Action Heroine Cheer Fruits

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.

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.

Sooo have Sakura Quest's quest to give a town recognition with Love Live's idol ranking just substitute idols with sentai action heroines...strangely it works.

To be honest here though, LA's first impressions on Action Heroine Cheer Fruits was not a great one, from Action Heroine Cheer Fruits' sentai element being amateur-ish (which WAS the point) and cringeworthy by that matter for such a simple matter of pleasing Mikan Kise's little sister. However Action Heroine Cheer Fruits is one of those animes where you need to take a step back and wait for it to get better and it does.

Action Heroine Cheer Fruits kickstarts with that incident ... with the amateur show of pleasing Mikan Kise's little sister bringing in the sights of Misaki Shirogane voiced by M.A.O wanting to bring recognition to her hometown (as well as the main cast) of Hinano City. From there and after a copyright tongue and cheek moment, they form the sentai action heroine group of Hina-Nectar.

Action Heroine Cheer Fruits's characters are pretty diverse all things considering though they have shades of personality from the original Love Live. We have An Akagi (Hina-Red) voiced by Miku Ito who is essentially Honoka from Love Live but having a durable body and able to do many stunts on her own, she also has an unknown rivalry with Kanon Shimura (Hina-Black) voiced by Haruka Shirashi, Kanon herself is the regal ojou character who always wanted to beat An at everything, after she joins Hina-Nectar, she becomes the villain for the Hina-Nectar series because of her regal vocals working well for the bad guy role. Next is Mana Midorikawa (Hina-Green) voiced by Yuuki Hirose who is money hungry and goes for the MERCHANDISE MERCHANDISE for Hina-Nectar. Roko Kuroki voiced by Rie Murakawa is best friends with Misaki and is in the villain role for Hina-Nectar as it just suited her demeanor, also yeah Roko and Misaki got some slight yuri vibes here and there LA isn't gonna lie, another admirer of Misaki is Hatsuri Momoi (Hina-Pink) voiced by Moe Toyota who kinda takes things too far at times considering she's from a construction family and is the pyrotechnic expert of Hina-Nectar, ohh and she adores Misaki to the point of calling her Lady Gozen. Second to last are the Aoyama twin sisters both voiced by Haruka Ishida, Yuuki (Hina-Blue) does have character development as at first she's extremely paranoid by society thinking she's a failure and the Hina-Nectar group conforms and rids of her paranoia, however only after this she just become the supporting character to her sister Genki who is the mission control of the whole operation of Hina-Nectar shows as well as the strict trainer from hell during practice. Mikan (Hina-Yellow) who was the catalyst in the first place, she plays the role of scriptwriter in order to get rid of her shyness and is generally the heart of the show and able to rally the Hina-Nectar, yes she falls under the cliche that shy girls have but HOW she does it is quite different to say the least. Finally we have Misaki Shirogane (Platinum) who is the leader of Hina-Nectar behind the scenes and always thinking up ways to evolve Hina-Nectar, she has hints of character development in the form of her extremely bad luck and this becomes a plotpoint both in the Hina-Nectar show AND her own character resolution, if anything she gets the most character development from the Hina-Nectar group. Action Heroine Cheer Fruits' characters are diverse, distinct and memorable which it itself is a huge strength for this anime.

You want Hina-Nectar to succeed and by extension Misaki's true goal by the end of it, essentially rooting for the underdog to do their best, like Love Live did with idols and before LA starts, Action Heroine Cheer Fruits already has their own distinct personality of it's own with it's sentai element and characters themselves with their own quirks and mannerisms (though yeah genkiness is universal here, LA can't fault Action Heroine Cheer Fruits that) and to say that it's greatly deviating from Love Live to be it's own thing.

LA's favourite character would be either Kanon Shimura because of her nice chemistry with An as well as Genki due to her personality and funny quirk of strict trainer from hell.

The animation by diomedea is once again expected moe, from the character designs and the such, the sentai shows shown are pretty well done from the somewhat fluid battle motions the characters pull off though in the latter half of the anime, it tends to go with one-shot shots of character doing their motion and not much else, sometimes it's meant to show time passing but sometimes not-so as yeah diomedea isn't exactly the masters of animating fluid battles ALL the time like Bones but still the animated fight scenes are done well for the most part, LA won't fault diomedea on what they could do nonetheless. From that the special effects elements from the flashy flairs they pull off to the sentai shows are reminiscent of the old sentai shows only it's "live". diomedea did what diomedea did well, from the moe atmosphere and character designs to some flair done with it's sentai shows, typical but still well done.

