Skate-Leading☆Stars

After watching the rest of the series, I still stand by my original review. I don't even know what the point of this show is. As someone who shamelessly loves watching terrible sports anime for the sake of pretty boys/fujo bait, this show somehow managed to offer me none of that.

The main issues with Skate Leading Stars stem from the fact that the "sport" it's centered around isn't real. Skate Leading doesn't exist in real life. The writers tried to create some hybrid form of team figure skating with elements from single Men's Free Skate/Short Program, but you quickly find out that the writers didn't ... bother to expand on it afterwards. You get some sad excuse of an explanation at the very beginning of the series and then you never see/hear about it ever again. I'm not saying that the "sport" in a sports anime needs to be realistic, but if you're going to add that as an element, at least give it more attention than what you gave it in this show. The anime itself doesn't even show much of the sport in general. If you've seen other sports anime (Prince of Tennis, Slam Dunk, Kuroko's Backetball, Ace of Diamonds, Haikyuu, etc.), you know that one of the major points of animation is the actual sport itself. You can see that the animators show the movements and the game actually play out in those series. You don't get that with Skate Leading Stars. You get a shot of the five-man team spin around for 3 seconds at a time and random frame cuts to stills or scenes where there's minimal movement.

It's almost as if the point of the show isn't about the sport, but the relationship building that happens between the characters. That's also not what happens in this show either. The show does a terrible job of building any of the characters and their motivations for trying to win the Grand Prix. The main character, Maeshima Kensei, gives up solo figure skating because his rival, Shinozaki Reo, doesn't acknowledge him or his skill because Maeshima could never beat him in a competition. Somehow, between quitting his solo career and being in high school, he gets convinced by a classmate, Sasugai Hayato, that he should take up skate leading in order to beat Shinozaki, who also just happened to quit his solo career and join skate leading at a rival school. There's no rhyme or reason for any of these events to happen and you don't understand why any of this happens, other than for convenience. You get introduced to a bunch of "rivals" that have 0 background and are very 1-dimensional and boring. The relationships shown between Maeshima and his other teammates are also poorly developed. No one on his team liked him, but somehow, the very next episode shows that they're fine with him being on the team with no context/development in between. There's one episode where one of Maeshima's teammates transfers schools and they try to convince him to come back, but then the very next episode, all of the characters forget he even exists. The continuity is all over the place with random time skips. I'm honestly not even sure what the time is currently in the story because it jumped all over the place and skipped seasons in the universe.

I can't fault the art. The art is fine. It's inoffensive. It's competent. The character designs are quite boring. They also all have no personalities, so it's hard for you to become attached to any of them. Even as fujo bait, there's nothing that really draws you to any of them, since none of them have any attractive/interesting features. Looks are one thing, but if there's no personality, you're not going to be attracting the same people who like other sports anime for the sake of pretty boys with some personality.

I see this anime get compared to Yuri on Ice a lot and most people who are disappointed in it are the same people who thought it would be like Yuri on Ice. Skate Leading Stars is not supposed to be another Yuri on Ice. It's a sad excuse of combining Prince of Tennis/Kuroko's Basketball elements with a fake team figure skating sport. Do not watch this anime if your main intention is to fill a Yuri on Ice void because it's nothing like it. If anything, compare this anime with other team-based sports anime and you'll quickly see that it fails on so many different levels.

Overall, this anime is just poorly done, story-wise. It fails as a sports anime because the sport isn't real, the writers made the sport irrelevant to the story and there's next to no animation related to the sport itself. It fails as a fujo bait anime because the characters have the most boring, inoffensive designs with 0 personality. It wouldn't even matter if this anime came out during a different season because it's still bad. The 12 episodes it's getting is not enough to tell a decent story with sports as the main focus. If you tried to condense any other sports manga/anime into a 12 episode standalone series, it would be just as bad as Skate Leading Stars. If this show spanned 2 seasons, there's a chance that it would have a better story than what it currently has. As it stands, this is an anime you should skip if you like the sports genre or pretty boys. There's so many better shows out there for either category.

While watching this anime , I checked many reviews and many of them were from people that only watched 4 episodes , which i find dumb because you only watched 33% of the anime..
Anyways , this anime is overall good , its the basic story of a childhood "war" between the main character and a support/main character, the art is good and the characters were differentiated , the sound was fair tho it was many times repeated the same song, mostly on the first few episodes.
The anime had everything to be better if it wasn't rushed and didnt end the way it did , and ... of course if it had more episodes.

I feel like this winter it came out alot of good animes with alot of potential , tho I liked this anime , I don't think there's that big of a fandom willing to watch the next season.

Skate-Leading☆Stars is... I don't really know. Honestly, I was hoping for much better, and I still am. Still, it's worth checking out.

