionally, the characters' drama seems to overshadow the plot. too dramatic for my liking to be honest.

even though, i like watching "diving" sport during olympics etc., i think there should have been explanation on their points grading during competition because not many people would have understand how they are being graded.

but in general, can't really expect much from anime that ends in twelve or thirteen episodes as many things will be ... squeeze into such little episodes and a lot of explanations are left out which always keep people guessing when the anime ends.