Hachigatsu no Cinderella Nine

Based on the original game, the anime itself is a promotion for the game. The theme of the anime is obviously friendship, baseball, and cute girls.

First of all, the comparison people make to Love Live is definitely way off mark here. If you expecting love live here, then this is not for you. if you are expecting hanebado, then this is not for you. This is actually much more like Girls un Panzer.

The premise isn't anything new, the over arching story is nothing outstanding, each episode vaguely focuses on one/group of characters that fleshes out their back story.

The anime is pretty grounded in reality,there is ... no special power or anything like saki/hanebado, but all of it is based on handwork of training. You can't just overcome obstacles with friendship, but as a team sport, trusts is definitely something that a team needs.

You can definitely tell the animation drop in quality at certain spots (usually dialogue heavy scenes), but the actual baseball scenes are above average in most cases.

To the people who said the story is bland, they probably just watched the anime on the side while doing other activities and didn't really watch watch. Because there are several subplots that actually is well written such as the main character and her best friend.

Not the best anime, but definitely have a "fresh" feel to it and overall enjoyable.

Cute girls playing baseball isn't anything new but Hachigatsu no Cinderella Nine takes it into mediocre strides....ohh and the animation isn't too good either...

Hachigatsu no Cinderella Nine is your typical cute girls playing baseball, the catch?...well the one inspired to make a baseball team in her school played before and she wants to play baseball. The catch is still cliche in some respects but the real problems lies in it's animation but that a bit later.

Hachigatsu no Cinderella Nine's characters are probably one of it's more stronger elements of the anime so let's start with it's characters.

Tsubasa Arihara voiced by Nozomi Nishida and our main ... narrative focus is your typical genki leader type character akin to Honoka from Love Live but baseball, she's your all rounder in a sense and one of the main reasons the rest of the cast gravitate towards her and baseball, Ryo Shinonome voiced by Reina Kondo is your typical kuudere but is one of the leading aces in the cast being similar to Arihara in term sof experience but fills in the missing expertise that Arihara lacks, Yuki Nozaki voiced by Saki Minami is your typical ojou-like character and like most of the cast is a newbie to baseball but quickly picks things up, sorta a voice of reason towards the group but is your typical calm, cool headed ojou. Akane Ukita voiced by Yumiri Hanamori is your typical shy girl and is a catcher for the team but gets sever inferiority complex later. Tomoe Kawakita voiced by Honoka Inoue is Arihara's best friend and ventures with Arihara in forming a baseball team, she gets a bit of development in terms of her and Arihara's friendship and Tomoe wanting to learn without Arihara and this gets into a little bit of drama with Arihara as a result. If there one real flaw towards it's main cast of character is what LA has been saying about every character, "typical"...or more harsher "cliche" but nonetheless Hachigatsu no Cinderella Nine's characters is WAY better than it's weak typical plot.

The plot follows Arihara wanting to form a baseball team is the basic template but to add to that, we look into each of the characters, some who come later to actually form the "9" in the title and some of the characters developments and "episodes" are decent in certain respects, from Tomoe to Akane. Since the plot follows the character development switching formula it goes with the only upside is the formation of the team and learning of any new newcomer to the team but in terms of plot, it's ok once the entire group forms and the anime starts focusing on the character development of the members as well as honing the characters with baseball and later on a tournament in seeing the characters progress sports-wise as a clutch.

LA was suppose to praise this anime but with the next thing coming up, guess not...

Hachigatsu no Cinderella Nine's animation done by TMS Entertainment is probably one of the inconsistent messes of Spring 2019 and shame since the character designs went not derping is one of the best things about the anime. Hachigatsu no Cinderella Nine's animation to say with absolute honesty is a derp ridden facial distorted mess of an anime, it's no My SIster My Writer levels, but if there was one full length anime LA watched in Spring 2019 that was this inconsistent and filled with low quality animation derps then Hachigatsu no Cinderella Nine was this. LA doesn't know was TMS Entertainment stretched in animating this and the remake Fruits Basket that Hachigatsu no Cinderella Nine was this bad in the animation department?. Nonetheless as much as LA wanted to praise Hachigatsu no Cinderella Nine for it's character designs, it slips quite easily due to it's derpy animation littered throughout the anime.