The story itself is pretty average, with the main character's only motivation being to beat his childhood rival. Maeshima said he would quit ice-skating if he lost to Shinozaki when they were kids, and he lost by less than a point and came in second place. He quit skating, and continued to be a sore loser about it. When Shinozaki switches over to skate-leading, his brother decides to get Maeshima to help him beat out Shinozaki in skate-leading. There's not really any drive for ... self improvement, creating friendships, or making skate-leading into a career for himself. All Maeshima is concerned about is beating out Shinozaki, and then... who knows. It feels pretty lackluster, so I'm not really sure what direction they're going to go with the plot.

The art itself and animation is good, no complaints there. The art style is more simplistic, but that fits the show well in this case.

The ED isn't too great, but the OP is really catchy and stuck in my head. I'm not too sure if that's a good thing or not, but it made its way into my playlist, so that counts for something. The sound effects match the setting and the atmosphere, which helps them match with the visuals and world itself and sound realistic enough.

The characters are the biggest fault of the show. More specifically, the main characters, Maeshima and Shinozaki. Shinozaki just seems detached from everything in general, more so than what would seem natural for a detached, nonchalant character. Maeshima on the other hand, manages to get on every single one of my nerves. He's cocky, annoying, stubborn, arrogant, loud, and just frustrating to watch. He doesn't ever really think about others, and is only concerned about beating Shinozaki. He makes messes and causes problems without thinking about the effects of them, and typically drags others into those problems. I'm really hoping he gets some character development, and it seems the other characters in the show hope so too.

Overall, it's pretty fun to watch, as Maeshima's annoying moments are pretty brief. The story should begin to pick up soon, as they begin to train for competitions and actually compete.

Would this be my first recommendation for someone looking for a new anime to watch? Absolutely not. But if you like ice skating and attractive-ish boys, then sure, give it a whirl and see how you like it. I'm a pretty hopeful person, so I still give it a 7 overall with expectations for the plot to expand upon itself and for lots of character development. If I were you, I'd watch the first couple episodes and see for myself if I enjoy it or not, but you won't really miss out on anything by not watching it.


Hope this helped and have a great day :)

Well well, what a disappointment of a show indeed to no one's surprise. I have rephrased this many times in my reviews over the last few years, and it is that: Even if you have high-profile people working on shows, it's not indicative of any results unless we the viewers can see whether the talent or inspiration has been carried over from past shows with their name carved as a household name.

And yet still, even with legendary director Gorou Taniguchi on board, Skate-Leading☆Stars still feels like a ham-fisted show with an unique setting already grounded by the likes of Yuri on Ice!! (creating the male ... derivative to the females' CGDCT of "Handsome Bishounens Doing Handsome Troupes"), but the script and storywriting itself is written by someone who's had the idea of creating a story that's just being the equivalent to the usual "child's play" of a stupid and nonsensical "revenge game" plot. Bear in mind that at the time of this review, Gorou Taniguchi is also helming directorial duties for another show this season: Back Arrow (the mech series that fit most of his work ethos). That's why the production team had to get another director to oversee this show, and it had to be Major's director Toshinori Fukushima since he has a lot of background on sports anime, and hoped that his director position would salvage the best parts of the show (which he did, but often is limited due to the simple storytelling).

The story and plot of this show is just the simple, typical childhood "war" of the main trio of brotherly characters: Kensei Maeshima, Hayato Sasugai and Reo Shinozaki. The former a dropout from figure skating; the latter being someone who used to compete on the grounds, but due to a serious injury he is relegated to being a team strategist; and the last is the arrogant champion-type person who only aspires to go beyond than where he is now, all else are stepping stones to his main goal. Together with the enrollment of their respective regional schools, and "un"intenionally sucking teammates into their rivalry, the "road to stardom" ensues to trump over challenges and be the top gun that reigns supreme. Now tell me how rather dull, boring and predictable all of this sounds.

The characters aren't anything to write home about (much less remember their names), despite being designed by another legend: Yana Toboso of Black Butler. It just feels like overtime you're trying to understand where the characters come from, but seemingly most of their actions either halt or impede further warranted actions of proof, despite trying their absolute best to deliver the best they could. At best, they aren't as annoying, but at worst, they can get obnoxious and grinding on your ears, especially the "red-haired bull dog" Maeshima with his complete temperament of a character indeed being a yapping dog that just couldn't shut up and always have to prove by words instead of his actions (and I thank God that Hayato is always the one to stop him, he's a caretaker too that plays the game differently). The best character IMO is Izumi Himekawa, being the figure skater that somehow couldn't mesh together with the Ionodai High School team, he transferred over to another school's team to broaden his horizons, and that was what I wanted to see: at least SOME character development done decently, even if the majority of the cast are of cliques in the same regard.

