Action Heroine Cheer Fruits

Several years ago, local heroines—superhero characters who represent towns and perform stage shows in order to raise their town's acclaim—had a boom in popularity. The most famous of these local heroines, Kamidaio, is scheduled to perform in the small town of Hinano, much to the excitement of Mikan Kise's little sister Yuzu. Unfortunately, when Mikan takes Yuzu to the show, she finds out that it has been canceled. She promises her distraught sister that she'll make sure she can see the show. Desperate not to let her down, Mikan asks her classmate, the local heroine fanatic An Akagi, for help.

Mikan and Ann put on their own Kamidaio performance clad in homemade costumes, which the kids in the audience love despite its lack of production value. The show is recorded by the student council president Misaki Shirogane, who posts it online to garner attention. Misaki is from a family of politicians and has taken it upon herself to revitalize Hinano. Impressed by their show, she recruits Mikan and An to become the official local heroines of their town. As the group works to improve their shows, they enlist the help of a variety of colorful individuals.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Akagi, An Main

Itou, Miku Japanese

Shirogane, Misaki Main

Ichimichi, Mao Japanese

Kuroki, Roko Main

Murakawa, Rie Japanese

Kise, Mikan Main

Yamazaki, Erii Japanese

Aoyama, Yuuki Main

Ishida, Haruka Japanese

Shimura, Kanon Main

Shiraishi, Haruka Japanese

Midorikawa, Mana Main

Hirose, Yuuki Japanese

Aoyama, Genki Main

Ishida, Haruka Japanese

Momoi, Hatsuri Main

Toyota, Moe Japanese

Kise, Yuzuka Supporting

Mizutani, Marin Japanese

Mizoguchi, Daigo Producer

Uemura, Shunichi Producer

Yoshikawa, Atsushi Producer

Amano, Shouta Producer

Reviews

Sep 30, 2017

Fircoal

Recommended

It's literally Love Live but better.

If you've seen Love Live before it's very clear where Action Heroine Cheer Fruits takes its inspiration from. They both have 9 main cast members and the whole concept of how the Cheer Fruits rank up and build a more local brand is directly copied from Love Live. While that does make it have a lot of Love Live's pluses and faults, what Action Heroine Cheer Fruits is able to do is add to it with its own unique charm and ideas.

First, the foremost interesting point about Action Heroine Cheer Fruits is its subject matter. Rather than be the ... thousandth iteration of an idol anime it focuses on something else entirely, that being super sentai like units. The unique premise itself is something I enjoy to see and personally, I enjoy it when shows are able to showcase more uncommon ideas and themes. It's not just that it covers local heroines but it's able to portray them well and show some of the perks of that role. It's heartwarming to see them act for the kids and it's great to see the impact that a unit of local heroines has on the community. The effect of local performers like these have on their communities is not often focused on, so it was nice to see a show that is able to express that and show the power it can have on a community.

Furthermore, the way that they made their performances were also a joy to see. Considering these local unit performances are designed to do live on stage in front of a small selection of people it makes sense that they don't have the highest production values behind them. And it shows, not only in the weak production values of the show but how they get by that in their performances. They use ingenuity to make their performances impactful, using whatever things that they manufacture together to make the great performance that they want to do. Using things such as cranes and planning along with local events and timetables in order to provide the best performances they can. The way that they not only perform for the locals but manage to so effectively include the local events and culture into their performances is what makes their message of locality shine so much. They truly feel like a local unit through and through.

The characters suffer from the same problems that the character's from Love Live do. While the ideas behind the characters are interesting, like they are in Love Live, the sheer amount of them makes it hard to go into depth into them. While they do at least get an episode that they are able to have the spotlight, the spotlight has to be shared with the general plot and the performances. With 9 characters to balance between the only time, a character can really get focus is in their episodes. This leads to more flat feeling characters and ones that despite having their own charms are harder to really love in the same way that one can if they were given more time. Despite each character having very good moments and making a good impact in their episode, the lack of full focus keeps them from having the true power that strong characters can have.

The animation can be somewhat lackluster at times and considering that a good portion of the show is movement based this is a bit of a problem. Moments that could have been made much stronger with better animation are weakened by the low quality. The performances themselves had a lot to gain by having better quality. While on one hand, it does weaken the show on another it can be endearing. Because the show is so local based and is so unpolished it does reflect the nature of the town and the atmosphere that they have. While personally, I think it goes too low quality for some of its moments the general idea and reflection of itself is quite nice.

Another strong point of the show is the whimsical traits of the world. One of my favorite facts is that one of the girls lives in a train car out by the station. It's such a cool house and she even has a miniature train that goes around on the top of her room. It's not that important of a point, most of these whimsical traits aren't, but they're something I do love to see.

While Love Live is polished, pretty, and bombastic, Action Heroine Cheer Fruits is muted, homely, and local. While the two shows are dealing with a lot of the same subject matter and material the implementation between the two varies completely. And that's what makes Action Heroine Cheer Fruits much more than just a copycat. Even though its ideas are straight from Love Live, and even though some of its copies are done unnecessarily and make it too like the original, the overall feel and result of the two shows are quite different. And they both have their worth. Even though I like this more than Love Live I can understand why someone would like Love Live more. It has its own charms and while I personally really enjoy the atmosphere and message of Action Heroine Cheer Fruits it's not like Love Live is devoid of that, it just doesn't resonate with me as well. The only big quality difference between the two is that Action Heroine Cheer Fruits keeps it's forced drama to a minimum while Love Live loves to roll around in it like it was a pig in the mud. But for what could have been just a shameless copycat it has a lot of power and charm to it, making it a worthwhile show of its own.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Sep 30, 2017

Classic_

Recommended

Well I can't say that I thought this anime would have me writing my very first review, but here we go.