The voice acting was....decent...seriously was the least interested and "meh" element of the anime, expected from a typical cute girls playing sports anime.

With all the flaws seeping out of this anime, LA doesn't outright hate this anime but it wasn't exactly nice going through to this anime to the end to the state it was at from episode 1 and again, this anime wasn't My Sister My Writer terms of derps in terms of it's animation but Hachigatsu no Cinderella Nine isn't helped by the fact that this anime was adapted from a mobile game and that's where all the flaws now makes MUCH MORE sense (sans animation).

Well LA won't push Hachigatsu no Cinderella Nine even more as one of the better dynamics of the anime is the comparison towards Arihara's Satogahama team and the Seijo High's baseball team, budding rival teams that met in a practice game. As Arihara looks more towards having fun with the team and teamwork through her teammates strengths and weaknesses, while Seijo High's captain is more focused on winning and bearing everything on herself in order to win the tournament, it's just kinda too bad that this dynamic only arrives at the finale and is only touched upon.

Hachigatsu no Cinderella Nine wasn't exactly the one of the worst animes LA watched in Spring 2019, yes it had a rather typical underdog sports plot, cliche characters with ONLY saving grace being some of it's character's developments and horrible animation filled with animation derps, nonetheless with all this being said and how much LA beaten this anime with all the criticism that LA levied on it...it was cliche yet harmless, cliche for a sports anime yet harmless what with it's character development of the cast and typical underdog plot.

Nine out of Ten?, pffftt it wishes...nah rather spin that nine 180 degrees.

I've watched my fair share of sports anime, especially recently where I've been on a girls sports anime kick, and I have to tell you Cinderella Nine is possibly the most boring one I've watched so far.

Story: Cliche as hell. Cliche is expected in sports anime but holy crap is this anime just by-the-numbers all the way through. The only "interesting" part is that the club isn't a club until Episode 8, before that is is an "association". Additionally the way the team is formed is, for the most part, hilariously terrible. Characters are introduced and join sometimes in the same scene, while characters like ... Nakano join because reasons.

Art: Holy crap is the art medicore, or even bad. Characters barely move outside them playing baseball (Asada spraying the team with the hose is a prime example of this), the lip syncing is not very good at points (Iwaki especially), goofy faces are a main stay, and I've even noticed a colour inconistancy as early as episode 2 (Suzuki's blue glove turns tan when Ukita takes over playing catch). It seems like there was little in terms of quality control and the characters' faces always look wonky. There's also a fair few scenes that are static scenario with the characters' faces flashing over it as a form of "reaction". It's really bad.

Sound: The OP is decent, and some of the music plays turning big emotional scenes is passable but over all not great. Nakano's voice drives me up a wall.

Characters: There are a lot of characters and nearly all of them get no meaningful screen time or development. The only decent character in my opinion is Kurashiki since she has a decent character design and a more interesting back story. Nakano is the worst, with her nyan speech pattern making her unbearable. Asada is fine I guess, if not very bland. Iwaki and Ukita are annoying. Suzuki has some interesting aspects to her in episode 2 but afterwards has the personality of wet paper. Arihara has the personality of a main protag but without the screen time or growth or interesting back story, and her friend Kawakita grows in episode 7 but otherwise is like a cinderblock. Nozaki has dumb hair but is fine, and Tsukumo is fine. Other characters are kind of just there. The teacher character is the generic supportive teacher archetype so eh.

Enjoyment: What a slog. Every episode felt like they were 60 minutes, rather than 24 minutes. I was able to easy binge other terrible shows like Hanebado! because at least they weren't boring. Hanebado! may have been a melodramatic pile of garbage but it was at least a melodramatic pile of garbage and not a boring pile of garbage.

Overall: Would not recommend to anyone. Cute girls doing cute things? The girls aren't that cute due to derp faces and weak character designs. Sports? baseball is a fairly boring sport in my opinion, and the anime doesn't even really go into that much detail.

3/10 bad anime is bad