It's J.C.Staff back at it for the animation and visuals, and literally it just looked...OK at best. Even though there was nothing that blew me away, at least the presentation for the figure-skating scenes were a touch above average. Once again, you can't compare this to the infinitely superior Production I.G.'s Yuri on Ice!!, so at least there is a distinction between the two shows. And also, sad to say that even though the sound directing legend Jin Aketagawa is helping out (as is with many anime in this day and age), I'd say he'd be better off not being hired to be part of this variety-lacking of a show. Same goes with the OST, while it's catchy on the Bishounen level, there isn't as much appeal of Seiyuus helming OPs and/or EDs if their fanbase in Japan isn't as big as the others (say Daisuke Ono for example).

All in all, you could have better if you have watched Yuri on Ice!! instead of this shallow-minded thought process of a mediocre show that should not have been worth the time for legendary people to have worked on, and get decreasing popularity overtime. To the minority that enjoyed this (even if this was targeted to the Shoujo audience), I'm sorry but this isn't really worth your time either due to how BS the story plot and characters are by themselves, and having plot holes to fill from the viewers' behalf. Just pass this one up, and follow the feels-satisfyingly-good figure-skating, skate-leading path to greatness with...you've guessed it: Yuri on Ice!!.

Winter 2021 came with many good animes but there was a worst anime also came and that is the the skate leading star.Skate leading has the dumbest plot I have seen in any anime.

The main character of this anime "Maeshima" whose parents were died in an car accident and being living with grandfather and grandmother.In his primary life he was lost two times against a penis boy "Reo Shinozaki" in a famous tournament called "All Japan Novice Championship"Then Maeshima quit the skating because he was not acknowledged by Reo...(like all rivalry in all animes).When he was studying in high school he met Reo younger brother ... "Hyato" who wanted to beat his own half brother by using Maeshima.So Maeshima again entre in the world of skating...wtf
It is like saying to someone else child
"hey kiddo I will be your dad from now on because your mom dump me and she married with my big brother.So I will train you that how____________________.(Fill the blank with your own thoughts)*.

In the 1st episode,they also gave brief introduction of skate leading.


There are very plot holes in the in every episode.The character development was worse than anyone.90% of the characters are full of pride meaning they believe they are the number one player in the world.For example, a character quit the club because Maeshima join the team because he didn't like Maeshima...They didn't show the perfect reason and tell that he want to be in leading(They all.are studying in high school but arguing over on childish reasons).
If you focus in each episode there were also.many dubbing and voice overing problems meaning (One of the character is anime looking happy and firmed but the voice actor voice is dull like he was forcing to voice over because they also know that they are doing a shity show).I also fell dissatisfied by the voice of Reo which is covered by one of the best voice actor but does not gave us vibes like other voices.The animation in this anime was fair but It can be more good.

However I didn't like the anime at all because of its bullshit story and characters.This was the worst and dumbest sports anime ever.I am feeling miserable to writing this review on the worst show.So In the end,
(1/10).

An anime about ice skating, with a cast of hot guys and possible drama between two of the main characters? Hmm, I wonder what this reminds me of...

Nah. Going into this expecting Yuri On Ice 2.0 will only lead to disappointment. Despite liking YOI a lot, I did not go into this expecting a copy of it. At the same time, let's not pretend that two anime about ice skating, with a cast consisting predominantly of men, won't be compared. Now that we got that out of the way: this review covers episodes 1-5 of the anime, because I simply couldn't afford it more grace ... than that.

The characters are nothing to write home about. Maeshima is Our Protagonist With A Dream who returns to skating after a break of a few years; this "dream" of his consists of beating Reo, his supposed rival...because Reo was rude to him a bit in middle school once. Maeshima is like Eren at the start of SnK, in that he yells a lot, is impulsive and rude, and thinks he can do everything by himself — and, for some reason, he can perform very high level routines easily after being off the ice for a few years. Cool cool. Joining him in this grudge is Sasugai — the smug, grinning, info-dumping brother of Reo, who also has a bone to pick with him. Then we get treated to a plethora of guys whose only differentiating characteristics are their names and one major trait: the playful one, the people-pleaser, the arrogant one etc. If you've seen a reverse harem anime or a sports anime (or most anime with a larger cast of young male characters), you'll know what to expect.

But the directing is quite possibly the most confusing thing about this anime. Not that it made things hard to understand, but after introducing so many characters it seems to leave little time for making the viewer actually CARE about them as well. Shouting at each other isn't character development (and I'll blame this annoying voice acting on the directing as well), and introducing even more characters just when the viewer begins to get used to existing ones just makes things needlessly confusing, because now you can only afford to give each character 1-2 lines here and there in order to fit everyone in and to make sure the viewer doesn't forget they exist.