The voice acting, LA would say that there are some slight squeakers in this anime cast (eg. Miku Ito as An, Erii Yamazaki as Mikan and Moe Toyota as Hatsuri), thankfully they aren't too annoying and rarely annoyed LA anyways. LA's favourite voice actor is the same as LA's favourite characters, Haruka Ishida and Haruka Shiriashi.

Action Heroine Cheer Fruits for LA is what happens when you are given a terrible first impression but it got better over time and surprisingly it did better than LA expected by the end of it, as the cast grew, their personalities clashed and interacted with each other all the more better for the characters, the Hina-Nectar show simultaneously having their own plotline in which LA being honest here, LA wanted to know what would happen next, like LA became 10 years old again, the sentai shows maybe campy and childish (the in-universe audience are targeted towards kids) yes but again due to knowing the cast members of Hina-Nectars and their struggles and developments as characters, we want to root for them and get into their creation of Hina-Nectar.

Action Heroine Cheer Fruits is a valiant effort from diomedea in making an anime original about action heroines in the sentai genre, from the great character development, nice and uniquely different premise, good animation and a great voice cast. Action Heroine Cheer Fruits is one of LA's surprising animes from the Summer of 2017 right next to and below Tsurezure Children. LA will say something LA had been saying about Action Heroine Cheer Fruits once LA started to get into it...

"Sakura Quest with Love Live but Sentai.....weird combination sure...but it strangely works!"

CHARACTER: 9

They're diverse in age, body types, and even abilities - something rare for any anime, let alone a cute-action one.

I love that the 'disabled' character actually has so much more to her than her disability - in fact, it's only ever brought up in context of her relationships, and even then it's not really the issue at hand. Too often, disabled characters seem to become their disabilities, and it gets played for sympathy and laughs - Genki is neither.

Half the characters come off as either Love Live or Precure copies initially, but every single one has far more to their character than meets the ... eyes, and besides superficial similarities, are all very different from their apparent inspiration.

No single character has the limelight for a full episode, so each character is as memorable and lovable as the last, which is an impressive feat with such a large cast. Sometimes, episodes have a clear protagonist, but even then they're guided and pushed forward by the others.

The relationships between the duos are very well thought out, believable and entertaining. Unfortunately, they don't vibe so well as an overall group, and it often ends up feeling clunky when they're all together.

STORY: 8

The concept is awesome - what can girls who can't sing do to bring fame to their town? Apparently, put on magical girl stage shows. It's cool, unique, and as someone who can't sing myself, is a great alternative to the usual miraculously a-cappella tween fair. The fact they clearly start from nothing, and face issues like those in the real life film industry do, is awesome.

Everything serves a purpose - no side plot or back story is wasted, either building individuals, relationships, or pushing the girls forward.

Unfortunately, the pacing goes from meandering to racing and back again, making it difficult at times to feel as engaged. Plus, the motivation for it all is lacking, with most of it coming from only three members of the cast, with the others seemingly just along for the ride.

SOUND : 7

There's nothing amazing going on here - it's fairly standard Magical Girl stuff, with a handful of cute idol thrown in. The theme tune is catchy, the ending is generic, and the action scene are exactly what you'd expect.

ART: 7.5

Some of it is smartly done - their costumes for example start simple, but steadily improve and become more complicated as the show continues Other things, like the extreme shows of emotion, do well at providing comedy without resorting to chibis. The scenery, on the other hand, remains pretty bland and simple throughout.


OVERALL: 8

This show has a lot to offer to fans of both Magical Girl and Idol shows - or those looking to try the other genre. It's unique and fun, but not perfect by any means.

A cute anime of cute girls doing cute things. Not much else to say besides that. As cliche as the story was, most of the characters keep you going and wanting to push forward. I say most because of my main reason for watching the anime was never actually answered. I like backstory; I think they did it extremely well with Misaki.

The character they never touched on, though, was Genki. What we know: her dreams growing up with her sister, all of the idol songs they sang, and what happened with her sister/avoiding spoilers. You know what we never got, though? The explanation of ... the injury. All we know is that she's wheelchair bound, but can walk with a cane. We're never told what the injury was, and that completely ruined everything for me.

I went in with a question and never got it answered.

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.

Its fresh blend of action and slice-of-life makes this anime stand out. The plot, featuring high school girls becoming local "heroines", provides entertaining moments. The vibrant action sequences and lively character designs contribute to the series' energetic appeal, but nothing special. Exploring the characters' daily lives adds an extra layer of connection. However, the series could benefit from more development, some characters left you with questions too. While the live performances shine, the central plot can feel somewhat predictable to me. Some secondary characters might have been given more attention to enhance the overall narrative. Despite this, it offers an enjoyable experience, particularly for those ... seeking a unique mix of action and slice-of-life