Action Heroine Cheer Fruits was by far the biggest surprise to me this season. I started watching this show on a complete whim and I wasn't expecting much from it at all, but to my surprise as it went on I started to actually really enjoy it.

Story: When I started watching this it seemed like it was going to be a classic cute girls doing cute things anime, which I mean it still kinda was but it was different than most I have seen before. ... The story is about a group of girls trying to make it big by becoming their hometown's heroine group while having fun at the same time, and it develops quite well. We start off with just two of the eventual nine girls in total and they decide to try and put on a show for a few kids with nothing but a cardboard costume, then eventually progressing into something I doubt they even expected. I loved the progression of the story and watching them become a better team as a whole.

Art: The art style is nothing new nor is it that good but it was quite fitting of the theme in my opinion, it has a very colorful and lively feeling to it which keep me captivated the whole time.

Sound: The voice acting for the show was decent, some characters had more fitting voices than others but overall it was decent. The background music was very fitting as well and a couple of the OSTs were very memorable and catchy. Finally the opening song was good and really set the mood for the rest of the show and the ending song was decent with cute visuals.

Characters: Another very strong aspect of this show was it's characters. It's not like the characters personalities were entirely unique but that wasn't a huge problem for me. Nearly every character was developed fairy well which is something I don't see all that often with this type of anime. Each episode brought a new character and most had solid development, ranging from sad to heartwarming. As the characters joined the group they each found their place and every single one of them became an essential part of their productions ahead. From the cheerful and bouncy personality of Akagi to the sincere leader of the group Misaki, every character felt unique and important.

Enjoyment: This was a very fun, cute, and heartwarming anime to watch that brought unique elements to a common genre.

Overall: At the end of the day it was an enjoyable experience that was a complete surprise to me. I highly suggest giving this underrated anime a shot.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Aug 4, 2022

ggultra2764

Mixed Feelings

Unique in its focus compared to many recent anime titles that focus around pop idols, Action Heroine Cheer Fruits' main focus is on the formation of a local heroine group formed by a group of nine teenage girls to aid in their town's struggling popularity. Anime fans may be be familiar with local hero live-action acts being depicted in a number of anime titles. They basically serve as a stage version of tokusatsu series that are formed by local committees in Japan to entertain children, promote tourism for the town they represent, and support their local economies.

As far as the handling of the show goes, ... it has its ups and downs. The first episode starts things off fairly strong with the introduction of Ann and Mikan's characters in their amateur attempt to do their own show modeled after a local heroine. But they do lose some focus with the introduction of Misaki's character, who gets more prominent focus through the remainder of the series. Other characters are introduced through the anime's first half to add more stage effects and enhance the performances of the heroine group as they form Cheer Fruits. Besides Misaki, some of the other characters do get their developments that aid them in supporting the efforts of the Cheer Fruits group and giving them unique personality quirks to give them some more dimension, including a unique instance of having a wheelchair-bound character in the form of Genki whose disability is subtly shown and contributes to story developments with her and her sister, former idol Yuki. Others, like Kanon and Mamoi, are largely pretty one-note with their characters and don't do much else after their debut episodes beyond serving whatever character type they are meant to depict.

Outside exploring the characters, Cheer Fruits does a pretty solid job embracing the action hero premise. Besides nods and references to other tokusatsu shows, the series explores the planning that the girls get into with scripting, costumes, fight choreography, and stage effects for their performances. The typical elements of action hero shows are present in their performances with the color theme of the hero costumes, battling against costumed villains, and having the audience participation element for children to provide the heroes with power-up encouragements through their cheering. The fight choreography during the performances have their moments of being engaging, though often suffers from Diomedea trying to cut corners with animation through frequent use of montage sequences.

In short, Action Heroine Cheer Fruits is pretty mixed as far as quality goes. Its premise is a fresh focus on the local hero scene of Japanese communities and a number of the characters do get some fleshing out and development. But not all the characters are fleshed out and for a series with fight choreography as its core element for its premise, the animation is mediocre at best. But for the unique focus alone, I'd at least suggest watching the series at least once to see if you enjoy it or not.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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	Poll: Action Heroine Cheer Fruits Episode 11 Discussion Stark700 - Sep 21, 2017	8 replies	by DolFunDolphinVT »» Jun 28, 7:43 PM
	Poll: Action Heroine Cheer Fruits Episode 12 Discussion Stark700 - Sep 28, 2017	24 replies	by DolFunDolphinVT »» Jun 28, 7:42 PM
	Poll: Action Heroine Cheer Fruits Episode 10 Discussion Stark700 - Sep 14, 2017	12 replies	by DolFunDolphinVT »» Jun 28, 7:41 PM
	Poll: Action Heroine Cheer Fruits Episode 5 Discussion Stark700 - Aug 3, 2017	18 replies	by SlammyHammy »» Sep 20, 2023 9:23 PM
	Poll: Action Heroine Cheer Fruits Episode 9 Discussion Stark700 - Sep 7, 2017	10 replies	by Serafos »» Apr 13, 2021 12:06 PM