Are the characters just a vehicle to deliver awesome performances? Nope, because we barely see tiny parts of the actual routines. Is Maeshima more of an observer-type protagonist? Nope, because everyone else is even less developed than him i.e. even less interesting to follow. Is this anime Maeshima's story? Who knows, because anytime it seems to focus a bit on him, it shifts away to other characters (again, gotta give them all screentime). In 5 episodes we haven't had any character growth for absolutely any of the cast, who remain as shouty, bland and generic as they were introduced.

The most baffling part of all this is that, in an ANIME ABOUT SKATING, we barely see any skating! Routines are interrupted all the time with irrelevant cuts to other characters' reactions, which completely ruin the flow of the performances. And it's not like it's supposed to be a character drama like Taisou Zamurai was for gymnastics, because the characters are bland and the only struggles they have are picking whom to argue with next!

To quote one of my own comments: one character says "Wow! To land a quadruple easily like that." and I guess we have to take the guy's word for it, because the only part of the routine that we see is the very end — and even then it's from way back in the seats in the audience. It's lazy of a visual medium to constantly TELL how good these guys are, instead of SHOWING them skate. The animation itself isn't visually exciting at all, as most scenes consist only of mouth-flapping. Just...the absolute bare minimum. For crissakes, half of the OPENING is white text on a black screen and feels very much like a prototype leaked way before its scheduled release date. A lower budget doesn't automatically translate to a shitty product, but when your budget isn't enough to spotlight the thing that everyone is here for...why even bother?

Episode 5 was the final nail in the coffin for me: a skating competition between Maeshima and another guy is lazily represented through two dots with light trails moving on a screen, Powerpuff Girls-style. But I suppose it could've been worse — they could've only had Sasugai narrating what was going on.

So if the characters are bland, and the music is unremarkable, and the skating is mediocre, and the directing is bad...what is GOOD about this anime? Well, the character designs are decent, the OP song is pretty catchy after a few listens, and the few seconds of sakuga afforded to skating in each episode are nice. But overall it's...bland. Two months from now, I can't see myself remembering what the hell this anime is about if it didn't have "Skate" in the title. But if you're looking for something to leave on in the background, or turn off your brain to, you can give this a shot. Just don't expect anything to blow you away.

No. This is not Yuri!!! On Ice.

I have seen so many comparisons and expectations online about SLS contrasting it with YOI. Believe me, it has its own merits that it managed to present its own identity as ice skating sports anime. From the premise, it's a group sports, thus, it heightens more spirit and soul as sports genre.

There is an immense difference in the plot narrative, however, you can sense the quick phasing of the competition to the extent that it needed to compromise most of the skating performances. For a 12-episode anime, it lacked so much in sports action. Hence, in compensation, ... it focused on another domain which is characterization.

Since it is group sports, the names and faces to be remembered doubled. Nonetheless, most of the characters are written good. You can at least distinguish which is which. The characterization is far from perfect also, there is no really astounding with these boys. Nothing remarkable. They seemed like normal high school teens flared with their courage to win, and they have different cores clashing, and whoever wins will be the best. That's it, nothing more.

But things get better until the end, I was a bit sleeping from the early episodes but when the Grand Prix Final ticked, you just can't leave the screen. The last episodes finally manifested what a sports genre should be-- the thrill, excitement, and nerve-wracking moments. The questions of, "Will they gonna make it?" "Can they actually beat them as underdogs?". As I questioned myself about this, it finally hit me that it is actually getting good for a sports genre. Maybe a bit late, but at least, it managed to embody the expectations that I have.

I have to admit, it is mediocre but you will remember the characters for sure. It is best to watch when you thirst for good-looking hot boys, I'm not kidding because they really put much budget to them (lol)

i love everything about this anime except for the fact that it was rushed. i wish it is a 24 episodes anime so they can show more like the routine, the practice, character development and a friendly match with other schools just like they did in haikyuu. it's a sport anime after all. if only this anime has 24 episodes, it wouldn't get that much bad reviews and then season 2 wouldn't get cancelled. it's sad because i enjoy this anime so much. i want to watch and know more about them.

i love the art style. the only reason i started watching this anime because ... a skate leading stars video show up on my tiktok fyp. when i saw maeshima, i knew i had to watch it. i don't have regret. even though the anime was rushed, it is very enjoyable.

Its bad that the reason why I watched this was because its about ice skating and I loved Yuri!!! On Ice, but my expectations REALLY LOW

Even when I binged episodes 1-3, I was already intrigued with the story. I was willing to know the characters. In fact, I got attached to them too. I already get excited every time a new episode comes out which made me realize how much I enjoy this underrated anime.

My only complaint is the fact that it's only 12 episodes long. Like any 12 episode anime, some of the plots were rushed and the character development.

I honestly want more of ... this anime, if there's a season 2 I'll probably blow up ;-;

Skate Leading Stars...

IS RIDICULOUS

Well, it's an anime I was very hyped for considering I'm a huge Guilty Pleasure anime and Figure skating fan. (Stan Yuzuru Hanyu)

Part of me wanting to watch this was because the character designs were done by none other than Queen Yana Toboso-san herself.
(Well, I just needed some skating anime cuz, Yuri, on Ice won't come back, and they won't animate the other arcs of Black Butler)

I was impressed, at first. Yet my boredom got the better of me, since mid-way of the anime, there was never really anything to be hyped about. A lot lacked in ... this anime, with it also having a lot of unnecessary stuff.

I felt uncomfortable every time I tried to compare this anime to Yuri on Ice when, to be honest, is more similar to Prince Rhythm lol. But the main problem really was that they showed such few scenes of the characters practicing their choreography, and focused on too much blabbering without the visuals helping the blabbering to make the viewers understand more. Is it a J.C. Staff problem? cuz I can't really consider this an enjoyable skating anime when they don't focus on it. Seeing the characters at least dance on screen for 3 minutes or less would've been better than some rough 5-second scene of them dancing. I'd really seriously like to see the teams' choreography and not just the camera focusing on them delicious faces for 5 minutes straight without feeding us the smooth delicious skating animation, which this anime didn't have.
It kinda feels like the staff didn't know what to do, and doesn't have what it takes to make an original skating anime, with a made-up type of skating at that. Skating is elegant, expressive, passionate, enjoyable, smooth, sometimes wild, explosive, or more. So visuals really play a key role if you want to make a skating anime. Well, it's not like I'll know any better as a watcher who doesn't know much about animation making, and story writing, but Skate Leading Stars really had potential.

Skate Leading Stars ignored lots of Factors such as explaining the scoring system, which devices they use, rules of the sport, appropriate attire, banned moves, and so on.
Skate Leading stars just felt very vague with us clueless on what's going on with the tournaments, because the sport wasn't explained clearly, when they should've had, as its a totally made-up sport, with no careful consideration of the other elements. It's like they just made it up with no in-depth research of the actual real sport to support it. J.C. Staff NEEDS to pay attention to even the littlest details.

Now my other problem.
The outfits.
Yes omg, they look great, fabulous, and all that stuff.
But is it appropriate for skating? is it necessary? Realistic?
I mean seriously Capes? Those are too hard to move around to maintain balance and perform moves and flips. Too much accessory. That's too heavy in real life, limits free movement and extension.
Also having the main team have individual costumes to represent the character that fits them more looks great, but having the same uniform increases efficiency, coordination, teamwork, and all that. It's a kind of heavy burden to wear such different clothes in one team if you ask me. Also, those over the top clothes must be the reason they can't animate much lol

Also in the latest episode...
SERIOUSLY KUONJI'S TEAM WEARING THIS PIPE THINGIES ON THEIR BACK THAT DOES FIREWORK EFFECTS AND COLORED SMOKE?? SERIOUSLY HOW CAN THEY MAINTAIN BALANCE AND JUMP LIKE THAT. PIPES ARE QUITE HEAVY, AND THEIRS ARE LOADED WITH FIREWORKS!! FIREWORKS ON THE RINKKKK
To be honest, the only reason I can put up with this type of ridiculousness is that Kuonji's VA is Soma Saito.

Also, objects cannot be in the performance, especially when you're in a competition. Such objects hold back movement etc. Yes, Shinozaki, your episode was great, but Swords ain't allowed.
A lot of Characters are undeveloped too and left in the shadow. They don't introduce much of the characters as the characters they are, especially the other competitors, which I take more interest in than the main team themselves. Well, not much is to say as this show still has 3 episodes left to leave a mark and make better of the characters, which probably won't happen, considering the time left.

I'm still looking forward to the last episodes this Show has to offer, as a Trashy Guilty Pleasure anime fan.
I really recommend watching these types of shows if you have the same trash taste. Thanks for reading. :))

I seriously tried my best to finish it, I even watched it in x2. As a figure skating fan I am so hurt. I can pass on the fact that they invented a new sport (synchronized skating exist but as far as I know it doesn't include jumps) but at least they could have made it realistic. For example the costumes, ok that the producers wanted to make an idolish appearence, but costumes this big and heavy are just a burner while performing the elements. Another example are the jumps. SERIUSLY A 4A-4Lo-4T combo??? No competing skater was able to land a 4A yet, let ... alone do a combination of 3 quads. Ok, now the charactes: BORING is the right definition. I can understand the rivality but in this case its so heavy to tire immediately. I saw many people conftont this to YOI. PLEASE DON'T DO THE SAME MISTAKE. Personally YOI is my all-time favourite anime and I was so happy when I saw a new ice-skating anime.

I consider myself to be pretty knowledgeable about sports anime; I have seen a good number of them. And I can say with good conscience that Skate Leading Stars has to be one of the worst, if not the worst, sports anime out there. This was such a horrid ice sports anime it left me with more appreciation for Yuri!!! on Ice.

This show was absolutely terrible. Everything about it was horrible and screamed lazy. Something that honestly left me dumbfounded was the fact that, a majority of the time, the skating scenes were not even animated. Yes, an anime which focuses on the premise ... of a stunning team skating competition did not even take the time to animate skating scenes. The characters would go out on the ice, the music would start, the screen would fade to black, and then the show picks back up after they have finished their performance. Seriously, that is just the worst possible production choice I could ever imagine, who allowed that? The sole good aspect about this is the fact that I did not have to see horrendous CGI skating. I respect them for choosing the lesser evil, and not showing anything at all.

Basically the only episodes with any actual skating in them are the first and the last episodes. What happened the rest of the time? Well, I couldn’t tell you. Not a single scene has any significance to the overarching plot or character development. Nearly half the dialogue felt like it was rambling on about their training and practices, which we never even get to see. Skate Leading Stars legitimately has some of the worst script writing I have ever seen, anime or otherwise. This show had a pretty strong lineup of voice actors, but completely ignored that and had the characters talk about absolutely nothing for twelve episodes.

The script may have been horrible, but even if it had been exceptional that cannot change the fact that there was a very evident lack of character development, or even character personalities whatsoever. These characters offer absolutely nothing. They have no backstory, no motivations, and no personality outside of watered down classic anime tropes. The character aspects the creators did choose to focus on had no relevance to the core plot. There was time spent discussing side characters and teams, but not in a quality manner such as in Haikyuu!!, but in a way in which screen time was wasted on characters that obviously would not even matter in the final competition.

I keep referring back to some sort of main or core plot, but even I have trouble labeling anything as a “core plot”, as nothing in this show mattered. You know in elementary school when teachers would draw a mountain to represent the tension rising and falling in a story? Now imagine a straight line. That’s Skate Leading Stars. Writing this review, I cannot stress enough how little happened during this show. I invested time into watching twelve episodes that I could have better spent staring at a wall. In my reviews, I try to at least say one thing that I appreciated or enjoyed about the show, but in this case, I cannot. As a sports anime fan, Skate Leading Stars is locked in the deepest, darkest portion of my mind in an attempt to forget about this atrocity.

Honestly, I expected more.

Shinozaki was honestly the most boring character ever, and honestly, I'm doubting if he even HAD a personality.

The rivalry felt so damn forced. I mean, I get it, most sports anime start with rivalries that seem petty to us but we understand that it's important for the characters and we root for them. It was near impossible for me to do that here.

There's a fine line between hyping up the rival team to be good competition, and hyping them so much that they are they are seen as OBJECTIVELY better than the protagonists. Honestly, the show's rivalry set up was ... so all over the place that I seriously thought that Ionodai won due to plot armor only.

Honestly, the best character was Sasugai. He was funny, cunning and at least the feelings he had towards Shinozaki felt REAL to me.

I came here for the sport, but it was more drama. We never even got a full routine from ANY school! Seriously??? That ticked me off more than anything else.

If you like boy drama, give it a go (still pretty weak though). If you like sports anime, save yourself the heartache. There's hardly any sport in here.

A friend and I decided to start watching this anime the other night, hoping it would be a little bit similar to Yuri on Ice (but not too similar, you know?). We had pretty high hopes because the art looked alright and the synopsis seemed interesting enough, but we were swiftly disappointed.

Every single character is uninteresting and one-dimensional, nobody is really motivated by anything other than "to win" (which we don't even really see for most characters), and even the main character's end goal is unoriginal and boring. His 'rival' doesn't even acknowledge him as such when they were kids, but this main character ... decided to latch onto that dream... then quit skating. THEN get back into it? It doesn't make any sense.

On top of that, the pacing is horrendous. It seems like the whole show was a lead up to the Grand Prix... that we, the audience, don't even get to watch. This was a skating anime where almost no skating happens, and nothing feels like it matters. When the show does show skating, it doesn't even look like the characters are moving. None of the performances look nice, and characters are drawn stiffly and with no movement, which is what you want in a skating anime.

Overall, this is one of the worst anime I've watched in a long time. Very much do not recommend.

I was really excited for this anime, I've loved Ice Skating since I was 7 and watched the 2002 Winter Olympics, and I loved Yuri On Ice so I was craving for another sports anime that included Ice Skating. Don't worry, the only thing I'll compare to YOI is the animation and that's on favor of Skate-Leading☆Stars. Sorry for my bad English in advance.

So the story is very cliché, like to the extreme. Protagonist was a prodigy of Ice Skate as a child but then there was his rival which was better than him and beat him in a competition so he "retired" when he was ... still in elementary school. In High School he's good at basically any sport and makes fun of the Skate Leading team of his HS where all his childhood skater friends are. Turns out his old rival is now the best Ice Skater of Japan and suddenly decided to enter Skate Leading. So of course protagonist will join his HS Skate Leading team and very surely will beat his rival with the help of the team he once mocked. So story wise there's not much really.

Skate Leading seem to be a made up sport and to be honest, I'm not here for it. It doesn't make sense and I see it as just an excuse to have tons of pretty boys on the same team and interacting with each-other all the time.

There's a ton of pretty boys all with different hair colors like any other otome-style anime. The pacing of the chapters is weird, it feels rushed and at the same time like nothing much is happening. The dialogues are mediocre and with not much substance to them.

The art is ok, not super good but not bad either. What impressed me was how well animated the skating scenes are, they're really good and I appreciate that a lot. After watching YOI again this past December I noticed that the skating scenes were really low budget to say the least, so watching a well animated skating scene in this anime was a nice surprise.

The characters are whatever, again, just a bunch of cute guys with quirky personalities. The protagonist is kinda like any other stereotyped spokon protagonist out there, he's talented so he's quite egocentric and bigheaded. The rival is the typical "I'm so good at what I do no one can compare to me so bow down you peasants". Not my favorite type of characters.

I guess this anime is kinda funny it's just not my type of humor, but I can see how others may enjoy it. For me is just a bunch of forced humor scenes and dumb jokes. I think is entertaining if you're into anime with lots of pretty boys with silly jokes and not much of a story.

I'll drop it here, I saw enough of it to know is not something I'll enjoy watching. If I watched the whole season it would be because of the animation of the skating scenes. The more salvageable part of this anime is the work of the seiyuus, which is really nice and the Opening song, that's an immediate jam, but this is not enough to keep me watching.

This show was a very mixed bag. There were some enjoyable parts, and I wouldn't say the plot or the animation was bad, it just got a lot of things very very wrong. The story revolves around Maeshima Kensei who is used to skate professionally before his parents died. His rival Shinozaki Reo is a skating prodigy who got bored with singles and is moving to the made-up sport of skate leading. His brother Hayato scouts Maeshima for skate leading to beat Shinozaki. This plot is actually pretty interesting in concept and isn't necessarily implemented poorly either. The main problem lies in the characters. Like ... 90% are assholes for absolutely no reason. They're not even likable assholes they're more like the 'I want them to get humiliated' assholes. I understand making Shinozaki's team unlikable because they're kinda the antagonists of the series. But god damn I wanted them stamped into the pavement so hard. Sometimes you just want these people to get their comeuppance in a story and not have it be all morally gray like it usually is in sports anime. But it was hard to feel any satisfaction when I feel like the protagonists' team was almost as unlikable.

Maeshima is really no fun at all. He's supposed to have that shounen protag energy but he comes off as selfish and disagreeable. I never felt like any of their team were actually friends, much less trusted teammates. We don't actually see them practice very often or do much in terms of team bonding. I wanted them to win, but only because I wanted to see Shinozaki lose and not because I actually felt they could or deserved to win. Their coach, who is a famous singles skater recovering from an injury, is one of the worst characters in the show. It takes him forever to actually teach them anything and he mostly just sits around and gives permission for stuff. What an insufferable person, wasting these kid's time and energy and not even teaching them properly. He's the one who took the job, and now these kids are left without a real coach. There was also a purple-haired boy who left the team near the beginning and his character arc is surprisingly poor. I understand his choice to quit the team, and I think that that was a good way for his character to go, but they almost stop showing him after that. He feels more like an afterthought than an actual character and his development mostly happened in like one flashback exposition scene.

Another major problem with the show is the lack of actual skating in it. I know that skate leading is a fake sport and that doesn't really matter much to me as long as it makes some sense. They never really explained the point system much which I'm sure really bothered some people but I wasn't super interested in that kind of stuff. I really just wanted to see the performances which I was, unfortunately, let down on. There is an embarrassingly small amount of skating in skate leading stars. this is especially sad because what they actually had was pretty good when it wasn't being bogged down by weird cuts and scene changes. I wouldn't have minded if they had used CGI for the skating because I know it's expensive, but they just stuck with showing as little as possible instead.

overall, if you want to look at pretty boys give it a shot, but if you are looking for ice skating/the sports anime experience I suggest just watching Yuri On Ice because it is much much better.

A figure skating sports anime, with the premise of “skate-leading.” It’s basically what artistic swimming is to competitive swimming (juuust slightly, ik that example is a bit wonky). The animation for this anime was actually very good, I found no real issues. Many scenes did give me chills, mainly Shinozaki revealing his more competitive side and the music for the final performances.

Those were my pros. As for the cons, there is a bit to cover. One of the most frustrating issues about this anime is none other than our main character, Maeshima, who is your typical cut-out angry red-head who fails to understand any form ... of logic and resorts to screaming his lungs out if anyone were to ever argue against his weird reasoning for literally any decision he makes while he’s on the ice (he basically says it’s cooler, and that’s what matters most). Trust me when I say, he makes you want to scream and punch his face.

The entire plot is a rivalry between our MC and the #1 figure skater, Shinozaki, who looks like atsushi from BSD and khun from TOG combined. I don’t mind rivalry animes, but this one really did not hit the spot where I wanted it to. We get NO development at all from our rival. Even though Shinozaki is the target Maeshima wants to beat, you’d expect that we’d get more development on his side of the story, but no, he’s just some prodigy skater who has been undefeated for his entire childhood. You can argue the ending showed a different side of Shinozaki, but man, after wanting to question this direction story of this story, with how messy the rivalry was really shown (I mean it felt one sided the entire time, so I felt like I was watching a man scream at a wall in every episode), this different side of him was super generic and almost expected, given how he never had more than 2 expressions throughout the show. His looks are nice and all, but he is as black and white as it gets.

As for other characters, i didn’t mind then, but they were never really relevant to the plot. For a show to be centered around team figure skating, I expected there to be more build up between Maeshima and his other teammates, but many of them have no development whatsoever and remain the same throughout the entirety of the show. Even if the useless coach (sorry bro) said something about their flaws, they manage to correct it effortlessly without any struggles, unlike our MC. It’s very obvious who the anime cared enough to put some thought into the stories of certain characters and which characters to just slide in for the sake of the show to keep up its team figure skating plot.

I honestly thought this anime would have been better had it been single skating instead, especially since you could throw out any other side character in the show and still make it make sense on the larger spectrum of things (Maeshima vs Shinozaki). The idea of Shinozaki’s younger brother, Sasugai being the coach for Maeshima in order to beat Shinozaki would have been a good enough plot as it is, minus the team stuff.

Overall, this anime is decent, but nothing special. There were many moments that I loved the performances, but there were also a handful where I skipped scenes because they held no relevancy to the main plot and were overall bland.

i like the concept of the anime since i have not watch any anime that have the same team skating theme. however, i feel that the execution of the anime sucks, it wasn't very well-planned and well thought of.

the characters background wasn't well explained, so i don't really understand the characters fully. additionally, the theme of the anime was about team skating however their competition skating performance keep getting cut off. like the teams can be skating halfway, then it turn to film people's reaction etc, so you are are not able to watch their full performance therefore unable to get why they are ... awarded certain points. overall, the anime just feels very slipshod and choppy.

As someone who enjoyed Yuri on Ice and figure skating, I was extremely excited by this anime. Though Skate-Leading Stars was able to feed that craving, it wasn't the BEST. It's a nice show to burn some time, and the story and plot is very simple and cliché, nothing too different or extraordinary (except for the fact Skate-Leading isn't even a real sport but that's fine it was a nicely made up). Personally, I was still very entertained with the characters and it really highlights the big performance moments when it needs to. Overall, I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it, but ... if you enjoy these types of sports anime that don't really have a revolutionary plot, its a nice one to watch.

When I first read the summary for this anime I had high hopes, but after reaching episode 6 I am starting to lose interest. I would say that the beginning felt very stretched out, where the main focus seemed to be on pushing the main character out and determining his skill level.

There is no cohesion or character development in this team where other sports animes like Haikyuu show that the characters have truly grown together as a team and have similar goals. Many of these characters seem to be defined by one characteristic and don't seem to stray from what they are first seen ... as. Ex: One character is only seen as brains and statistics.

Though this team in the anime is motivated to win, there is no development of these characters going into competition on the same page or looking out for each other if one messes up. This makes me a little upset because sports animes should (in my opinion) revolve around a team bonding and working together. These dynamics draw viewers in seeing cute and funny moments and banter between members. There are moments where the team that should be inclusive, yet they seem to belittle or hold a grudge for the main characters decision he made when he was 11.

Also it bugged me how their coach who was a former skater is always on his phone! He is unmotivated to actually encourage and coach these skaters who all hold incredible skill. It's episode 6 and he is still glued to his phone, gives no pep talk, and seems to just be present because they need an adult around! I hope that changes though!

I want to keep watching because I am someone who needs to see how this show wraps up (maybe my opinion will change), but for now these character traits and story development needs to be sorted out!